Learn how the corporate careers site has become a primary tool for recruitment and hiring, as well as a direct source of hire.

1. How the Corporate Careers Site
Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

2. Contents
Introduction
Talent Acquisition Portal
Where to Focus
Marketing Content
Job Description Content
Tapping Technology
Endnotes
About the Author
2
2
3
4
7
10
13
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How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction 1 / 14

3. Improved technology, greater awareness
2 / 14
Talent Acquisition Portal
The 2014 Source of Hire Report from talent acquisition and HR think tank CareerXroads shows
that in 2011, employee referral was the top source of hire at 28 percent, while careers site lagged
far behind at 9.8 percent.1
The same report shows that, one year later, in 2012, careers site was a close second to referrals,
at 23.4 percent to 24.5 percent.2
Then, in 2013, careers site essentially tied with employee referral as the No. 1 source of hire at
19.1 percent and 19.2 percent, respectively.3
And every indication is that careers sites will continue to yield results. The CareerXroads 2015
Source of Hire Report finds that, in 2014, on average, 31.4 percent of job candidates applied after
visiting a company’s careers site.4
So, what’s changed in recent years? Why is the corporate careers site getting renewed attention
and results — or, perhaps, results and renewed attention?
For one thing, job seekers have become more sophisticated and more comfortable with internet
research. At the same time, the ways in which information is being shared is more conducive to
research. In addition, advancements in technology have created better user experiences.
Introduction
The static corporate careers site, once utilized by top organizations largely for the purpose of
employer branding, is ancient history.
Today’s corporate careers site serves as a multimedia information portal, an extension of job
postings, a driver of candidate engagement on social media, and more.
In recent years, the careers site has also become a primary tool for recruitment and hiring, as
well as a direct source of hire.
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Where to Focus
From the candidate standpoint, nothing else even comes close. Job seekers were asked to select
up to five types of research channels they found most valuable when researching opportunities
at a particular company and careers site ranked highest at 64 percent. Job notifications or agents
came in second at 34.5 percent.6
And it’s not only young job seekers who rely on these information portals. Talent Board finds
careers sites to be the most valuable research channel for candidates from all five generations,
both men and women.7
The 2015 data is based on 130,000 candidates who applied to more than
200 companies.
Talent Board 2016 research, to be published in 2017, based on 183,000 candidates who applied
to more than 240 companies, finds careers site again in the top spot, at 57 percent.8
Meanwhile, on the employer side of the desk, technology has facilitated the talent acquisition
process, enabling careers sites to become robust recruitment portals. As important, availability of
data, and the realization that data can be used to drive processes and improve results, have led
the talent acquisition community to, basically, pay attention to the numbers.
And the numbers, on both sides of the desk, point to careers sites.
Information for all
The 2015 North American Candidate Experience Research Report from Talent Board, the
non-profit organization behind the Candidate Experience (CandE) Awards and research, finds that
the careers site is the top channel for candidates and the top investment for employers.5
But, as Talent Board points out, simply having a careers site is not enough. Companies must
invest in relevant content, information about the job, employee experience, and company
culture.9
Talent Board research shows that company values are the most important marketing content for
candidates, and job descriptions are the most important job-related content that candidates look
for when researching a job.10
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Information about values is shared at the Enterprise careers site on a page that’s easily found;
under the heading, “Our Company,” is a link to the page, “Our Values.” Here, the headline reads,
“Not merely words, but actions.” Enterprise then describes the company’s eight core values and
explains how they translate to a rewarding work experience and a positive customer experience,
as well as how these values impact the communities the company serves.
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction
Figure 1:
Enterprise Holdings Careers, Our Company, Our Values
http://go.enterpriseholdings.com/our-company/our-values/
Marketing Content
Communicating values
Enterprise Holdings, the world’s largest car rental company and a winner of a North American
Candidate Experience Award for four consecutive years, focuses heavily on communicating
company values.11

6. 5 / 14How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction
The military has played a prominent role in the company’s history; Enterprise is named after the
ship on which Jack Taylor served, the USS Enterprise. The company remains committed to the
military, and when sharing this commitment values are again emphasized. Military is also front
and center, on the homepage of the careers site, as a category all its own. The headline on the
“Military” page reads, “Your mission starts here. GO.”
Figure 2:
Enterprise Holdings, Careers, Our Company, History
http://go.enterpriseholdings.com/our-company/history/
Information about Enterprise’s values is not limited to this section of the site, however. Values
are part of the company’s history, and in the section called “History,” also under the heading “Our
Company,” job seekers can learn about the “hard work and dedication” of Enterprise founder Jack
Taylor and others. The headline on this page reads, “Decades of success. And we’re just getting
started.”

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Impactful headlines
Rob Kelly, CEO of Ongig, a provider of visual job descriptions, is a great believer in compelling
headlines — and the headlines at the Enterprise site certainly attract attention.
“Words matter,” he says. “It’s a one-click world, and people are one click away from going
somewhere else. You have less than 5 seconds to grab them.”
Kelly recommends unique headlines, and he says that it takes being bold to be unique.
Call to action
Once a company has captured a candidate’s attention, the challenge is to keep them engaged. “A
clear call to action is vital, because if you don’t have something for them to do next, they’re
confused,” Kelly says.
This is where companies often miss the mark.
“I’m amazed at how many career sites don’t pass the squint test,” Kelly says. By this he means
what a person sees when she or he squints — what stands out, what should be done next.
Otherwise, in a world of distractions, that candidate will click and move on.
Figure 3:
Enterprise Holdings, Careers, Military
http://go.enterpriseholdings.com/military-overview/
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Answer ‘the why’
Additionally, Kelly finds mission to be critical. The “why should I work for you” question needs to
be answered. Millennials especially want to work for someone who’s purposeful, he says.
Job Description Content
Mission can be achieved in the headline, Kelly says, as well as through the overall feel of the site,
including by showing engaged, happy people.
He gives the example of Autodesk, which shares the top reasons to work for the company at its
careers site. He also points to how Tesla shares its mission in job descriptions.
Impact is essential
Ongig findings concur with Talent Board research: job description content is critical.
“Seventy-seven (77) percent of candidates say they make their decision [to apply or not] at the job
description level,” Kelly says.
Candidates’ attention to job descriptions was the impetus behind Ongig’s visual job description,
he explains. A job description with a logo or any visual-rich media gets more attention than
text-only descriptions. Headlines matter, too, as do job titles. Kelly gives the example of Customer
Service Representative I as a less- than-compelling job title.
He says that a job posting is an ad, and as such, it should engage people like other marketing
content.
Attention to details
There are other factors that come into play as well. Appcast, a provider of programmatic
recruitment advertising, finds that when it comes to click-to-apply rates (defined as the number
of candidates viewing a job advertisement who then complete an application), the length of the
job title matters, and that the ideal number of characters is between 51 and 60.
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Figure 4:
Appcast click-to-apply (CTA) impact is based on 3.1 million clicks and 213,000 applications from 140,000 job postings.
Appcast finds that the length of the job description also matters. While less is theoretically more,
click-to-apply rates appear to peak when job descriptions contain 8,001 to 9,000 characters.
CTA Impact by Job Title Length
Based on number of characters in the job title
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction
Figure 5:
Appcast click-to-apply (CTA) impact is based on 3.1 million clicks and 213,000 applications from 140,000 job postings.
9.0%
8.0%
7.0%
6.0%
5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%
20-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 81-90 91-100 101+
Number of Characters in Job Title
CTA%
6.2%
6.8% 6.8%
6.5%
4.1%
3.6%
3.4%
7.6%
8.4%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
<500 501-1000 1001-2000 2001-3000 3001-4000 4001-5000 5001-6000 6001-7000 7001-8000 8001-9000 9000+
Number of Characters in Job Description
CTA%
11.0%
8.6%
4.6%
6.5%
5.7%
6.4%
7.2%
7.4%
8.9%
8.0%
6.0%
CTA Impact by Job Description Length
Based on number of characters in the job description

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What’s next
When asked about trends, Kelly cites three:
According to Kelly, these trends are poised to shortly become mainstream. “I believe that all job
pages will include these features within the next two to three years,” he says.
The research speaks to the importance of including enough information. At the same time, a case
can also be made for quality as opposed to quantity, in that quality of content drives candidate
interest and engagement, and therefore application rates.
Encouraging engagement
Kelly says that getting candidates to actively engage as part of the job description increases the
likelihood they will apply. He tells of an Ongig client that added comments and chat options.
What the company found was that approximately one in two people, roughly 50 percent, who left
a comment or asked a question then applied. It’s about giving candidates a voice, Kelly says.
Visuals are really taking hold, he says. He gives the examples of Comcast, which now
includes a video on almost every page of its careers site, and Google, which now includes 12 to
14 images as part of every job description.
Social is still vital, he says, noting how people are figuring out the job description piece. If
you want a job description shared on social, it can’t look like medical and legal journals, he
explains. You can’t ask team members to share content that embarrasses them. On the other
hand, content-rich job descriptions and other recruitment media allow companies to truly
leverage social recruiting.
Interactivity, which Kelly says is the opposite of brochureware, has become more common.
He gives a few examples: click and watch a video, click on a gallery of photos, click on salary
information. GoDaddy, he notes, embeds salaries and ratings information from jobs and
recruiting site Glassdoor.
A few companies go even further. “True interactivity is showing off a team and allowing a
candidate to have a chat with a team member,” he says.
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Improving the user experience
Among other features, the Jibe platform incorporates a consumer-quality search engine within
the careers site.
Jibe’s thinking, according to Casanova, is this: We live in an unbelievable world of technology; we
get to use unbelievable consumer sites. Why shouldn’t a very important function like searching
for a job provide the same experience?
As important, a robust careers site gets results. “We work with the biggest employer brands in
the world and we clearly see more candidates of higher quality and better analytics,” Casanova
says. To date, the company has processed more than 250 million job seekers across its platform.
Designing to the objective
Jibe research shows that the No. 1 thing job seekers want to do when visiting a careers site is
search for a job. But information is also important to them.
“Job seekers are spending more time on career sites in general. They’re doing their research
online. Career sites are the place that happens,” Casanova says, noting that other investments
funnel into these sites.
Jibe’s technology and solution offer more than a customizable look and feel; they extend all the
way to the job application and interface with the most popular applicant tracking systems. Most
clients approach Jibe in order to overcome their ATS limitations, Casanova says.
Jibe offers a complete end-to-end solution, but Casanova emphasizes the consumer level
experience, and the customization. “No two Jibe clients look alike; you would not recognize two
client sites,” he says.
Be that as it may, incorporating these features, while getting the most from an applicant tracking
system (ATS), keeping up with technology changes, and optimizing the candidate experience on
all devices, is a long to-do list for companies. Nevertheless, all are essential.
“In order to convert better candidates faster, you need a career site built with responsive design,
highlighting your employer brand throughout,” says Ivan Casanova, senior vice president of
marketing for candidate experience and recruiting software firm Jibe, which provides a
customizable candidate experience platform.
Tapping Technology
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

12. 11 / 14
With this in mind, clients are also encouraged to increase SEO on targeted landing pages. For
example, a company might build a landing page for hard-to-fill locations or hard-to-fill-positions,
and it will be an SEO friendly page. “SEO is an ever important part of our business,” Casanova
says.
Companies are embracing the strategy. “The bigger the brand, the more important SEO is to
them,” he says.
Data matters
Analytics have become extremely important to companies as well. In fact, people analytics
related to recruitment, and the careers site in particular, is the No. 1 trend Jibe is seeing.
Companies don’t only review analytics; they use analytics to make decisions about their sites.
Getting mobile
Other trends include increased mobile activity. “We see mobile traffic going up on all our sites,”
Casanova says. “If you don’t have a mobile-friendly experience, you’re losing candidates.”
Jibe research finds 30 to 40 percent of job seekers begin their job search on a mobile device.
Meanwhile, new research from Appcast shows that more job seekers are applying for positions
via mobile.
In 2015, the click-to-apply rate for mobile was only 1.5 percent.12
It has since more than doubled
to 3.26 percent.13
Mobile still lags behind desktop, which has a click-to-apply rate of 7.81
percent.14
Yet inroads are being made, most likely due to improvements in technology and
increased attention to data.
Separating technology and design from brand
The company, though, is not in the business of branding. Typically, organizations have strong
brands already and are interested in the best possible candidate experience, Casanova explains.
The focus is now on how to attract talent, convert those individuals, and do so within the context
of an existing brand.
Leveraging technology is key. “A big part of what we do today is SEO strategy,” Casanova says.
Because job seekers often start a job search with a Google search, Jibe tells clients, “Think of
Google as the very first page of your career site.”
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

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Companies appear to be stepping up with regard to mobile. Talent Board 2016 research finds
that among companies surveyed, 76 percent now offer mobile apply. It’s worth noting, however,
that among the companies and candidates Talent Board surveyed, only 12 percent of candidates
applied via mobile.15
Still, employers wishing to attract talent have no choice but to offer a mobile option. Job seekers
want to search for a job and apply at their convenience.
At the same time, these savvy researchers want engaging, dynamic, informative experiences
when at company careers sites.
And every detail matters, including how sites look and function in different web browsers.16
Appcast research, which includes a review of 500,000 job applications across 16 different
industries and every major ATS, finds Android users are nearly 2.25 times more likely to finish an
application than job seekers who view the same information on an iPhone. The default browser
for Android is Chrome, and Appcast also finds that Chrome in general has approximately a 20
percent higher click-to-apply rate than other browsers.
Simple assessment
Analytics will tell a company if its careers site is on target. In addition to the recruiting metrics
companies typically review, Allan Schweyer, president of human capital consulting firm ASFM
Group, cites another.
“Even though your main concern might be number of applicants, you should also track the ratio
of prospects, those who land on your career site, to applicants, those who apply for a position or
join your talent pool,” Schweyer says.
“A lot of people might come to your corporate career site, but if they don’t do something, like join
the talent pool or apply for positions, then you have a high bounce rate. For whatever reason,
people aren’t liking what they see, and they’re leaving. It’s a good indicator, the bounce rate, of
the effectiveness of your site.” 17
The recommendation is worth heeding now, and as careers sites continue to evolve.
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Endnotes
1
“CareerXroads: Source of Hire Report 2014,” 14,
http://www.careerxroads.com/news/2014_SourceOfHire.pdf
2
Ibid
3
Ibid
4
“CareerXroads: Source of Hire 2015,” 16,
http://www.slideshare.net/gerrycrispin/2015-careerxroads-source-of-hire-report-56847680
5
“2015 Talent Board North American Candidate Experience Research Report,” 17
6
Ibid, 15
7
Ibid, 14
8
Kevin Grossman. 2016 Talent Board North American Candidate Experience research findings,
Nov 22, 2016
9
“2015 Talent Board North American Candidate Experience Research Report,” 21
10
Ibid, 12
11
“Enterprise recognized for recruiting efforts.” Florida Times-Union, Dec 13, 2016,
http://jobs.jacksonville.com/job-seeker/2016-11-25/enterprise-recognized-recruiting-efforts
12
Chris Forman. “The Impact Of Mobile Recruiting On Click-to-apply Rates.” ERE, May 7, 2015,
https://www.eremedia.com/ere/the-impact-of-mobile-recruiting-on-click-to-apply-rates/
13
Appcast, December 2016.
14
Ibid.
15
Kevin Grossman.
16
Todd Raphael. “We’ve Got Some New Info on Mobile Vs. Desktop Recruiting, And What It Means
To You”; “Chris Forman on Droids vs. iPhones and more.” ERE Media, September 18, 2015,
https://www.eremedia.com/ere/weve-got-some-new-info-on-mobile-vs-desktop-recruiting-and-w
hat-it-means-to-you/
17
Allan Schweyer. “Recruitment Analytics in a Programmatic Sourcing Era.” Appcast webinar,
November 17, 2016, http://www.appcast.io/resources/webinars
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction

15. About the Author
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Paula Santonocito
Paula Santonocito is a business journalist and communications professional
specializing in employment issues. She is the author of more than 1,000
articles on a wide range of human resource and career topics, including
recruitment and hiring which she has covered since the early days of
web-based employment advertising.
Her articles have been featured in many publications and information outlets:
HR Dive, Human Resource Executive, The Wall Street Journal, The Florida
Times-Union, Monster.com, and others. In addition, her work has been posted
at more than 100 websites, referenced in academic and legal publications as
well as books, and translated into several languages.
Paula has also served as managing editor of Recruiting Trends, U.S. features
editor of Online Recruitment Magazine, and AIRS News editor.
She brings a strong business background to her work as a journalist and
communications professional. She served as a vice president for a Fortune
500 corporation, and has management experience in a variety of work
environments.
Paula Santonocito holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Norwich
University, a Workforce Career Coach Facilitator (WCCF) certificate from
Thomas Edison State College, and has been awarded the Global Career
Development Facilitator (GCDF) designation from the Center for Credentialing
and Education (CCE).
How the Corporate Careers Site Has Evolved in Talent Attraction