Recruitment Web Marketing and Design

Think your recruitment website design is just an online brochure? Think again.

Your website should be the central hub for all your business development, operations and marketing activity as well as a digital platform to drive inbound traffic – potential candidates, clients or consultants (internal recruitment) to your business.

But unlike websites for other industries, recruitment website design requirements are specific. We are one of the only industries that have a dual B2B/B2C audience, requiring clear user journeys for candidates and clients. While operationally there might be the case that ‘today’s candidate becomes tomorrow’ client’, recruitment websites need to treat each separately.

Think about buying a house. When you visit an estate agent’s website, you want to have an easy search function to help you find the right property to meet your specifications as quickly as possible. Sure, you might be selling a house at some point in the future, but in that moment, you don’t want to learn about the estate agent’s commission structure, you just want to buy a house.

Same thing for recruitment website. Your home page may have both candidates or clients visiting and you need to get them to their destination with as little friction as possible. This can be accomplished through clear call to action buttons in the header, or even a search bar that will direct them to the job search.

It’s also important to think about not wasting any prime real estate on any activities that don’t lead to that ever-important conversion – i.e. a candidate applying for a job or a client requesting information or a call back. So, think twice before crowding up your home page with links to blog posts or Tweets – if someone has landed on the home page, they will generally want to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible (and that’s not a blog post!)

Best recruitment website design: What you need to consider

As you’re designing your website, it’s important to think of the following:

• Clear user journey: Get candidates and clients where they want to go as quickly as possible by clearly sign posting audience-specific pathways, including the job search (candidates), services/case studies (clients) and internal opportunities (future colleagues).
• A compelling value proposition: How many times have you heard a recruiter say they’re ‘experts’ or ‘specialists’? How does that actually help the end user? Instead start thinking in benefits, not features, and the narrative you develop to evidence your brand’s promise to the customers you (hope!) to serve!
• Proof points: Demonstrating the service you provide through case studies or testimonials is an absolute must, however, think about other ways you can evidence what makes you better than the rest. By leveraging your data – the percentage of roles you fill, the average fill rate, the number of successful placements each month – you can start painting the picture you want to show your customers.
• An engaging visual brand: As much as your value proposition needs to convey why a customer should use your agency, it’s equally important that your visual and creative brand – through colour, imagery and creative elements – conveys the right image and positioning to your target audiences.
• A job board: Contingency and temporary recruiters should always have a job board. Not only does it provide a reason for candidates to apply to your job, but it helps bring people to your website through search engine optimisation (SEO). It does so by:
• Providing keyword rich pages based on key terms (generally job titles!) that people are searching for online
• Delivering frequent content updates which helps your overall site’s visibility
• Getting pulled into Google for Jobs (with the right schema mark-up on your website) to promote your job to whole new audiences
• A blog or content hub: Sure you want to demonstrate your expert knowledge as a thought leader, but a content hub is so much more. By writing on topics that people are searching for online, you have a greater chance of people landing on your blog page at the beginning of their job or candidate search (think: how to write a CV, senior accountant salary or how to write a job description) to bring audiences to your website before they’re actively looking for a job or a candidate.
• Mobile-friendly design: Since the rise of smart phones, more and more people are searching on mobile and this is especially true for candidates who are searching for jobs on their commute. While the pandemic and work-from-home norm may have driven candidates or clients to search on desktops, your website should still be fully mobile responsive, including a streamlined application process, whether uploading a CV through DropBox or one-click apply through LinkedIn.
• Job alerts: Your website should ideally have a portal where candidates can update their preferences and set up job alerts based on specific criteria. Agencies that include this function drive exponentially more candidate traffic and therefore applications ‘for free’, instead of constantly relying on job boards (when more often than not, that candidate already exists in your database!)

Recruitment website design for career sites and employers

Your career site needs to articulate your Employee Value Proposition and employer brand, allowing you to showcase all that makes your company a great place to work. In addition to a job board and insights about what it’s like working at the organisation, your career site should also showcase your employees and departments, evidencing the work and nuances for working within different teams.

Recruitment website design for contingency or temp recruiters

The job board function is critical for contingency and temporary recruiters, particularly those who specialise in entry- to mid-level roles. Candidates at this level are most likely to look for jobs online – in fact, it is estimated that as much as 30% of all search traffic is related to jobs! If you’re not including a job board on your site, you’re missing a great opportunity to attract candidates to your jobs, your brand and your company!

Recruitment website design for executive search firms or interim management

Many executive search firms and/or interim service providers are reticent to include job postings on their site. After all, your retained offering is one of market mapping and ‘headhunting’ the right candidate, not necessarily attracting inbound candidates to your site. However, some search terms like ‘ceo jobs’, ‘cfo salary’ or ‘cio jobs’ yield more than 1000, 590 and 480 search queries, respectively, each and every month. Developing an SEO strategy, including job terms for executive roles should be part of your marketing strategy, so much so that even Korn Ferry has a job search function on their website!

Recruitment website design RPO/MRP service providers

Unlike other recruitment providers, recruitment placement outsourcing (RPO) and managed recruitment process (MRP) providers have one main audience: clients. Unlike your contingency or retained counterparts, you typically don’t attract candidates to your own site – once engaged, you recruit and therefore attract candidates on behalf of your clients through their online presence. Still, don’t forget the importance of evidencing your value proposition and driving clients or internal candidates to conversion points on your site.

Should I use a recruitment website builder?

There are a number of options when developing your recruitment website design, however, it is often best left to the professionals. Whether you’re a start-up venture or an established large agency, there is a recruitment website offering that’s right for you.

• SaaS model, basic design: Best for start-up or boutique firms, these websites are generally created by website developers who have created a platform with a job search function and a number of templates, allowing them to provide (relatively) inexpensive website design that’s perfect for micro businesses with big ambitions. Cost ranges between £300 and £500 per month.
• SaaS model, bespoke design: For scale up agencies looking for a more bespoke design, including custom page layout but with tried and true job search function, a custom build website but on a SaaS platform may be the right option for you. The monthly cost makes it perfect for businesses not wanting the fixed one-time cost of a custom build. Cost ranges between £500 and £1000 per month.
• Custom build: Often developed on WordPress, Drupal or Salesforce CMS, custom build sites give you full autonomy over how you build your site and what to include without the commitment to the SaaS platform and the monthly fee (generally SaaS websites only work on the proprietary platform so if you ever choose to leave, you’ll need to rebuild the site from scratch). The amount of development work required varies, making this option feasible for small businesses through to large enterprises. Depending on your needs, it may still be wise to work with an agency that specialises in recruitment websites due to the importance of the job search functionality. Cost ranges between £3000 and £40,000+.

Getting started with recruitment website design

Really for your new site? Developing a recruitment website can be a lot of work and while you may engage a Rockstar developer, agency or platform to develop your site, there is still a ton of work that the business needs to contribute itself – from brand and commercial value proposition, through copywriting, image selection and project management (and that’s not even considering some of the technical considerations like SEO, user experience or conversion strategy).

At Thrive, we don’t claim to be developers, but we’re darn good at getting websites go-to-market ready – i.e. the marketing of your website to make sure it performs and reflects your company brand. We help you from start to finish, even providing the campaign to launch your new website to your employees and the world – for less than you might think! Get in touch to learn how!