How To Choose The Right Recruitment Website Developer For Your Recruitment Agency

There's a lot of options out there when it comes to a new website for your recruitment agency, I'd probably say there's around 20-30 companies that specialise in recruitment website design and development. They're all similar in that they offer one particular service but they're all very different when it comes to experience, the tech stack they use, price, the quality of their work, their backgrounds, personalities, their size, knowledge of web design & development, location and if they outsource work. 

There's maybe 10 factors that should form the pillar of your decision when it comes to choosing a recruitment website design and development agency and we'll talk you through what they are and the questions you should be asking. 

Website Development Experience

Do they actually have experience in the recruitment industry and in website design and development? There's a number of recruitment website design agencies out there that have anything from 1-15 staff but not a single web or software developer on their team. I'd seriously reconsider working with a digital design agency without any developers. Like, how are you making the websites?! I assume they're just charging you UK prices and farming the work out to India and paying the developers there pennies. How will they check the quality of the work? They won't. 

Design & Development Prices

Prices between agencies will vary but you could be looking at anything from £2,000 - £15,000 for a standard recruitment agency website. This will be further broken down based on pay up front or pay monthly. We offer a pay up front model as it is overall better value for our clients. Paying monthly will mean you end up paying more for your website. 

Website Quality

So, let's say they actually have UX & UI designers and web & software developers on staff and they're offering websites at a reasonable price but what about the quality? How can you even check the quality of their websites? Well we'll talk you through a few tools you can use to check the quality of their work. I'd recommend using 2GDPR to check if their websites are UK & EU GDPR compliant, Google Lighthouse to check the overall quality (you want to see minimum scores of 320/400) and the Google Developer Console to see if any errors are being logged. 

Website Tech Stack

Now if you're speaking with a professional recruitment web developer then your website will likely be made in one of four ways. Firstly with a template builder (in this situation I'd just recommend using Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy - they'll be of a higher quality and way better value). Secondly, they'll be WordPress websites with PHP on the backend, which could be a good option for small recruitment agencies, however you’ll need to ensure your website developer regularly updates the plugins the website uses otherwise you face leaving security flaws open to hackers. When your website is a conduit for candidates sending across highly sensitive data such as their CV, passport & visa details you want to make sure your website is fully secured against hackers. Thirdly, a plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript website, probably using jQuery could be a great option. You’ll likely have a super fast website from an old school developer who hopefully knows what he’s doing, however you will have to ensure the jQuery library is regularly kept up to date. And fourthly, you have the websites that we make at Abstraction Labs - enterprise level web apps. They will be made with a frontend framework such as Angular, Vue or React with a backend such as Firebase or .Net/C#. 

Company Background

Always check out the company on LinkedIn and check out their backgrounds. Have they previously worked in the recruitment industry? Great! Have they worked in software development before? Great! If not then maybe look around for someone who can really support your project. 

Web Developer Personalities 

One of the most important in my opinion. Web & software developers can be a funny bunch and I include myself in this. When you really get to know then most are just really nice people but that can take time with more reclusive personalities. You’ll be in regular contact with the developer, designer and project manager over the course of the build, which could be anything from a month to a few months. Also they’ll likely support you over the next 4-5 years with updates and website expansions. You need to make sure you get on well with this person and you trust them.

Development Agency Size

I don’t think this is a particularly big issue unless you’re a large, international recruitment agency that requires heavy IT support and account management from your web design agency. The bigger the agency then the more staff they have to support so the higher their fees will be. It’s great working with a large agency because they have a whole in-house team of SEO professionals, UX & UI designers, front and back end developers, project managers, account managers, customer service people and salespeople on hand for you but at the same time you are paying the price for this too. 

Location

Maybe not such a big deal in today’s world of remote work and especially so with web design but it makes sense your web design agency is at least in the same country as you. You want to make sure your web designer / developer is familiar with current UK trends. For example an Indian recruitment website will look very different to a UK recruitment website and yes your clients will notice the difference. I’d recommend working with a UK web developer as they should be experienced in working with UK privacy policies, UK & EU GDPR law around cookie consent and their website designs will hopefully be in line with what you’re looking for. 

Use Of Outsourced Software Developers

A lot of companies outsource some of their web design work (not Abstraction Labs) for capacity or cost reasons but if you're working with an agency who are outsourcing the work to say India then I certainly wouldn't be paying UK prices. 

Of course having said all of this, there’s only one choice when it comes to recruitment website developers and that's of course us, at Abstraction Labs, so get in touch.