How to Increase Candidate Conversation on Your Career Site

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Your career site is one of the best tools you have to engage candidates but you could be missing the mark. It’s an unfortunate fact that most HR and recruiting teams don’t have a careers site that fosters and encourages conversations, interaction and engagement – even those with seemingly stellar websites. The truth is, you can have a beautifully designed and branded site that is comprehensive and easy to use, but you still might be forgetting a few keys that could unlock candidate conversations.

The vast majority of potential candidates who visit a career site will not apply for one of your job openings. As a recruiter or talent acquisition leader, you might pride yourself on the fact that your career site leads to higher quality candidates, but statistically speaking, you’re still probably missing out on a lot of great candidates that visit your site but never take the plunge. You might point to candidates who visit the site and see they’re under-qualified, or say that there wasn’t a position that matched their needs as reasons for low conversion and no engagement, but I believe a lot of candidates are leaving your website for reasons within your control.

You most likely post job listings on your career site in a standardized format for 14 to 30 days, and that’s about as far as your careers page goes. By relying just on these postings, you limit your qualified candidate pool. Stretch your career site’s reach and influence with these four tactics:

Create landing pages

Landing pages give your careers site much more visibility in searches and allow you to attract candidates who may not know to search for your company but are looking for a job in your industry or a position in a specific area, such as IT. From your landing page you can link to current openings and encourage interaction even when there isn’t an open position, such as joining your talent network, giving you the ability to build a candidate pipeline.

Build a talent network

A talent network truly is the best way to encourage engagement through your careers page. This kind of environment makes talking to a recruiter easy and takes the awkwardness out of starting conversations. Technologies like TalentCircles have made it easy to create this space within your careers page and I would argue that it’s an essential piece for any organization that prioritizes candidate conversations as part of their strategy.

Optimize your site for long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are phrases made up of three to four words that are typically very specific, and they are perfect for employers looking to recruit. You can optimize your career site for long tail keywords and take advantage of SEO by finding out what searches are leading candidates to your website already. These are especially useful because candidates using these phrases obviously know what they’re looking for. By optimizing, job-ready candidates looking for the exact positions you’re hiring for are being delivered to your website. Creating a conversation with them is a natural next step.

Provide downloadable candidate resources

There’s an essential question that every corner of the Internet, including recruiting, must ask. What value do I provide? Think beyond the job opening itself and consider what you have that makes a candidate want to visit, re-visit and hang out on your careers page. Give them a reason to by providing downloadable candidate resources that help them in their job search. This could be resume or interview tips, FAQs or industry-specific topics. You could make these available by entering an email address, or better yet, by joining your talent network.

All these tactics make your careers site more visible and give candidates a reason to engage.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

When Should You Automate Your Recruiting & Candidate Conversation?

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

There is a current trend happening in HR Technology and I am wondering if it is helpful or more of a hindrance to the world of recruitment. As we shift towards using automated tools, searches and other technologies designed to improve our roles as recruiters, has our reliance on technology created barriers that stifle prime opportunities to build relationships with key candidates?

We receive alerts when candidates who match our specific criteria upload their resume to our favorite job boards or when someone views our professional profiles on LinkedIn. As recruiters we are overwhelmed with candidate information, profiles, and processes that were developed to make our work function easier. Technology is supposed to make our efforts more efficient and effective, freeing us up to allow for more meaningful activities. As recruiters, this means carving more time and opportunity to meet with qualified candidates, engaging in a more personal one on one setting.

However, has today’s technology created barriers to unique and original conversations between your best new hire and the recruiting team? Has the opportunity for growth in the hiring process been stifled as the possibility of meaningful conversations start and die as quickly as an alert pops up on our smartphones?

If you are finding that you and your recruitment team have fallen heavy on the tech side instead of the human side of HR, perhaps I can help provide some answers to how to best bridge the gap between the HR tech and human side of recruitment.

How are successful recruiters balancing automation with truly meaningful conversations that lead to a thriving hiring process?

Those who understand the full lifecycle of talent recruitment and relationship development are the ones who you will find engaged with a variety of professionals at networking events or job fairs. Balancing the face-to-face interaction with the tech tools and screen is critical to success.

Are leading organizations missing critical moments to make their company’s value propositions unique?

Company career pages can be an excellent tool to educate the masses. However, it is important that the recruitment team is also well versed in the competitive advantage points represented by their company so that they can tailor the value points in the individual conversations they have with candidates.

What are some unique ways that technology is helping to cultivate meaningful relationships with candidates today?

No doubt, social media tools like LinkedIn allow recruiters to stay connected with candidates and have ongoing updates on big career moves. In addition to the typical HR tech tools and talent networks, recruiters may want to consider plugging in to non-conventional tools like Pinterest, Instagram and Slideshare. These can be highly visual and provide insight quickly into the personal interests and professional roles of specific candidates.

When should recruiters begin to engage with candidates and where can the meaningful conversations happen in spite of the technology traps? 

Technology provides many valuable courses to engagement. I talk about social networking a lot. Why? Because they are excellent sources to find a rich pool of candidates that share values and interests.

Of course, LinkedIn groups and TalentCircles groups are great formats to engage with candidates. However, Instagram and Twitter can also provide a networking opportunity. In fact, recruiters may enjoy the interaction with candidates who share similar non-career interests. By searching and getting involved in chats about gardening or reading on Twitter, many opportunities can open for meaningful conversations that lead to an ongoing relationship.

The secret to success for today’s recruiters using technology to engage with candidates is this: Recruitment is not a one time point and shoot activity. Successful recruiters understand that when there is a sudden vacancy that requires a specific candidate, that there should be a talent pool of candidates already formed, and relationships with them must already be developed.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell.