Careers page best practices: How to attract talent

Stop.

Open a new tab.

Go to your website’s careers page (or team page if you don’t have one yet).

Ask yourself this: would YOU apply for a job based on your company’s careers page?

52% of candidates first seek out a company's website to learn more about an employer.

If you want talent to come to you (and not your competitors), your careers page needs to be optimised for conversion.

So, here are our careers page best practices...

‍

Sell your company’s mission and values 

Just like any other part of your website, your careers page should sell your company.

If you don’t have a flashy office or heaps of benefits to show off, that’s fine - sell candidates on your mission and values instead, since they’re what really matters.

What does your company stand for?

What cause can candidates get behind?

You don’t have to be saving lives or rescuing donkeys to have a mission worth signing up for, whether you’re bringing change to your sector or building a cool new bit of tech, make it sound like something candidates can buy into.

Candidates will be drawn to a mission-lead company, but nobody works for free.

Be clear about the benefits and salary they can expect, as well as any remote working options.

You can bet your competitors aren’t listing salaries on their website, so by being upfront you’ll make your organisation seem more transparent.

Would you rather apply for a job where you knew what you’d actually be paid?

Or one where you didn’t find that out until the end of the process?

‍

Describe what it’s like to work there

According to Linkedin, the #1 obstacle candidates experience when searching for a job is not knowing what it’s like to work at an organisation. 

This concern is easy to address - make sure your careers page provides a genuine insight into the culture and working environment candidates can expect. 

To appear as transparent and human as possible, you’ll want to avoid stock photos at all costs.

As an employer, you want to appear open and genuine.

Here’s another insight that you can act on: 56% see employer branding as the most important factor when choosing where to work

So, if your company is genuinely a great place to work, you need to be making some noise about it.

Try sharing Glassdoor reviews -  according to a 2019 Hubspot report, 96% of global employees who changed jobs checked potential employers’ reputation.

Plus, candidates trust the company's employees 3x more than the company to provide credible information on what it's like to work there… so get sharing those reviews!

‍

Show that you care about diversity

Glassdoor’s data found that 57% of employees want their company to do more to increase diversity.

Can you show that your company cares about diversity?

Is your culture inclusive?

Addressing candidates’ diversity concerns doesn’t mean reeling off stats and bombarding candidates with photos of employees from minority backgrounds.

Instead, simply be explicit about what your company is doing to improve diversity and maintain an inclusive culture.

‍

Use inclusive language 

The words you use carry subconscious meaning. 

Without evening being aware of it yourself, you’re painting a picture of what your team is like - a picture than often deters certain candidates.

Terms like ‘leader’ or ‘driven’ have masculine associations.

So, overuse of these masculine-coded words will signal to female candidates that they wouldn’t fit in.

Ideally, careers page best practice would have you write neutral-coded copy, but not to worry if it turns out to be more feminine-coded. The effect above does not work in reverse: men will not be put off by feminine-coded language.

We built a Job Description Analysis Tool that detects gender-coding and reading burden (which can be used for careers pages too).

Avoid excessive jargon and buzzwords too.

Candidates won’t be impressed by your ‘spearheading’ or ‘needle-moving’.

Your aim should be to seem like down-to-earth, caring people - this isn’t an episode of Suits.

You want to give candidates a snapshot of what your company is all about and what it’s like to work there. Try to keep your careers page concise and snappy - write in short sentences and avoid the dreaded ‘wall of text’... because top talent ain’t got no time for that!

Be upfront about what the hiring process entails 

Hiring can be a daunting process.

The more you can do to put candidates’ minds at ease, the more applications you’ll receive.

You’ve (hopefully) been transparent around salary and culture, why not be upfront about the hiring process itself too?

Risk-averse candidates will be less likely to qualify themselves out if you remove the guesswork from the process.

Below is a little chunk of copy we like to leave at the bottom of all our job descriptions, which could also be used for a careers page.

‍

You’ve followed careers page best practice and optimised for conversion, but what about your job descriptions? We built this Job Description Template to help you write high-converting job descriptions using behavioural science research.  

‍

Applied was built using behavioural science so that every step of the process is as predictive and inclusive as possible. Read more about how we’re changing the way teams hire via our free resources, or go ahead and start your free trial.