Why you should care deeply about your career site? [podcast #43]

Why you should care deeply about your career site

Career site is arguably the most important talent media for a growth company.

Yet, career sites are not getting the care and attention they should.

It could be that your talent acquisition is losing leads on a daily basis because your career site was not optimized to catch them.

Check out this post about optimizing your career site for a growth business >>

Why the career site matters so much to a growth business?

Your career site is your most important media for talent marketing because it is the only media your business has 100% control of. Every single content, every single message, every single element and what most: every single digital footprint left on your site is yours.

If you plan the content on your career site well, you can in fact turn your career site into a lead generating aid, even a machine for your recruitment.

What this means is that every person who enters your career site is able to learn more about you. And while they are learning about your business. they are leaving traces – digital footprints – behind. Those footprints can be tracked with your website analytics and they can teach you a lot about your career site audiences.

When a growth business takes full advantage of their website, they use it to build awareness, grow affinity and convert career site visitors into their recruitment funnel as leads or directly into applicants to currently open vacancies.

What most business do with their career sites?

There is a difference between a career site and an open jobs -listing.

The most common way to use the “career site” -landscape is to either publish the open jobs -listing page and leave it at that. Or add a bit of a cushion around the open jobs -page in the form of a show window -site.

Check out these examples:

Vodafone “Career Site”

Vodafone’s site is called a career site, but it is a job listing -page. On the top of the page, there are several links to other pages, which offer fairly little value to a passive job seeker. Vodafone’s site is a recruitment site, not a career site. It is clearly targeted to active job seekers. An active job seeker is looking to change jobs right now or as soon as possible.

Now, this is not wrong. Vodafone may just have chosen to follow a recruitment strategy instead an employer branding strategy. As long as your decision was made in the knowing that a recruitment site is relevant to active job seekers only. Nothing on their site is really relevant to a passive job seeker.

Vodafone career site screenshot 03102020
Vodafone Career Site is in fact an open jobs -listing page.

Careers.Microsoft.com

Microsoft has the same strategy: hiring surpasses the importance of employer branding on their career site. When a person enters their career site, it is automatically assumed they are interested in browsing open jobs.

Even though there are other content on this site, the content is very typical to large corporations: Just change the name and the same articles could be copied just about to any other corporate career site.

I know I’m being harsh, but I am doing it with the purpose of helping employers to understand how much the world has changed and how the traditional means in talent marketing just are not going to cut it anymore.

IfI was planning to change jobs, and Microsoft was interesting to me as a potential place of work, I’d be likely to spend a little bit of time browsing their offering. But if I was a passive job seeker, there is nothing meaningful for me on this career site.

Microsoft career site screenshot 03102020

Facebook Design Careers

Facebook Design does a much better job. Even though the primary content is about job opportunities, a page visitor does not need to scroll down much to get the “related stories” section which presented relevant articles for passive job seeker -designers such as “Content strategy, product design and research: How we make it work” and “5 ways to improve your design portfolio today”.

Despite there being way too much text on the page, especially considering this is a career page for a designer audience, this career page does a much better job servicing both active and passive designer job seekers.

FB design career site screenshots 03102020

Why is it important to make a difference between an active job seeker and a passive job seeker?

A website targeted and servicing only active job seekers is equivalent to a web shop. When you enter any web store online, you are likely to make a purchase if you find something that pleases your eyes and your wallet.

The same applies with recruitment sites. If you enter an open jobs -pages of a company, those vacancies are like products on sale. All the calls to action call you to make a purchase, as in apply to a job that pleases your needs and expectations.

But if you are not currently looking for a job, an open jobs -site is giving you nothing. You will leave. And what a waste that was to this employer.

It is no longer at all easy to get internet-users to actually visit web pages. The social media has stolen all our attention and all our free time on the internet. For a person to actually leave social media and browse company pages is a huge change in behavior these days.

Make sure you use that opportunity well and give your passive job seekers immediate value so that they leave you digital traces and want to come back another time.

#43 Why you should care deeply about your career site

https://soundcloud.com/modernemployerbrand/43-why-you-should-care-deeply-about-your-career-site

In this episode of Building a Modern Employer Brand -podcast, I want to give our attention to your career site for a bit. If you are a growth business active in talent acquisition, your career site is your most important talent media.

Most career sites are unfortunately not much more than a “shop window” without an entrance in sight. They may be well dressed, but all they allow you is to browse a few items; not touch anything, not interact with anyone, and not step inside.


Too many businesses seem totally blind to this amazing opportunity to activate your career sites as your talent lead generators.

Generating talent leads is about getting your ideal, yet currently passive job seeker talents to spend time on your website, inspire them to come back and eventually convert them into your recruitment leads or applicants. This is not at all the same as listing your currently open vacancies on your website. Learn more from this podcast-episode.

Episode-length: 12:26 min

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