Your career page is largely responsible for your recruiting success. 96 % of applicants use the career homepage to find out more about you as an employer and use it for their application. We will explain to you how a good career page can help you reach the right talents. We share best practices for career websites: You will learn what is important for a modern website design, how people find your career page, and how to evaluate the performance of your career page.

What is a career page?

Career pages should be an integral part of any recruiting strategy today.Here potential applicants can get an impression of your company and also of the advertised positions in your company.Ideally, your career page should provide potential talents with all the necessary information about you as an employer that they need for an application.The technical requirements should also be met in order to be able to apply to you directly, even on mobile devices.

A well-designed career page turns interested visitors into applicants.

By the way: When we talk about “career page”, “career homepage”, “career site” or “career website” in the following, we mean the same thing, even if it is a classic term used in web design to describe different things.

Why is a career page important?

Anyone looking for a job today would like to find out about an employer on a career page with inviting design.

According to our “Candidate Experience 2020” survey, more than one in four applicants (25.6 %) start their job search right here.

The rest of the candidates use job exchanges, Google, social media, the daily press, or employer evaluation platforms.

This does not mean, however, that the job search will not lead these candidates to the career page at some point in time as they continue their research about an employer.

Employers should therefore not underestimate the importance of a well-designed career homepage for their recruiting

Job seekers from all walks of life are used to being able to research precisely tailored information on the Internet.

They expect the same when looking for a job.

As a result, a disappointing or even a missing career page is seen as showing an employer’s disinterest. A real missed opportunity!

SEO: With a good career page you do not need to rely on job portals

However, candidates must also be able to find your career page.

Therefore, a good ranking on Google is extremely important – and this is where search engine optimization comes into play.

What do you need to consider for your SEO?

Use Keywords

It is crucial that your career homepage is found under the terms your candidates are looking for.

These are usually keywords like “career” + a specific job title + the name of your company.

Your career page should be full of these essential keywords.

They should appear in the headlines, body, meta description, and HTML title.

It is also worthwhile to name the used images with keywords or related search terms before you upload them.

If you fail to do so, you are wasting valuable potential on Google and are significantly harder to found, if at all.

However, if you follow the basics of SEO, your career page will receive a real boost.

The importance of the Google search

This way, you can reach talents who would not have become aware of you through other application channels, as shown in our survey “Job search in the age of Google Jobs”.

For example, one of our survey participants said: “I often find unexpected potential employers (on Google) that I would not have found on niche sites. This broadens the scope of possibilities”.

All this depends on the ranking of your career page.

Overall, candidates advocate a very active approach to Google and make the following recommendations to employers:

“Your job offers should appear on the first page on Google when searching for the right terms.”
“Be listed as high as possible on Google and indicate on your own company page right on the start page that you are currently looking for employees.”

Another expert tip: Integrating integration real applicant feedback or employer ratings into your website is another real SEO booster.

Google rates the relevant information as very valuable and helpful content and rewards career pages with ratings with a better ranking.

In addition, ratings are a key decision criterion for candidates: Our study “Candidate Experience 2020” showed that 59% of candidates are more likely to click through to a career website with integrated employer ratings.

What makes a good career page?

The best career pages

prepare important information clearly,
are well structured and easy to navigate,
are immediately visually recognizable as part of the company website,
allow a quick application directly on the site, and
load quickly.

Clearly prepare important information

A good ranking for your career page on Google is only half the story.

Once candidates have found your career page, they want to find all the information that is relevant to them.

Good career pages provide transparent insights into the working environment of the respective company.

Describe what areas you cover within your industry and what makes you unique.

Your career page gives you the space to provide your visitors information on all these aspects.

However, make sure that you present an authentic picture to the outside world. For example, embed photos and videos from your company.

Important note: No matter whether it is film or picture – do not use stock images or video clips – show only authentic pictures of your employees and work locations.

Put the people who make up the company in the limelight.

Videos in particular arouse great interest among employees.

For example, almost 70% of talent is more likely to apply for a job in an ad integrated into the career page if a video is embedded in it.

You can also underline your credibility by embedding company ratings from employees and applicants.

As a result, you present yourself as an attractive employer and optimize your employer branding.

Use recruiting key indicators as an argument

You can also integrate important recruiting indicators (key performance indicators, KPIs) in clear graphics, for instance:

“10 days until interview”
“4 weeks until hiring”
“564 job offers online”

The effect of this information is very strong.

Clear information on the duration of individual process steps creates trust.

Accordingly, 74.4% of applicants click on pages with clearly communicated KPIs.

Without this information, an otherwise identical career website is only selected by 25.6% of applicants.

Subpages for different professional groups

A small tip aside: If your career page is aimed at many different professional groups or career levels, it is a good idea to create separate sub-pages for the respective target groups.

This makes it clearer for talent.

After all, working conditions, benefits and other factors can be very different for a payroll accountant and an industrial machinist.

Include open positions directly on the career page

A must-have on the career page: a job portal with the daily updated open positions.

At all costs avoid “dead-end files”, i.e. positions that have expired. This makes your job portal look untidy and does not leave a good impression.

Make your job advertisements as meaningful as possible. Offer talents not only detailed job descriptions but also the following information:

In which department is the desired position located and who manages it?
What tools and methods are used in the department?
Who are the contacts for questions before and during the application process?
At which location are you looking for employees?

Easy application

If you have managed to impress your visitors, you should enable them to apply directly via your job ad – no matter where they are and which device they are using to access the job ad.

Offer candidates who are on a laptop, tablet or PC, for example, an easy-to-fill application form that is tailored exactly to the job in question and asks only for relevant facts.

Alternatively, you can offer mobile candidates a one-click application.

It allows you to import data from your own Xing profile into the applicant tracking system in use.

Candidates can also upload a resume in PDF format, the contents of which can be read with a CV parser at the touch of a button and stored in the talent’s applicant file.

This benefits everyone involved.

Candidates submit an online application with just a few taps and recruiters receive optimally prepared data that they can process directly.

Designing a career page: What is important

Now let’s talk about the design of your career page.

A common faux pas of many companies: You may have a career page, but it looks very different to your actual web presence.

Talents who access the career page via a company’s homepage inevitably feel lost and wonder: “Am I in the right place?”

You should definitely avoid such an inconsistent look and align your career page with the corporate identity of your company.

Otherwise, you run the risk of candidates dropping out because they no longer feel they are on the right site.

What you should keep in mind:

Use the same main, secondary, and accent colors and the same fonts
Ensure that the content is uniformly structured with headings and a font size gradation across pages
Do not forget the company logo

Usability and Candidate Experience

It is also important that your website has optimal usability, i.e. user-friendliness.

For example, improve the candidate experience by offering various filters on your job portal – by position, career level, location, or full/part-time.

In this way, talented people can directly find the job that suits them.

In addition to the images and videos already mentioned, informative graphics, lists, and bullet points as well as prominent headlines are important visual anchor points that facilitate the quick scanning of attractive career pages.

Also very important: nothing is more annoying than a page that loads slowly.

Compress images and videos to avoid long loading times on your site.

The result is a career page that is tidy and easy to use.

Evaluate the performance of your career page

However, once your career page is online your work is not over.

Instead, use the various analysis options to permanently improve your site.

Here are some of the most important KPIs to help you do this:

Conversion: How many applications does the site generate?
Impressions: How many people have visited the site?
Conversion rate: ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions
The ratio of new to returning visitors
Traffic Sources: the origin of your site visitors
Conversion Sources: From which source did the site visitors come who applied in the end?
Hires: How many candidates do you ultimately hire through the career page channel?

Used correctly, these recruiting metrics are a powerful tool to measure, evaluate and ultimately improve the performance of your career page.

Conclusion

There are a few things to consider when designing a career page.

The time and resources invested pay off. Keep in mind that you are creating an independent portal for the recruitment of new employees.

In addition, there is software that makes it easy to set up and maintain a career page: The Career Page Pro from softgarden has everything you need.

Without any previous knowledge in web development you can create an impressive employer appearance in your corporate design with which you can also present yourself perfectly to candidates looking on mobile devices.

Job advertisements published via our applicant tracking system appear immediately on your career page, all changes are automatically and continuously synchronized.

Candidates can also apply for your job postings from the career page thanks to the integrated instant application.

Additional features: