By having a high quality career site in place businesses are able to increase SEO, better compete for talent and ultimately reduce recruitment costs.

A recent study by Zety found that 77% of job seekers visit a company website to look for jobs, in turn career sites account for 27.35% of all hires. Sounds great right? Unfortunately, creating a top- notch career isn't an easy feat. 90% of career page visitors leave without applying (source workable). 

Which brings me nicely on to the topic of building or buying. If you don't yet have a career site in place (or a high performing one) is it best to build or buy? 

In this article we've included the key components that make a winning career page and the considerations you may want to make before deciding whether to build or buy.

Creating an outstanding career site in-house is no walk in the park and there's plenty to contemplate. Time, project stakeholders and hidden costs all have to be considered. On the other hand, you could outsource your project. Outsourcing has it's own challenges, which provider should I choose, what will it cost and how long will it take being the main concerns. 

All great career sites have three key factors in common. They all have first-class; usability, employer branding and application process'. These three components are vital to creating a high converted career page. 

1. Usability: To be a success a career site needs to be user friendly. Your page needs to be optimised for mobile traffic and navigation needs to be seamless. With the rise of mobile phones, internet usage and apps job seekers expect to visit and apply for vacancies via a mobile device. According to Job board Reed, 75% of job seekers now apply for roles via their smartphone. 

Considerations:

• Is your website optimised for mobile traffic?
• What time implications will it have on your IT department to build not just a career page, but one that is mobile responsive? 

2. Employer Branding: Branding is super important, without the right mix of content on your site it's extremely difficult to enthuse talent to apply for your vacancy. Time to think like a marketer, by understanding what your ideal candidates looks like you can start to build relevant, appealing content. 

Considerations -

• Know what your ideal candidate looks like
• Understand what content appeals to your target audience
• Review and align current content to your ideal candidate
• Understand the time and hidden cost (employee time) to create new content

Tips -

You probably have a good idea of what your ideal candidate looks like, but do you know what content will convince them to apply? Why not run a survey amongst current employees to get a better understanding of why they joined your business in the first place. You could also ask about their prior job seeking experience, what did they want to see on a potential employers career site and what would put them off from applying. This task won't take long and could save you significant time in crafting relevant content. 

If you need another opinion why not reach out to a career page provider and enquire about the type of content they are seeing perform well. They should be able to provide some statistics or case studies to back up their thesis.  

3. Application Process: 

A good careers page links seamlessly to an Applicant Tracking System allowing for a smooth application process. This process needs to be quick and easy for candidates to complete. Research conducted by Potential Park found that 50% of applicants quit an online application at least once. Avoid asking for any information that isn't vital at this stage, there's plenty of time to grill applicants further on in the recruitment process. 

As soon as a candidate hits submit they expect to be communicated to. Research from job board Reed found that only 64% of candidates received confirmation of their application. If no contact has been made within two weeks, 90% of candidates will assume they're not going to be progressed to the next stage.

Before embarking on your career site journey it's vital that you have the recruitment infrastructure to handle large volumes of candidates. A good Applicant Tracking system should enable you to automate candidate communication to provide a positive candidate experience and save you time on menial recruitment tasks. 

Considerations - 

• Can my ATS integrate with a career page 
• Can I automate candidate communication through my current ATS 

So there you have it, three main functions your career page must have to be a success and the considerations you must take before building or buying. Hopefully now you have a clearer idea of what checks to make before making your decision. If you still need some inspiration, why not check out these 10 companies who've nailed their career page. 

Could you build a career page for less than £500?

At Talentvine we love building stunning, high performing career sites. Discover more about our career page service here.