You may have realized that most every company now has a Careers page on their website with an interface allowing candidates to apply directly.
You should have one too!
To start, I’m going to assume you have a website for your company to begin with. But if you don’t, please include a Careers page as part of your overall plan.
Your Careers page will be the beginning of your company’s Recruitment Marketing campaign. Recruitment Marketing is nearly as important as your Marketing for your product or service: just as you seek to attract the most ideal customer for your product or service, you will craft messages and experiences to attract the most ideal employees for your company.
The Basics
Don't be intimidated by setting up a Careers [or Jobs] page on your company's website. The most basic way to start is to simply have a page on your website
, called Careers or Jobs, that gives some simple information about working at your company.
Your Careers page should include at all times, even if you have no open jobs:
A brief “elevator speech” about working at your company. You must answer: Why would someone want to work for you?
An explanation of benefits for employees at your company.
A list of open positions, or job titles and positions for which you are always recruiting. Just make it clear which positions are open immediately and the ones for which you are simply accepting applications.
Instructions on how to apply.
Turning Visitors into Applicants
Just as in Marketing, when people visit your website you want to turn them into leads. Of course in Recruiting, that means getting them to apply for a job, or at the very least to give you some information about themselves.
If you typically like to collect resumes, simply set up a page as described above, and then have a link for interested applicants to email you their resume. In this case you will most likely want to create an email of careers@yourdomainname.com and then set up your internal process of checking that inbox and dealing with applications.
A job application, in its simplest form, is a way to gather contact information along with other important information for someone who wants a job.
The basic information your job application should gather if you are an employer in the United States is:
Full Name, Address, Phone, Email
U.S. Work Authorization
Position(s) sought
Employment History: Current & Previous Employers along with dates and job titles, or a simple explanation of years of related experience and type of experience.
Certification/signature to confirm that the information provided is truthful.
When you break it down to the bare bones, the information you collect is actually simple enough to be gathered in a customized contact form on your website. I have found that many web developers have blogged extensively about how to create these customized contact forms within your website no matter what type of site you have. If you maintain your own site or have someone do it for you, it should be a fairly low investment of time (and/or money) to get this solution up and running.
Stepping up Your Recruiting Game with an ATS
To take it one step further, there are some fairly affordable applications that could be worthwhile to add a careers page to your website. These applications are usually called “Applicant Tracking Systems” and can be built seamlessly into your existing website. [usually by adding in iframe or HTML code provided by the database after you get it all set up]
Either you purchase an Applicant Tracking System, or you can look into free and open source software to create a careers page that will allow people to upload a resume or application.
From there an Applicant tracking system is a database you can use to hold all the applicant information and documentation so you don’t have the need for paper files.
You Are Always Recruiting
Repeat after me again: you are always recruiting.
Don't let visitors to your Careers page get away. You can have an opt-in for a special email list for those interested in Careers at your company. This is a little advanced, but I will include it here so you can begin with the end in mind. Developing a curated list of interested applicants just a simple, smart move to have a community of candidates at the ready when you have a job opening.
In addition, this strategy can capture names of future candidates even if you don't have the right job available for them now, or if they are not fully ready to "apply for a job." If people are interested enough in your company to visit your Careers page, you should be interested in staying in touch with them.
So whether you have a very simple page or you have a list of 20 jobs, an Applicant Tracking System, and a special newsletter for jobseekers interested your company, get that Careers page up and running now!
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