The formula for creating great careers pages
Check out our formula for great career pages here.
To be great at hiring, you have to adopt the mindset of a great marketer. And, as is the case for so many marketers today, how you portray your value on your website is what will make or break your brand.
“Companies should put as much enthusiasm into their careers page as they do their consumer brand on their websites,” said Jeff Dulemba. Dulemba is the founder and president of LoveMyJob and has been working in all facets of recruitment for 25 years—from contingency search to agency work to recruitment process outsourcing.
As he put it, in the same way brands need to work tirelessly to build messages that attract and compel the right consumers, they need to apply the same rigor and focus on their careers page to win the war for talent.
Of course, there are seemingly endless channels for getting the word out about jobs these days—whether through LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Craigslist, Indeed, or trade publications—but, inevitably, the best candidates will come to your website and your careers pages to decide whether they want to pull the trigger on applying.
According to Dulemba, the higher the percentage of applicants coming directly through your website, the better. “It doesn’t matter from a candidate’s perspective where they saw you at first—as long as when they come to your careers page, they’re engaged, they have an understanding of what it’s like to work there, and an understanding of what their role will be, and then they click apply.” He said companies with good careers pages on their site should be getting around 60% of their job applicants through their own careers pages. He’s seen companies with lousy careers web pages that get as few as 10% of their applicants through their own site. And making this order even taller, great careers sections also do some of the recruiters’ lifting when it comes to screening people out of the recruitment process.
Dulemba is to career web pages as a food critic is to restaurants. He has audited thousands of careers pages during his career. After analyzing so many careers pages on companies’ website, he’s concluded that the formula for crafting compelling careers pages is to include the following six components on your organization’s career pages:
1. Explain the mission and vision of the organization.
As Simon Sinek explains in his famous TED Talk, inspirational leaders “start with why.” You can— and should—apply the same philosophy to recruiting great talent. You should appeal to potential candidates by explaining what your mission is and what kind of impact you want to have on the world. In other words, sell them on your dream. This is your opportunity to create an emotional connection with prospective employees around what you’re trying to do as an organization.
Companies that do a great job of explaining their mission and vision on their careers pages:
Boston Beer Company uses strong visuals and strong copy to tie the company’s business mission to their recruiting mission.
The Achievement Network uses feel-good imagery and messaging to its advantage on its careers page.
Charity Water uses its bold and noble cause to its advantage when trying to appeal to prospective employees.
New Seasons Market makes it clear that they’ve got more heart and soul than your average grocery store chain.
2. Lay out the benefits of working at your organization.
At some level, marketing your company as a place candidates should consider comes down to answering the “what’s-in-it-for-me” question.
Think broadly about the benefits of working at your organization. Ask yourself questions like:
- What are the people like?
- Is the environment casual?
- Are the work hours flexible?
- Can people bring pets to the office?
- Are you open to people working remotely?
- Do you give people free lunches from time to time?
- Are there team outings?
And, of course, include the more standard-fare benefits as well:
- Paid vacation time
- Sick time
- Health insurance
- Dental insurance
- Gym reimbursement
- 401K
- Profit sharing
Companies that do a good job of laying out their benefits:
Seer Interactive uses imagery and an infographic approach to highlighting its benefits.
Keen Footwear highlights its on-premise child care center to lure in prospective employees.
BambooHR highlights a perk that seems almost too good to be true—actually paying for its employees vacations. They also take things to the next level with this internally-produced video:
Highlighting benefits isn’t just for flashy software companies. 84 Lumber simply lists out its many benefits.
Highlighting a unique benefit, Boston Beer Company points to the fact that every employee gets two cases of beer each month.
3. Convey the culture and core values.
When people are evaluating where they see their next career move taking them, they care intensely about the kind of culture an organization is trying to create. A 2019 survey by Glassdoor found that over 77% of adults across four countries (the United States, UK, France, Germany) would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there. Naturally, people want to feel both inspired and aligned with the core values that a prospective employer claims to embrace. Simply put, they want to know if they’ll fit in.
An easy way to highlight this is to have a page that describes the organization’s core values and how they’re seen in the day to day at work.
Companies that convey their culture well:
Viget uses images of real employees—paired with brief overviews of their core values—to help give a sense of its culture.
MOD Pizza uses compelling copy to help convey the kind of culture it’s trying to build.
Peabody Properties uses an easy-to-remember acronym to explain its core values.
4. Introduce your people.
For most people, the thing that makes or breaks a career experience is the people they work with day in and day out. Think about a great—or terrible—work experience you’ve had, and it probably came down to your colleagues.
In addition to yearning to know what their potential coworkers are like, people want to know whether there are examples of people like them whose careers have flourished—so shine a light on these stories.
Companies that excel at introducing their people:
At accelo, an “Employee Spotlight” series on their blog to introduces their people.
At Medallia, employees are featured looking straight into the camera, talking about why they love working there.
Here at PI, we published Q&As with a few of our employees to give people a sense of the career growth real people have experienced here.
On SodaStream’s careers page, you can simply scroll over an employee’s face and see a quote from that person about working at the company.
5. Drill into the departments.
It’s one thing for people to understand what it’s like to work at your company in the general sense, but as people move down the path of increasingly serious consideration, they’ll want to know what it’s like to work in a specific department. Provide visibility into that experience by highlighting different departments’ unique subcultures.
Companies that drill into departments to showcase team cultures:
Equinox creates videos and provides a brief overview about different positions at the company.
HubSpot creates robust pages for each department. Each page features a departmental overview, videos featuring people in that department, and a “day in the life” snapshot, then lists all positions open in that department.
6. Explain your hiring process.
Recruiters and hiring managers have collectively given the hiring process a really bad rap. Too often, candidates never hear back after they apply, hiring managers are uncommunicative, and the entire process is a complete black box to candidates. You can improve the candidate experience by simply letting candidate know what your hiring process consists—and therefore, what they can expect—if they decide to throw their hat in the ring for a position at your company.
Recruiters and hiring managers have collectively given the hiring process a really bad rap. Too often, candidates never hear back after they apply, hiring managers are uncommunicative, and the entire process is a complete black box to candidates. You can improve the candidate experience by simply letting candidate know what your hiring process consists—and therefore, what they can expect—if they decide to throw their hat in the ring for a position at your company.
These companies do a good job explaining their hiring process:
Teamleader provides a loose sense of what candidates can expect without hemming themselves in by pointing out that these steps are a “framework” they use but not followed too rigorously.
Hotjar gives a very clear and concise process candidates go through before getting a job offer.
Here at PI, we shot a video with our talent design manager, Will Otto, in which he articulates both our hiring philosophy and the process candidates can expect. This video has been viewed 2,700 times since we originally posted it.
Conclusion
Your career page will be foundational in expressing your employment brand. While there’s plenty more you can do than what’s described above, think of these six elements like the price of admission when it comes to creating awesome career pages.