Career Sites That Sell

Insight4theEnterprise Series: Part 3
Career Sites that Sell:
4 Ways You Can Win More Applicants

Insight4theEnterprise Series: Part 3 Page 2
Contents
Introduction 3
The power of branding 4
Does your brand do enough? 4
Translating your brand to your career site 4
Rue La La 5
Zynga 5
Match.com 6
Strut your stuff: The what, the why & the who 7
Set your voice with images and tone 7
Get personal and share your values 7
Are you for real? 8
Strategies for hard-to-fill positions 8
Write strong copy 10
Be engaging 10
Get to the point 10
Be nice to your applicants 11
Keep it simple 11
Go extra sleek 11
Don’t lose people 11
Not everyone is ready to apply 11
Socialize your jobs 12
Help candidates be successful 12
Next steps: Conversion & metrics 14
Conclusion: Keep optimizing your career site 16

Career pages are among the most highly trafficked pages on a corporate
website. Visitors to these pages arrive due to interest in the company or via
job advertising, Internet searches, word of mouth, referrals, recruiters, and
any other recruiting channels. Some arrive with a purposeful goal (applying
for a new job), while others are just window-shopping for a better opportunity.
The enduring tag line for the U.S. Navy recruiting campaign struck a
resonant chord with many when it first debuted—and still does today.
That’s because prospective employees want more than just a paycheck and
benefits; they want a work experience that fits their values and aspirations.
By the same token, you want visitors who arrive at your career site to feel
welcomed and understood. You want them to want to apply. Unfortunately,
the timeframe you have to capture their attention is a very small window.
You have to make every second count.
This eBook, the third in our Insight4theEnterprise series, is geared toward
helping you produce a more compelling career site—one that paints an
inspiring picture of your open jobs, your company, and the people who work
there. With examples from numerous successful businesses, we’ll identify
four critical ways in which you can better capture the interest of targeted
talent and convert that interest into applications:
1 Use branding. Are you making the best use of this secret
weapon?
2 Strut your stuff. Are you showing candidates the real people
and culture of your company?
3 Write strong descriptions. Is your copy motivating and
attractive?
4 Be applicant-friendly. Are you asking applicants to jump
through hoops?
We’ll also discuss how you can use specific analytics to promote the
ongoing optimization of your career site—and continue to attract top talent
for years to come.
Introduction

Career pages often get shortchanged during the company site design process. We’ve all seen the beautiful
corporate website that hits a wall at the careers section, getting stuck with generic imagery, indifferent copy, and
clunky job listings.
Is your career section a victim of neglect?
When creating a career site, the first and most essential aspect to consider is your brand. It is your company’s
most powerful recruiting asset. After all, it’s the brand that you are trying to grow by hiring more employees. And
when visitors look at your company’s career site, you want them to understand that this is the message and
umbrella under which they may be working. If your brand is not fully and engagingly incorporated into your career
site, you are missing a huge opportunity.
Does your brand do enough?
You want your prospects to understand your brand message and be excited about building that brand by
working for your company. An effective brand should do the following:
Deliver A Message Be Credible Connect On An Emotional Level Motivate The Prospect Create Loyalty
Think about your brand’s unique selling proposition or what sets your products or services apart from
competitors. Ask yourself:
• What is the promise to our customers on which we want our employees to deliver?
• What drives our company?
• What do current employees focus on when building campaigns and creating an emotion
around our company offerings?
The Power of Branding
When creating a
career site, the first
and most essential
aspect to consider
is your brand. It is
your company’s
most powerful
recruiting asset.

Zynga
On the website of this social
games developer, the transition
between corporate website and
career site is seamless. Fun
abounds. Open positions and job
description details fit in smoothly
with the overall structure and
theme of the website.
Rue La La
Rue La La carries its magazine-like style onto its
career pages, giving it a fresh and fashionable
look that easily conveys the heart of the
company.
Match.com
Match.com’s career site provides a unique take
on their brand and utilizes its message to attract
and engage prospective employees. The product
is online dating, but the brand is love. The
Match.com career page highlights that brand in
a playful, but truthful, manner. On this page, you
can see that Match.com wants their prospects
to both love their work and understand that
employees are working to help people fall in love.
Translating your brand to your career site
After you’ve identified the key elements of your brand that you want to convey to prospects, consider how you can apply them on your career pages.
The following examples offer some insight.

Strut Your Stuff: The What, The Why & The Who
One of the most important things your career site can accomplish is the visualization of
life—not just work—at your company.
It’s one thing to talk about what your company represents—innovation, free lunches,
active lifestyle—but it’s another to show it through imagery and tone. For example, there’s
no mistaking that you’re working for a company that emphasizes athletic culture when
you look at Adidas. However, this may not be so clear for other companies.
Before prospects hit the apply button, they need to be engaged in a vision of your
company, what it’s like to work there, what daily life is like, who they will be working with,
and what goals they’ll be working toward. What you say and how you say it will shape
each candidate’s experience and will give these prospects the insight required to apply
and pursue the opportunity.
Set your voice with images and tone
Don’t assume that visitors to your career site know all about your company or who works
there. Photos, illustrations and videos can shape the story about your company’s culture,
work atmosphere and the opportunity offered. If you don’t have a big budget for photo
and video shoots, don’t worry. Companies frequently use snapshots and videos captured
by employees at company events or around the office. The informal nature of the images
contributes to the insider view feeling. Take a look at how Shutterfly makes that work.
The tone of your copy should work with the graphics to tell a story. Zappos, for example,
offers visitors a real sense of the playful, social, and hard-working environment the
company has. Culture is the headline on the Zappos career site, and visitors have plenty
of opportunities to explore blogs, videos, and other social media channels to understand
the dynamic of the office.

Consider this: What about your
company would make someone want
to work there? Zappos demonstrates
an environment that’s “fun and a little
weird,” but makes the point that this
environment is about more than a free
lunch and fun times. Zappos is a family
with its own set of core values.
Other companies, despite having fun products, have a more
serious demeanor to their company story. Etsy, an e-commerce
website that allows artists and consumers worldwide to buy and
sell crafts, clearly states its vision “to build a new economy and
present a better choice: to buy, sell and live handmade.” Their
career site includes a video that conveys a level of emotion toward
crafts as well as key company accomplishments.
Your career site can do more than
simply list jobs; it can share your story,
your mission, and the reason why it’s a
great place to work. EventBrite does a
great job at all three.
Get personal and share your values
In addition to your brand and unique selling proposition, candidates want to understand what makes your story so relevant to them.

Redfin achieves authenticity by offering
visitors a photo series highlighting the top
12 reasons to work for Redfin. The clean
format allows people to browse through
the accomplishments and faces of the
company and quickly learn more about
the company culture.
Trustwave takes a similar approach. The
popular cybercrime-fighting company offers
real pictures of the many faces of its employees
along with the company’s values and identity.
Yelp’s career site offers the real story
of what it’s like to work there through
its “Day in the Life” section, where
employees in different departments
answer questions about their
backgrounds and daily experiences.
Are you for real?
Rest assured that, before they apply, candidates will certainly consider the people with whom they will be spending 40+ hours a week. They will want to
know if they’ll fit in and what working with a team at your company will feel like.
Always be authentic. You know there are people behind the corporate machine, so pull back the curtain and show candidates who they really are. Putting
employees on your career site gives your talent brand a face—multiple ones, in fact.
Always be authentic.

Jive Software is a prime example.
The company uses one page to tell
engineering prospects about locations,
values and open jobs.
Strategies for hard-to-fill positions
Companies who compete to fill certain types of jobs or hire a large volume in key functional areas often focus parts of the career site on those jobs. Blogs
that are specific to a functional area or job type are a meaningful way to help candidates learn more about what it’s like to work in that area of the company.
You can create specific sections of your career site to market these positions, using blogs, employee profiles, video interviews with employees, and key
points of pride.

Now that you’ve taken the time to properly brand your site, share your culture, and feature employee life,
you need to motivate people to apply. That’s where persuasive and powerful copy can play a huge role.
Why? Because many site visitors may arrive at a job description page without seeing any of your beautiful
career site branding, imagery and messaging. The words you use can go a long way toward converting
prospects into applicants.
Be engaging
The best-performing career sites feature engaging job descriptions that reflect the company’s brand, culture and
environment. In other words, don’t post impossibly long laundry lists of qualifications and requirements, and don’t
bog down your descriptions with a lot of administrative boilerplate text. No one wants to read that. Remember: A
boring job description conveys a boring job.
Also remember that you are trying to attract the best candidates for the job. Think about who those people are.
What do you need to say in order to get them excited about the opportunity? More importantly, how do you
need to say it? Use a voice that speaks to your target audience. For some companies, this means incorporating
humor, freshness, or whimsy. For others, it means offering a tone of pure professionalism. Obviously, it will
depend on the key positions available and the company’s brand.
Write strong copy
Remember:
A boring job
description conveys
a boring job.

Tivo does a great job of using engaging copy on the front of its career site while
remaining concise and purposeful in its requisitions.
Meetup uses a conversational tone to clearly explain the job and responsibilities;
this is far from a dry-as-toast job requisition.
Get to the point
You spend a lot of time, money, and brain power on driving traffic to your career
site. But when those people land on your job descriptions, you have the opportunity
to convert traffic to applicants. Keep the end goal in mind. You want quality
conversions, not just high volumes of traffic. Don’t get so caught up in crafting witty
copy that you forget to be realistic and direct about what you need. Do a little market
research to help position the job in an appealing yet direct way. Interview people with
similar job roles or ask the hiring manager, “What are the best parts of this job, and
what skills are essential?” Circulate descriptions to people in the department and test
which ones are most effective. Would your coworkers apply?

Be Nice To Your Applicants
The last thing a prospect wants to do is go through a tedious, multi-step process in order
to apply for an exciting job. The most qualified and in-demand people will be the least
motivated to jump through hoops on your website, especially if they are already employed.
Marketing professionals are constantly testing and discovering how to maximize registrants
by minimizing the number of fields on each form. For every field subtracted, the number
of applicants will increase. Think about the bare minimum that you need so that hiring
managers and recruiters can make an educated decision on which applicants to contact.
Keep it simple
Your interview process can still be as rigorous as needed; however, keep in mind that
you are not trying to intimidate visitors. It’s a cost/benefit analysis. Extra screening
questions on your forms make it easier to review applicants, but may dissuade highly
qualified prospects from applying. You want them to apply and to be excited about their
application, not irritated because of the number of required fields.
Zappos uses a simple two-page application process. Applicants fill out their contact information,
cover letter, resume and relevant samples on the first page; and wrap it up on the second page
with some additional relevant information. It only takes a few minutes to answer the job-related
questions that help recruiters decipher which candidates fit the company’s needs.
Go extra sleek
Note HUGE Inc’s application. All that’s required is an applicant’s first name, last name,
email address and resume. The rest is only nice-to-have information. Candidates’ phone
numbers will be on their resumes, and if they’re not, candidates have the option to
include it. Four fields, and presto! Application submitted.

SayMedia uses straightforward
navigation that remains visible on the
side of each page, detailing exactly
which options are available for visitors.
At the bottom of each page, several
options remain that will allow prospects
to instantly see all open positions or learn
more about working with the company.
Don’t lose people
Be sure that your rich content and engaging employment brand find a home in a career site that’s easy to navigate, so that casual browsers don’t get lost
on the way to apply.

For example, Match.com gives passive or lurking site visitors the option to receive future
alerts about new openings on just about every page of its career site. It’s a welcoming
alternative that tells prospects there are always opportunities down the road to build a
relationship, even if they aren’t ready to take the next step immediately. This encourages
people to connect with the company in the way that’s right for them.
SayMedia also provides a job alert signup, as well as the ability to submit a general
application, in an array of clearly outlined Job Seeker Tools.
Not everyone is ready to apply
Many people who visit your career site are simply checking out possibilities, or they
don’t find a job that fits right now. But you can use your career site to gain their
interest and then channel it effectively to keep them engaged.

Most Jobvite customers, like Groupon, also enable visitors to share any job with
their own networks through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, or other
networks. Jobvite matching technology can also suggest people in their networks
who may fit the job.
On Match.com, any visitor to the career site can send a Jobvite, a job invitation,
to contacts in their social networks; then recipients can apply—or forward to their
own friends. It’s an easy way to build awareness for your jobs in the networks of
your talent pool.
Socialize your jobs
Social media provides an easy and powerful way for you to build engagement
with prospective applicants. Featuring a blog and links to corporate social media
accounts on the career site gives visitors a way to stay in touch and find out the
latest news about your company.

For example, TiVo provides visitors with
a comprehensive FAQ section featuring
detailed information on everything from
the selection process to the ways in
which referrals work.
Match.com offers a similar section
dedicated to walking applicants through
expectations and preparations for an
interview.
Finally, be sure to let candidates check
on the status of their applications, so
they always feel connected. SayMedia
features a status check in its Job Seeker
Tools, where candidates can log into the
system and see where they are in the
process. This conveys to applicants that
you take them seriously, and that real
people are working behind the scenes—
not just resume-scanning robots.
Help candidates be successful
Your career site should also help candidates who have already applied by providing informative resources.

As the centerpiece of your recruitment marketing campaign, your career site should fulfill two additional purposes
beyond simply providing job description data.
First, you want to convert interested prospects to applicants, and eventually to hires. Consider your brand as
well as what key factors you want candidates to visualize. What will be the most important selling point for your
company? Is it the fun and cool corporate culture or the high profile and creative employees?
Once you have a general idea of what type of candidates you want to attract, you also need data to help you test
what works. Where are the best candidates coming from?
Answering this question does not mean needlessly pestering applicants to fill in another field on an application.
They aren’t always the most reliable source of data anyway. In fact, according to an ATS Sourcing Data report,1
five out of six job seekers—or more than 83 percent—incorrectly cite where they found out about a job when
asked in the application process. What does this mean? Companies who rely on candidates to self-identify their
sources are relying on imprecise data to guide their recruitment marketing programs and budgets.
Instead, think about automatically capturing candidate source data through your career site. By using unique
URLs in your job listings shared on the web or in social networks, for example, you can gather more precise data
and build reports outlining where your quality candidates come from—so you can see where holes exist, which
programs are best serving you, and how to better tune your marketing strategy to capture the right candidates.
1
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-white-paper-cites-that-ats-sourcing-data-is-over-80-percent-inaccurate-56558172.html
Next Steps: Conversion & Metrics
The truth is,
many hiring
managers can’t
say with confidence
where their talent is
coming from. It is
a dirty secret that’s
getting very little
attention.
Peter Weddle, CEO, Weddle’s

Tips for applying
career site metrics
• Which pages are getting
the most traffic? Why?
• What are the bounce
(percentage of visitors who
leave your site after viewing
only one page) and exit
(percentage who leave a
specific page) rates?
For more details on applying metrics
to improve your recruiting programs,
check out the second eBook from
this series, “Metrics that Matter:
4 Ways to Prove Your Worth.”
Jobvite makes this effortless by automatically providing unique URLs for all recruitment marketing and social
sharing. Continually monitoring the metrics of recruitment marketing will help you optimize your programs and the
performance of your career site.
Ask questions like, “If I were to change certain steps in our recruitment marketing process, where would I make
the biggest impact?” Think about what would make a candidate want to apply for a position at your company.
Do the numbers match up with your theories?
Remember that applicants are people, not just resumes. If you want to retain a high conversion rate of quality
candidates, you will need to put a little love into your career site.

About the career sites
The corporate career sites featured in this eBook are from a selection
of Jobvite customers. Each of them has created sites that speak
eloquently to their brands, people and amazing opportunities. We’re
happy to show you their wonderful work.
On these sites, Jobvite powers the job listings, application process,
job alerts, career site analytics and many other functions – including,
of course, the ability to Jobvite your friends through social networks.
You can easily incorporate these technologies into the Jobvite recruiting
platform or purchase a stand-alone career site that works with outside
ATS applications.
Conclusion: Keep Optimizing Your Career Site
Ultimately, your career site is a hub for attracting new talent to your company.
Building it takes time, creativity, and effort—and ensuring its success means
calculating and applying metrics to determine whether you are successfully
converting prospects to applicants and hires.
The examples included here represent just a small sampling of what you
can do with the right platform to support you. Work with your team to figure
out the right tone, images, style, verbiage, and social tools best suit your
company’s brand and targeted talent pool.
Of course, building a talent pool involves more than just amplifying your
career site. In our final eBook of the series, we’ll explore what it takes to fill
that pool with the most qualified candidates possible.

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