We all know it and feel the war for talent; the available qualified talent pool is in short supply, and we must 'market' for talent now more strategically, tactically, and effectively. With historical unemployment near 4% and lower in some key knowledge worker categories it is imperative that companies refresh their marketing position of their company to prospective employees and update your Careers page and start-earlier to engage prospective talent.
A couple of easy rules of thumb for your refreshing your Careers page.
No more than one-click away to your careers page. Your careers page should appear on the home page as "careers' button, menu item, or hyperlink. The word heading Careers is preferred to jobs, as careers denote a longer potential relationship however you can use either.
Be mindful of first appearances and impressions; Use engaging imagery/video/icons, whatever, and help your visitors visualize and feel your company culture. Post an array of information on your website that tells why its an awesome time to work for your company and team.
Here is an interesting example from Ionodeink.com that shows all the benefits of working for their company.
Share knowledge and engage talent, with resources such as newsletters, blogs, videos, games, and training to help others learn more about you and your business. For example, Google has a free AI portal on their website to help future programers learn about AI; for Google finding candidates with 'curiosity' and 'grit' starts early with access to tools, encouragement, and messaging to their prospective future employees.
Beyond these simple rules, I encourage you to look and observe what other great companies have done with their careers pages. Legendary websites and engagement can be seen at Tesla, Zappos, Backcountry.com, and a new entrant... Sarcos Robotics. Each of these sites has a way of sharing what they want, what they don't want, and are focused on their core missions.
Search out your industry competitors and find out what they are doing to attract talent. Also don't be afraid to look outside your industry for new ideas to increase engagement on your careers page. Knowing what others have previously done to improve their careers page visualization and engagement can be a helpful way for you to get started thinking about your own careers page; here are examples of corporate 'careers' pages from many different industries that were refreshed in the past 7 days.
24 more suggestions for your careers page. Once you get the visualization and engagement tag lines nailed, there are many other improvement suggestions for your careers web page: Here are 24 suggestions to improve your prospective employee candidate engagement on your Careers page.
After you master the above improvements to your careers page, next think about using inbound marketing techniques to help you leap frog ahead of your competition and find and engage with your target talent population sooner. For example, consider putting tiles, icons, or placeholders on your careers page that engage the prospective employee to learn more about your company. Then behind the scenes, consider scoring up or down clicks on particular topics that are most germane to the talent and cultural curiosities of your ideal candidates. Here is an article that talks further about these inbound marketing techniques that can be used in the recruiting process.
The primary message here... keep it fresh, lively, engaging, and focused on the talent you most want to attract.