Capture Job Seeker Attention in 7 Minutes or Less! Strategies for Increased Candidate Engagement

By Tess Curle Taylor, PHR, CPC

How well is your corporate recruitment website capturing the attention and engaging the best talent in your market? In today’s war for talent, one thing is for certain – your career website needs to be optimized so that it does a great job of reeling in top candidates.

According to a recent report from Peoplefluent, a talent management software firm, you only have approximately 6.48 minutes to make a positive impression on the top talent out there. Based on real-time Google Analytics that focused primarily on visits by job seekers to all the career sites they power for the entire year of 2013, there were some surprising behaviors noted by this study. These included:

• The top day of the week that job seekers visit career websites is Tuesday, followed by Mondays
   
• 53 percent of new website visitors check out the career portal vs. 47 percent who return later
   
• Internet Explorer is the most popular web browser candidates use to search for careers online
   
• Today, 15 percent of job seekers access career websites via their mobile devices and smartphones (as compared to only 3 percent in 2011)
   
• Not surprising, most job search behavior occurs between the hours of 8am and 4pm daily (Passive candidates who are looking for work while they are employed?)

Obviously, as a professional in recruitment, you will want to find ways to maximize the effectiveness of your career portal. The idea is to increase candidate engagement in all formats. This serves a couple of purposes. One being the ability to keep the interest of any potential candidates for longer periods of time, since the above survey indicated most visitors spent less than 7 minutes browsing the company website. Second, because you want to make it easy for job seekers to easily find the jobs that they wish to apply for using smart career application systems.

Some suggested ways to capture the attention of the right candidates, while improving employee engagement are to:

Create an Intuitive Career Portal

A vast majority of candidates are familiar with the use of job search technology, including the use of cloud-based job databases, Internet search engines, and mobile apps. Make your career portal intuitive with full search functionality, simple formatting of information, and easy resume uploads. User friendly career portals that allow candidates to create an individual account for setting up job alerts, updating and checking on the status of applications are always a great way to engage more candidates.

Provide a Web and Mobile Friendly Format

It goes without saying, but it’s time that all career portals got up to speed with both web and mobile friendly formatting. If you cannot redesign the website to make it readable on mobile devices, set up a mobile app for your career listings and use this to attract more job seekers. Consider that as of 2013, there are 6.8 billion people worldwide with mobile subscriptions, which is 96 percent of the world’s population. On-the-go candidates are the audience you want to capture.

Integrate Your Career Listing with Social Networks

To vastly improve the chances that your job advertisements will attract the best candidates, go where they are and that’s social networks. Fast Company advises that social media has transformed the way that adults worldwide find and absorb information. For example, their research indicates that YouTube reaches more 18-34 year old adults in the USA than any cable network, every second there are 2 new subscribers to LinkedIn, and social media in general has surpassed any other activity we do as humans. Boost your recruitment presence by integrating social networks within your job postings and accepting applications via social recruitment tools.

Make Your Job Descriptions Stand Out

When candidates read a job description, they get an immediate feel for your corporate brand. The tone and the use of descriptive words can play a part in their decision to visit your career website to find out more, or not. As you write job descriptions for advertisements, take the time to review them carefully and have a member of your team proof them before they go online. Use attention grabbing headlines. Make job ads comprehensive to shed light on the unique benefits and work experience your company can offer.

Use Industry Focused Keywords Online

Job seekers often refer to the main search engines when looking for a new opportunity. This means your job advertisements and career portal content should contain the keywords to help candidates find you first. Check out other career websites, review O*Net for the most common industry keywords, and then use the Google keyword tools to design the right content for your career portal and adverts. The results will be more productive visits from the right kinds of candidates who are searching for you.

Make your recruitment efforts count and capture the interest of candidates by using the above tips. You’ll hopefully see a spike in the number of website visitors to your career portal, and you’ll help get them to stick around longer to learn more about your company before they zip off to a competitor’s site.

 

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