4 Tips to Turn Your Company Careers Page Into a Powerful Recruiting Tool

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In my experience, many companies treat their careers page as an afterthought, something they just put together because others were doing it or they thought it would make them look good. However, such an attitude defeats the purpose of building a careers page in the first place.

Apart from showing job seekers the current vacancies in your organization, your careers page should compel qualified candidates to apply for openings in your organization without any hesitation. Like any other page on your site, your careers page should have a strategy.

Here are the key components you should add to your careers page to take it from boring to breathtaking.

1. Tell Your Story

Most companies use their about pages to tell compelling stories of how they began, challenges they conquered, what drives them, and where they’re headed. It’s a copywriting commandment.

Similarly, you should use your careers page to tell your company’s hiring story. It doesn’t need to be anything elaborate; it could just be a simple story about how you met your first hire at a coffee shop. Tell candidates about how that hire went on to become a cofounder who helped the company reach heights.

That probably isn’t your company’s exact story, but you get the point. The idea is to showcase your hiring success stories and explain to candidates how your hiring process works. Include every detail of every step of the process. At least one of three things will happen:

  1. Candidates will love your hiring process
  2. Candidates will despise your hiring process
  3. Candidates will be indifferent about your hiring process

Ideally, when you tell a compelling story, you’ll get the first two reactions: Job seekers will absolutely love your hiring process or absolutely despise it. Either reaction is perfect because it means you’ll get more applicants who are excited to work with you, while candidates who don’t like the sound of your process will shy away.

2. Add Employee Testimonials

Employee testimonials can come through third-party review websites or your own site. In the former scenario, ensure the reviews on third-party sites like Glassdoor are overwhelmingly positive. If your company’s average rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars, that warrants inclusion on your careers page.

Otherwise, ask employees individually what they think about working with your company. Text testimonials are fine, but where possible, video testimonials can really grab the attention of job seekers visiting your page. Videos are more convincing overall, and people can see and sense the emotions of your employees while they’re giving rave reviews about working in your company. Nevertheless, text-based employee testimonials are better than no testimonials.

If you need further convincing, research has shown that 50 percent of job seekers visit an employer’s website to gauge its reputation before applying, while only 19 percent check Glassdoor. Hosting employee testimonials on your careers page puts you in control of your company’s narrative, so take advantage of that.

3. Include Your Mission and Vision Statements

This is the part where you directly sell your company to candidates. Your mission statement should answer these questions:

  1. What do you do?
  2. Whom do you do it for?
  3. How do you serve them?

Your mission statement should provide valuable points of reference for your employees and job seekers. It should show job seekers and employees the direct effect their performance has on your organization’s ability to serve customers and serve them well.

A vision statement, on the other hand, is a projection of your organization’s future goals and their overreaching effect on humanity. It should answer these questions:

  1. What problems am I solving for humanity via my business?
  2. What are my long-term dreams and aspirations for the company?
  3. Whom or what do I want to influence through my business’s existence?

If your company already has a page for its mission and vision statements, you can simply add elements from those pages to your careers page. It is also a good idea to disclose any causes your company supports that align with your goals.

By showcasing your mission and vision statements on your careers page, you’ll attract more candidates who share your mission and vision for your company.

4. Show Off Your Team

Larger companies do not need to show off their employees on their careers pages. Candidates will flock to well-known brands because of their fame, stability, and compensation packages. (Plus, it’s impractical to show off the tens or hundreds of thousands of employees who make up these global organizations.)

If you’re a startup or a smaller company, displaying pictures of your current employees on your careers page can help encourage more candidates to apply for your positions. According to Glassdoor, 76 percent of job seekers consider the diversity of a company’s workforce when evaluating job opportunities. By showcasing your team, candidates can see at a glance that your organization has built a diverse workforce they’d be proud to join. Be sure to also shine a spotlight on the diversity of your executive team, as that will show candidates that they will have access to growth opportunities of their own if they join your company.

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Applying these tips to your careers page will help you attract qualified, culturally aligned candidates to fill open positions at your company. Job seekers will apply to your roles not simply to earn a paycheck but because they believe in your company’s goals for the future.

Vikas Agrawal is a startup investor and cofounder of Infobrandz.com.

By Vikas Agarwal