Competition for skilled and talented workers is intense in every industry. One way to attract the best is for your HR and marketing teams to collaborate. Job boards alone don’t cut it. Find talent where they are — searching for new opportunities on web browsers.

Your company's website is often the first point of contact for prospective employees. It serves as a virtual front door, giving them a glimpse into your organization's culture and values. Our recommended approach? 

Think of your careers section as a standalone microsite.

What to include in your website's careers section

While there’s no perfect formula, this checklist broadly covers best practices for content.

1. About Us info: Spotlight how you solve jobseekers’ problems, so they want to be part of your organization.
2. Culture/Values: Present your company in a more transparent and vulnerable way than you might otherwise — your evolution and roadmap for organizational change.
3. Engaging assets: Videos and high-quality photography show more than words can say. If possible, have employees give testimonials that authentically back up your proof-points.
4. Benefits overview: Insurance-related benefits matter. Tout those plus other perks like flexible hours, remote work availability, discounts, etc.
5. Locations: If applicable, showcase the range of available potions for potential hires when they consider coming to work for you.
6. Open positions: Use an iframe or API connection for a real-time list on your site, powered by your application management software to avoid having to duplicate the content of your job postings.  

Example of Careers Page Optimizations

Here are real-world examples of ways to elevate your site’s careers content. 

Know your audience by job type

A manufacturing client’s HR department was making a big push for recruiting. At the same time, their static, one-page careers section wasn’t engaging. And it wasn’t integrated with their third-party solution for accepting applications.

We worked with them to address how visitors would experience the site differently through:

1. Discovery: This phase looked at multiple audiences for the full site redesign. We created CX foundations documents — business-focused roadmaps, audience personas, journey maps — to make it clear what users wanted from the careers section.
2. UX/UI Design: Our designers made careers stand out with new photography, day-in-the-life stories and a management team page. We created a user experience flow to engage visitors, leading them to the desired outcome of applying for open positions.
3. Development: We built the microsite with the same structure and back-end technology as the rest of the site, with all admin functionality in one place. We integrated all changes with their third-party solution while making it easier to update and manage.

Pro Tip: Initial buy-in with partners across the organization sets the project up for success. 

More client stakeholders can be involved in the process without slowing it down, while cost can be split between invested departments. The manufacturing client’s HR team still uses those foundational CX documents for strategy.

Drive traffic to your careers page

Lightburn worked with a food production company to increase traffic — for the specific types of employees they wanted to attract.

1. SEO: A full site audit revealed gaps and opportunities to improve search rankings for keywords relevant to the target audience and positions of need. Improvements were both technical- and content-driven, so Googling “first shift maintenance tech jobs Wisconsin” brought up the site ahead of job boards.
2. Paid advertising: Search ads and display ad retargeting were supplemented by creative YouTube and Meta spots, which incorporated some of the company’s fantastic image and video assets showing culture, diversity, safety and other key attributes. These tactics covered all bases in driving jobseekers to the careers section. 
3. Conversion rate optimization: Analytics reporting tracks and assesses audience behavior data, giving insights for opportunities to take action. Is the funnel working? Where might tactics improve to motivate the right users?

Pro Tip: Digital marketing can only improve with those experts involved during design and build. 

Content strategists and managers almost always work with SEO pros. But UX/UI designers sometimes don’t have a seat at the table for media placement to talk through the customer journey so the right users go to the right destination.

Jobseekers have an abundance of options. So do marketers and recruiters. Contact Lightburn to fully understand your opportunities to develop, enhance or market your site’s careers section.