The recruitment market can be extremely competitive, especially when it comes to in-demand talent. For small businesses, it can be especially tough, as you can't always win by offering the highest salary.
Employer branding can tilt the balance in your favor. A good brand marks your business out as an employer of choice, one that provides a positive culture and chances for meaningful professional growth.
Your employer brand starts on your website--specifically, on your careers page. Almost every candidate will look at this webpage while making a decision about whether to apply. If you can pitch the right message, you'll attract high-quality talent.
In this blog, we'll look at a real case where Helios HR helped a small business develop their career page. We'll also share some tips to help develop your employer brand.
1. The Client
The client in this case was an organization that made a relatively small number of hires each year, typically around 10-15 appointments. However, each hire was critical for their mission. They needed to find top talent for every role.
The client had some strengths that helped their recruitment strategy, including:
- A positive organizational culture
- Good employee engagement
- Commitment to employee retention
They also faced some challenges, such as:
- Candidates required advanced degrees, specialized experience, and licenses
- Limited resources to invest in employer branding
- Difficulties in communicating their employer brand
As a talent acquisition consultant, the client asked me to review their careers page and identify opportunities to improve their employer brand communication, but without additional investment such as website upgrades or external marketing support.
2. The process
As we began the review, we wanted to ensure that key areas of their employer brand were reflected on their careers page and individual job posts.
Overall employer brand
The organization has a strong mission, vision, and impact and their overall communications reflect it. We wanted to ensure that it was captured on the careers page. They realize that their approach to their work is unique and want to explain their culture to potential employees so they can attract people who value the way they work.
Visual appeal & applicant experience
We wanted to make sure the careers page matched the overall look and feel of the company’s website and communications. We also wanted it to feature actual staff in videos, photos, and text.
Additionally, the careers page needed to be easy to find and use whether an applicant was using a search engine, coming from the company’s main page, or a job board on a computer or mobile device.
Transparency & Inclusion
We know the recruitment process often seems opaque from the job seeker's side, which can lead to frustration. It was important to explain to potential candidates the company’s approach to recruiting, including what a typical recruitment process and timeline look like can help manage expectations.
Like many other companies, they are evaluating how they approach equity and inclusion. We updated this language on their careers page to ensure it aligned with their current practices.
Engagement
Particularly since there are typically only 1-2 open positions and sometimes none, we wanted clear opportunities to connect outside of applying for posted positions. Encouraging applicants to follow the organization on social media, submit their resume to the talent database, and sign up for job alerts allows applicants to engage even if there isn’t a current job open.
Overall analysis
Their career site had the basics down, including a clear description of their work, detailed information on their strong benefits offering, and applications were easy to submit on a computer or mobile device.
However, it was text-heavy and, in contrast to the rest of their website, it had no photos or videos. There was no information on what candidates could expect from the recruitment process, what the company looks for in candidates, or their strong employee experience. Once candidates were on the careers page, information was clear and user-friendly, but the "work with us" webpage was buried at the bottom of their website.
I shared examples of peer organizations and pointed out some of the features they could consider. We started with some very low-effort additions they could add right away and included larger projects we could work on in the long term.
3. Quick Wins
The first step was to identify some high-impact actions that we could execute right away. We identified three quick wins:
Share pictures of the team
The company had employee photos from regular events and meetings, so they were easy to add and fit in well with the rest of their website.
Promote the most attractive benefits
We updated the benefits information to share more about the culture, including the flexible work environment and professional development opportunities.
Leverage the Applicant Tracking System
Their applicant tracking system had a feature that allowed candidates to sign up to receive emails when new positions were posted. We turned this on as a way for candidates to track their open jobs.
Create a hiring process FAQ
Drafting frequently asked recruitment questions, a brief overview of the recruitment process and typical candidate profiles don’t take much time, and they engage candidates and provide transparency into the recruitment process. It helps build trust with candidates as they have an opportunity to get to know the organization and what to expect.
4. Longer-term projects
The company hadn’t formally established its EVP (Employer Value Proposition) outlining the main reasons to work for the firm. An EVP typically includes tangible rewards (salary, benefits) and intangible benefits (flexibility, uniqueness of culture, mission focus).
The plan is to review data from their engagement surveys and exit interviews about what makes the company unique, so this can be incorporated into their employee brand. Highlighting this on the career page and throughout the recruitment process will help them attract the right candidates.
Our next step from there is to find authentic ways to share the organizational culture with potential employees using video and employee stories. The goal is to create videos of employees talking about what drew them to the company, what it is like to work for the company, and what a typical day in their role looks like. Additionally, they plan to incorporate employees’ quotes and stories.
5. Defining Success and Measuring Impact
We wanted to make sure that these changes have a positive impact on the company’s recruitment efforts. The company already tracks the number of applicants per requisition and the rejection reasons.
Our focus is on ensuring that investments in their employer branding lead to more qualified applicants, rather than simply increasing the number of applicants. Additionally, we can review metrics on the number of candidate withdrawals, offer acceptance rates, and retention. Ideally, we have candidates who are more educated on the company and invested even at the early stages to improve these metrics.
Related reading: 7 Metrics That Can Improve Your Recruitment
Applying these lessons to your company's career page
If you are unsure how to begin evaluating your own career site, start by putting yourself in the shoes of an applicant. Use both your computer and phone to perform the following steps:
- Search for the company name followed by careers to see what results come up. You want to see how easy it is to get to your careers page and what other news, reviews or information about your company are at the top.
- Navigate to the main page. Assess how quickly you can locate the careers page.
- Click on job postings and go through the application process to determine how long it takes.
Repeat this process on your phone. If the experience is confusing, difficult to navigate, or if applying is not straightforward, consider making changes to your application process.
AI is a great resource if you aren’t sure where to start in evaluating your own career site. You can give a gen AI tool (such as ChatGPT or Copilot): the link to your careers page, a sample job post, and then ask it to review them for strengths and identify any gaps. It can also share examples of other companies of a similar size and industry with strong career pages.
You might ask it to review what is being said online about your employer brand and analyze the sentiment. It can help you review the language on your careers page and job posts and help you define your EVP.
As always with AI, the results will be most useful if your prompts and requests are clear and well thought out. Be prepared to experiment and revise your queries if the responses don’t meet your expectations and review the information to make sure it is accurate.
Want to improve your hiring process?
Employer branding is just one of the areas where recruiting expertise can give you a competitive edge. Working with a talent acquisition consultant can help you improve every aspect of your hiring process, including:
- Compensation and benefit planning
- Job design and frameworking
- Talent sourcing
- Equitable hiring practices
- Onboarding and engagement
Ready to get started? Book a call with a Helios HR consultant today and learn how you can improve your hiring process!
