bars
Your career pages are a lead magnet for quality talent. According to a study by LinkedIn, more than 50% of candidates visit your website upon spotting your job advert. Probably, you're facing a situation where despite attracting a sizable amount of traffic to your career pages, the applications you receive are pretty few.
There are several reasons why visitors may fail to convert into applicants. For instance, poor candidate experience is a possible cause of a high bounce rate. This is due to issues such as mobile-unfriendly sites (mobile phones account for more than half of website visits), difficult navigation due to poor page design, long job application forms, job mismatch, etc.
That's why it's crucial to optimize your career page to ensure you're converting as many job applicants as possible. One sure way of attaining this is by implementing the 'sales landing page' approach when designing your career pages. But before we focus on how to create effective career landing pages, let's first understand what a landing page is and why it's necessary.
A landing page is usually a standalone page focused on a specific campaign. The aim of a landing page is to compel the visitor to perform a particular action. In this case, a career landing page should navigate the candidate to fill the job application form or sign up for the talent pool if the sought vacancy is no longer available.
In short, a landing page should target a specific audience. This means having a page for each of the roles you have in the company, which is optimized to compel potential candidates to fill up the positions.
An effective landing page helps you relay information to the visitor in a way that compels them to complete your desired action. Generally, building career landing pages enable you to achieve the following goals:
As we mentioned earlier, an effective career page should emulate a sales landing page. This means the moment a visitor lands on a page, it should beckon them to perform the next action.
For instance, if a candidate lands on the career home page, the search bar for the job category should be the most prominent feature on the page. This should lead them to the category page, which should also have a conspicuous search bar for their specific role, plus a list of available positions under that category.
Once they're on the specific job landing page, they should find clear information on the job requirements plus a conspicuous 'Apply Now' button. If the job is no longer available, there should be an alternative 'Join Talent Pool' signup button for them to register and submit their CV for future position consideration. It's also essential to provide the candidates with an option for signing up for job alerts to receive notifications whenever relevant positions come up.
That said, below are some key features you should focus on when aiming for an effective career landing page.
When it comes to landing pages, design is everything. From the page title to the description, body text, and call action, if the design fails to catch the visitor's attention, chances of them losing interest increase every second they stay on the page.
Essentially, the page copy should be compelling enough for the visitor to respond to the call to action. It should also provide brief but sufficient information that matches the visitor's search intent. Finally, you should accompany it with a conspicuous call to action button to lead the visitor to the next step.
This succinctness can only be achieved by adopting a crisp and minimalist design. The essence is to provide easy page navigation by portraying all the necessary features without making the page appear busy.
An effective landing page should be optimized for different devices – desktop, tablet, and mobile. Actually, popular landing page creation softwares feature mobile-friendliness as their key software promotion strategy. As earlier mentioned, most people use their mobile phones to browse the internet. However, few will stick on your site, however valuable the information is, if they have to navigate from left to right to read the content.
The importance of a website's mobile-friendliness cannot be overemphasized. Optimizing your career site and the application form for mobile can significantly increase visitor retention and hopefully boost applicant conversion.
Another vital aspect of an effective landing page is making it easy for visitors to complete the intended action. For an ordinary landing page, this involves requesting lesser visitor details to encourage them to fill the form. This can be their name and email address only.
When it comes to a career landing page, you also want to adopt the same strategy. Ensure the form requests only the necessary information for each application step. If they're signing up for job alerts, the fields should even be fewer. This way, you avoid the likelihood of the candidate postponing the action for a later time or date, as their return is not guaranteed.
Matching landing page and Ad copy headlines enhance the user experience, thereby reducing the bounce rate. For example, if a job seeker clicks on your Ad and then finds a similar copy on the career page, it assures them the job advert is legit. This increases their chances of proceeding with the application process.
Effective landing pages utilize consumer psychology to create positive impressions. From using emotion-triggering words in the copy to employing colorful images, embedding fascinating videos, and creating urgency in the call to action, landing pages are built to inspire website visitors to act.
Another effective strategy of molding consumer perception is including trust signals, such as client logos, customer testimonials, certifications, etc. Strategically positioning trust signals on the career page, like employee feedback, company badges, etc., can reassure and nudge applicants to take action.
Receiving significant traffic on your career pages does not necessarily translate into increased applications. If you haven't optimized the pages for conversion, potential candidates can easily slip out of the site without completing the application. One sure way of increasing career page conversions is by implementing sales landing page features, as discussed above. That way, your page can complement your Ad campaigns and nudge potential candidates to fill application forms, join your talent pool, or signup for job alerts.