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At the recent CIPD HRSS event one of the sessions looked at the importance of integrating your ATS with your careers site for complete engagement.
Insight was shared into the importance of careers sites for candidates and how they are used as a sourcing channel.
Of all the channels available to recruiters, a website/careers site is the most used channel; 94% of in-house teams have a careers site/pages* and these take many shapes and forms from fully interactive to simple job lists.
Source: 2017 UK CANDIDATE ATTRACTION REPORT
Whilst you might think your careers site is doing the job for you, do you really know what is working and what your candidates think?
Where do job seekers look for Employer/Brand info?
Research from the 2017 Talent Board EMEA Candidate Experience Report revealed that the top six research channels most valuable for candidates when considering a potential employer are:
Career Site – 61%, an increase from 55% in the previous year
LinkedIn Careers page(s) – 50%
Online Groups - 33%
Employee Referrals – 28%
Job Alerts – 24%
Employer Reviews – 20%
What’s important in Employer Brand Content?
Over 25,000 candidates were polled for the same report to reveal that candidates want to experience the ‘right’ content – a balance of employer-led content and that from existing employees and peers.
In general, careers sites contain two types of content: Recruitment Marketing Content – about you as an employer as a whole and Job Content – about specific roles and opportunities.
Turning first to Recruitment Marketing Content from a candidate perspective…When asked to identify the most valuable marketing content, 53 percent of EMEA candidates cited company values, an increase of 16 percent from 2016. Other content that is growing in importance is employee-generated or employee-based content such as testimonials and why people want to work here – particularly videos of employees telling their story.
What’s clear is that candidates want a high level of transparency into organisations in which they are interested.
Let’s now turn to the employers’ point of view…Job Content expectations are changing and it is evident that whilst still valuable, the faithful job description is declining in importance and career pathways that help candidates understand where the job may take them is seeing growing importance.
Knowing the types of content that are important means that you can start to create content for your careers site that has a powerful advantage – for example, stories about the pathways that actual employees took – it’s proof of the pathway. Travelodge have some great examples
Why integrate your ATS with your careers site?
Getting the best from your careers site and providing a brand-based candidate experience requires the company culture to be embedded. Content needs to be relevant to your audience ‘segments’ and roles and when integrating your ATS with your careers site can provide complete engagement through the user experience, ensuring candidates can find the right job, learn about the role and where it could take them.
Consider how your careers site will work with your ATS as too often the functionality that the ATS provides to the candidate journey is an after-thought. Don’t fall into the trap of a shiny new careers site to entice candidates to apply only to let them down when it comes to the online application process and beyond – think dynamic content to personalise the candidate experience, intuitive design, clever job search, engaging visuals and of course mobile responsive to increase the success of your careers site as a direct sourcing channel.
Further Reading….
How Travelodge embraced the candidate experience within their careers site and optimised their site with candidate personas in mind.
Creating a new careers site for a great online candidate experience?
