Build It, They Will Come: Building Blocks to a Best in-Class Career Site

[TiffanyW2299]

 

Building blocks to a best-in-class career site are essential. Building a career site is not unlike building a home or any structure for that fact. Taking time to plan is essential to ensure the structure is sound and meets the needs of those visiting, as well as have an aesthetically pleasing aspect. Let’s look at five of the key aspects to keep in mind when building a career site.

Building Block #1- The Design/Blueprints





it is important to create and consider your blueprints before building. The same holds true for your career site. It should have a simple enough design that it is intuitive for user to use, yet complex enough to meet the needs of all the different users. This is in addition to serving your organization’s end goal, which is converting talent and elevating your brand.

A good starting place is to ask yourself, if I were a candidate how would I find a job at this company? How would I identify with this organization? How do my skill sets align to their needs? Essentially, where do I fit in?

Landing pages are a great way to drive groups of talent to a subset of jobs. Likewise, talent community join is also a powerful way for passive candidates to connect. Both have a purpose, with an end goal in mind of converting active and passive talent.

Building Block #2- The Project Timeline



 

Ensuring you identify a timeline and goals up front is essential. Also ensure that you plan for the unexpected bump in the road or delay in construction.

Secondly, having an initial go live date is great, but the building does not stop there. Just like homes, maintenance is required. This means setting aside time to update your career site and explore new functionality that might further complement your strategy. Attending release calls and local events to learn more about new capabilities is key to long-term maintenance. Speaking with other “home builders” is also an excellent way to hear first-hand some of the creative things others are doing.

Building Block #3- Making your Home a Destination Spot



Career sites, just like new construction homes, should have a set of project plans and ideally a project manager. This will ensure that that your strategy stays on target both while building as well as during the maintenance phase. Project Managers should ensure your site is more than just a home- rather a destination, keeping in mind all the different types of people who may visit and their needs. Your project managers and crew members should take into account the following :

A destination that can be reached by mobile and non-mobile devices

A destination that can be reached by niche audiences such as veterans, new graduates and diverse candidates

An opportunity for passive and active job seekers to connect and be engaged

Feedback and ideas from other hiring managers on how they want their jobs to appear on the site can be useful. Likewise, highlighting key aspects of your culture through employee-based groups and events is a great way to add and build content to make your site come alive for prospective candidates. This is especially important to millennials. Culture is the number-one driver for these candidates. Recruiting Marketing offers many different and unique ways to creatively highlight jobs by brand, region, department, etc. Recruiting Marketing also has great features such as video, slide shows and custom plug in capabilities to further personalize your site.

It should also be agile enough to work OUTSIDE of your careers page. Yes, you should be able to break apart your house/ career site. The ability for your manager and their team to use pages of your career site to better market jobs and related content outside of your careers page makes your site a powerful marketing engine.

Fact #4- Crew Members and Site Managers



For the typical team of crew members your need will vary based on your vision and organizational structure. For example, a regional company with one brand may need one person who can maintain and build the site with additional resources such as marketing and legal playing a key role from afar. While a large global entity with multiple brands, may need an administrator per region along with their own team of experts regarding the local branding and legal compliance.

Aside from traditional resources such as marketing and legal, getting your employees involved can be beneficial as well. Often employees are the source of the content and images. Empowering your various business units to play a role in elevating their culture on your career site can be highly impactful to candidates visiting your site.

Building Block #5- Measure Twice & Cut Once



This is an old adage, but is still very relevant today. Ensuring you take the right measurements before you cut will guarantee you a house that will withstand anything and surely meet the expectations of the homeowners. The same holds true in measuring the success of your career site and measuring the success of your entire recruiting strategy. Your organization needs to ensure that the career site will not only attract the right talent, but will be able to easily report on who and where candidates came from. Recruiting Marketing empowers customers to measure not only the effectiveness of their sources, but their own career sites. Additionally, Recruiting Marketing takes the guess work out of SEO (search engine optimization) by ensuring built-in leading practices to support best in class SEO with our patented technology.

When building out your career site, consider all the connection points that occur when a candidate engages with your site. Additionally, consider how you want to view and use that data later. Ensuring you are using analytics to measure these connection points and reporting capabilities will set you up for success later and ensure a “sturdy” home long term.

Summary -Home Sweet Home



In summary, it is important to create and consider your blueprints before building. The same holds true for your career site. Taking the time up front to design and think through your candidate experience will ensure that your home is everything you and your visitors would expect It to be. Check out the leading practice blueprint for building a Recruiting Marketing site now, at the sap store.

Best of luck in your building experience!