Fri, 20 May 2016 | By Sue Weekes

FROM JUNE'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Attract the best candidates with a concise, focused online page

DEFINED Heatmaps: a traditional heatmap is a visual representation of data in which the values are denoted by colours. Developers have now taken this idea and created software that uses colourful heatmaps to show which area of your site is or isn’t working. This could be a button, image, text, link or other element on the site. The heatmaps appear in seconds and constantly change so you can gain a near real-time view of how people are experiencing the site. 

Landing pages allow recruiters to create a stand-alone web page outside their main site for a specific purpose. Whereas a careers site has many aims, a landing page should only have one objective. 

Typically, it could be dedicated to a particular campaign or position and used to target a specific group, such as graduates. “The biggest advantage of landing pages is that they enable you to speak to a particular audience or candidate persona,” says Ben Slater, vice president of growth at Beamery, developer of the sourcing, candidate relationship management (CRM) and employer-branding platform of the same name. “Using them in this way is likely to be far more effective in terms of conversion.”

Landing pages offer a chance to do something different from your main site but demand careful thought. 

Five key points

Marketing hat

Landing pages are used extensively in marketing to collect visitor information via a lead form. Recruiters need to think like a marketer when creating their page and ensure its content makes the visitor take action. “Address every element of the candidate decision-making process,” advises Slater. “There should be information about the role or roles you’re hiring for, content on your company culture and an easy way for a candidate to ‘take action’.” While this call to action will often be to apply for the position, it doesn’t have to be. “It can be more effective to invite candidates to join a talent community and become hiring leads,” he says.

Less is more

Avoid overloading the landing page with too many design elements. Ensure the text is concise and focused. And keep in mind that the page is there to do one thing. Mike Wedge, director of web design and digital marketing specialist, Fifteen Ten, says recruiters often unwittingly create too many distractions and add too many links to elsewhere. “At most, you’ll need key headlines, the most compelling job features, light supporting content, a quick and succinct application method and one or two visuals,” he explains. “Strip out unnecessary features, links and elements, often even the main navigation and footer links. We want to narrow the user journey.”

Common mistakes

Recruiters only have one chance to impress a potential candidate with their landing page, so make it count. While cluttering the page with too much content is off-putting, Slater reckons the biggest mistake recruiters make is failing to provide enough information about why a candidate should apply. “This could be anything from career progression to perks, but it needs to be clear,” he says. Make sure the content gives a clear indication of the type of person required for the role so the candidate can self-select in or out. Uninspiring visual content is also a big turn-off. “Don’t just use a stock image of a generic smiling model,” Slater says. “Visuals must be compelling and enticing.”

Where next?

Consider where the visitor information should be channelled. It can go via a link into the application tracking system (ATS), and Wedge says it can help to have a gateway before reaching the ATS to help track, test and tweak the landing pages for maximum effectiveness. The page could link to something as simple as a spreadsheet, Slater adds, but it is more effective to link it to a recruiting CRM system. “That gives you a lot more power over the candidate management and engagement process than an ATS,” he says.

Test, monitor and tweak

Test your page from the perspective of a potential candidate, and monitor and measure the effectiveness of the landing page from the outset. Don’t wait until the closing date of the campaign to do this. Analytics, heatmaps and other visitor–recording features are a must for attracting the greatest number of applications, says Wedge, who adds that monitoring behaviour on landing pages can highlight “user experience tweaks” that could influence the number of applications and conversion. “And learn from this experience when considering a new website or digital marketing material as a whole.”

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