6 ways to drive more traffic to your career site

A dynamic career site is vital if you want to create an employer brand, share your EVP and attract the right talent to your business. But if you want to convert the investment you’ve made into increased recruitment and retention, the next step is to drive candidates to your site – and make them stay there. Here are the six most effective ways I’ve found to drive traffic to your career site.

...Optimise for Google for Jobs

Google for Jobs does exactly what it says: it’s Google… for jobs. The search engine automatically collates job advertisements from across the internet and presents them in a clean, geo-targeted way for the searcher. Google presents all the places the job advert appears in one horizontal line and gives the candidate a choice of where to apply. The great news is that the data shows us the applicant is more likely to click on your career site link than on an external job board.

Tip: Make sure your site has a sitemap so Google can index your site.

...Create great content

While the navigation and design of your website makes it user friendly, when it comes to driving visitors to the site, content is still king. Take time to understand your target audience and demographic and create content that will appeal to them. A regular blog that appeals to their needs and interests will help you attract the right visitors to the site.

Tip: Get into the mind of your target audience and the questions they will ask. Now write a blog to answer these questions one by one, or better still, host the whole thing as a regular short podcast.

...Get friendly with Indeed

A well-structured career site will automatically be crawled by Indeed, so there’s a good chance your listing will show for free. But there’s more you can do. You can also create an Indeed company page for free, and keeping this up to date with the correct information and employee reviews will drive more traffic to your career site.

Tip: Start building a comprehensive Q&A section by asking a question as a guest user then logging in as the employer to answer it.

...Use SEO

Understanding basic SEO techniques and using them in all aspects of your site will boost the number of candidates who visit. Add relevant search keywords to page titles, headers, meta descriptions and URLs. Remember good housekeeping, too: make sure your site is easy to navigate, doesn’t contain broken links and you’ve met all the technical requirements of search engines.

Tip: Get your site set up on Google search console to monitor its performance.

...Chatbots

Chatbots might not actually drive candidates to your site, but they do help to keep them there. Artificial intelligence chatbots speak to candidates in a human voice and answer basic questions such as “How do I apply?” “Do I need a degree?”, so they can not only encourage the right people to apply, but filter out unsuitable candidates at an early stage.

Bots don’t just give a great experience – they can increase applications. As well as collecting information like contact details, CV data and qualifications, they can answer FAQs about the application process, give job details and describe perks and benefits. Some chatbots can even schedule interviews.

Tip: Think about your target audience when designing the tone of voice for your chatbot. The way you speak to candidates needs to sound authentic.

...ATS (Applicant Tracking System) integration

This one’s a long game. There are many reasons to integrate your ATS with your career site, but the most important one in terms of driving traffic is that it creates a more positive candidate experience because the whole process is automated.

In the long run, this encourages candidates to talk more positively about your company, which in turn creates better brand awareness. This leads to – yes, you guessed it – more applications from quality candidates in the future.

Tip: Work with an ATS that has real flexibility over the application pages and how they can be styled. The more control you can have over these pages the better the experience will be for your candidates.

In summary

Building a career site is just the beginning when it comes to hiring great talent. With a little time and attention you can drive the right traffic and increase your candidate conversion rate, so you know you’ll get a great return on your investment.