How To Create An Incredible Recruitment Website

In today's highly competitive recruitment landscape, your website is more than just an online brochure – it's your digital storefront, your brand ambassador, and a crucial tool for attracting both top talent and clients. We're going to talk you through the key aspects of creating a recruitment website that looks stunning, ranks well, functions seamlessly and delivers results when it comes to bringing in new clients & candidates for the business.

There are several key aspects you’ll want to consider and these include, overall design style, where to source images and which images to use, fonts, colour palettes, layout and general navigation. All of these combined will need to work well together. You want harmony between all these aspects. 

Laying the Design Foundation

We’ll talk you through a selection of styles that would be worth looking into first of all as this will lay the foundations for your choices in all other areas. Just google images of any of these design styles and you’ll get a good idea of what they are and maybe some solid inspiration too. Here's a list of over 30 recruitment website design styles that are worth looking into.

Bento: very similar to the Japanese bento box. The designer lays out neat components into set grid layouts with rounded edges for each image / content container. You’ll need to ensure your website developer fully implements responsive design with this style and thoroughly checks how it looks on various devices. 

Glassmorphism: normally lends itself well to bright, bold, vibrant and neon colours with slightly opaque designs and components. 

Retro 90s/2000s: this is big right now but could quite easily look dated within a few years so if you do go down this route then be prepared for a redesign in the next couple of years. It’s busy, bright, candy colours, chrome, space age and cyberpunkesque. Great for recruitment agencies that are appealing to a younger demographic, maybe suitable for female led industries or sectors such as fashion or media. 

Bold typography: this works well across your recruitment website but particularly well on the hero / landing page. It captures the reader's attention, ensures your website stands out and delivers your personality & what you do in a quick and succinct manner. 

Gradients: are still very popular. Here we see websites where background colours transition through maybe 2-3 complementary colours. They’re soothing and draw users in. 

AI generated images & video: there are so many AI powered tools out there for generating images and video content such as OpenAI’s Sora and DALL-E, Microsoft's Copilot, Midjourney, etc. I predict we’ll see a lot more AI generated images and video, not just on blog posts but across recruitment websites over 2024 and beyond. 

Parallax scrolling & movement: is great for capturing the visitor's attention. Parallax scrolling is when you scroll down the page of a website and you see parts of the page move as you scroll down or up the page. Content and images appearing from off screen are also nice little touches that really bring a website to life. Micro-interactions are really the bare minimum you should be including such as buttons or links changing colour when hovered over. 

There’s way more website design styles beyond this but hopefully this will give you some inspiration. 

Layout

This totally plays into the overall style you choose but the trend has been a minimalist approach with clever use of white space for the last few years. 

Think about how you want each of your pages laid out, where the text & images should go, which components come first, middle and last, etc. Sit down and draw out rough sketches for your web designer. They’ll likely elaborate upon these and make suggestions but it’s also great to have a guide from a client. 

Consider user flow and how you want visitors to navigate your site. Have a think about their personas who will be visiting your site, planning out a journey from each page, not just the home page. Every page should direct the visitor on a specific journey towards  positive action using call to actions. 

Images

You've got a few main options, paid for stock library images, free to use stock library images, professional photographer / videographer, personally created photos and AI generated images. 

I’d recommend a mixture of using a professional photographer, free to use stock library images and personally created photos. For example professional photographer images are great for the team pages and photos of your offices. Video content and personally created photos from your mobile phone are great for “join us” and job pages. And free to use stock images are great for blog posts. 

I see a trend for recruitment sites using more AI generated images and video so that’s definitely worth looking into. However I’d avoid paying big bucks for unique images from photo libraries. There’s just no need. 

Video

Curating video is a great way to capture the attention of clients, candidates and talent. It’s a brilliant tool to showcase your company’s culture, values, office and work environment. I would recommend using a mixture of staff generated content mixed with help from a professional videographer. 

Fonts

You typically don’t want to overload the user with lots of different style fonts so stick to one or two main fonts and use these consistently across your website. “Google Fonts” is a great place to start to look for fonts. All of their fonts are free to use, work well on Google Chrome browsers and are easily imported into your website no matter the website platform you’re using. 

Colour Palette

Colour is well known for evoking emotions and influencing buying behaviours so spend ample time picking the right colour palette to align it with the values and goals of your organisation, as well as your niche.

I’d recommend limiting the number of colours you use to 3-5 complimentary colours and stick to those. You can get away with more but it can be a bit busy and often doesn’t work. If you google “website colour palettes” you’ll be faced with lots of websites offering you a huge selection of colour palettes that work well. You can simply pass on the hex codes to your website designer / developer and let them do the rest. 

Navigation

Keep it simply and easy to navigate, that’s the best advice anyone can give you. 

Try to organise your content and pages into logical categories, especially when using subheadings in navigation bars.

For most recruitment agencies this should be relatively simple as your recruitment site will have a finite number of sections. I often see larger, international agencies struggle in this area with too many pages, sections, components are requested and created by various different parts of the business, everyone vying for attention and space on the home page. We doubt you’ll forget the main toolbar and mobile menu when it comes to navigation but don’t forget about including all the links to the main section of your website in your footer too. 

Tools

There are loads of tools out there that will help with the design phase but I’d recommend looking at free tools such as Figma. It’s a design tool, free to use with premium paid for options available too. It’s widely used and you can quite easily get a good understanding on how to use it within a couple of days. 

Beyond Aesthetics: Functionality and User Experience

Your website needs to be more than just pretty – it needs to work effectively for both candidates and clients. People like to immerse themselves in beautiful things, art, music, food, etc. and so it's so easy to get caught up in solely how the website looks but there’s so much more than just that. You also need to focus on the functional and technical aspects of your website too. 

Job Search

Your job search page is probably one of the most important parts of your website as it’s a direct revenue generator. It’s a completely free tool to advertise your vacancies and if set up and used properly, then it should be generating highly relevant candidates on a daily & weekly basis. Implement an advanced search tool with filters for location, job type, sector, contract type, salary, etc. Make the application process as seamless as possible, keep your application form clean, minimal and simple with an email confirmation for every role they apply to. Also include social media integrations, allowing visitors to share jobs posts LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

Call-to-Action

Ensure each page has a clear set of CTAs to guide users towards desired positive actions, such as subscribing to your newsletter, applying for a role, sending their details across via your contact form, following your social media channels, etc. 

Job Alerts and Social Media

Job alerts are a brilliant way to keep candidates engaged and updated with highly relevant roles. You need to ensure your CRM is kept clean though and is well coded, otherwise you could face a tsunami of unsubscribes if candidates are sent irrelevant roles. 

Promote your social media channels on your website, on the contact page, in the footer of your website and in other relevant areas and share your blogs, events, podcasts & job content across WhatsApp, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to drive traffic.

Blog

I always recommend that recruitment agencies should incorporate a blog into their website. It doesn’t need to take up a huge amount of time and 2-4 blogs per month is sufficient. Aim to publish informative, quality, engaging & unique content that actually has traffic behind it. You want to be viewed as a thought leader and to drive traffic to your site but your main objective with your blog should be customer (client & candidate) acquisition. Also optimise your blog posts for SEO to attract organic traffic - it’s very easy to pick up 10-100 monthly searches with a well written blog piece.

Mobile Optimisation

Ensure your website is fully responsive on all devices, as many job seekers (around 50%) use their phones to search for a new job. On the other end of the spectrum make sure your website looks great on large desktop screens too. I often see web developers only cater up to laptop screen size and forget that clients are often working on much larger desktop screens while at their office or even at home. 

Security & Compliance

Prioritise data security and comply with all relevant UK & EU GDPR regulations. If you are using a WordPress website then make sure the website’s plugins are regularly updated - WordPress websites are the most targeted sites by hackers. 

Also make sure your website has an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate, which is a security protocol that encrypts data transmitted between a website and its users. Essentially it protects data that is transmitted from the user's browser via your contact form to your server. 

SEO

SEO is probably one of the most (if not) important factors when developing a website. This consists of formatting a comprehensive SEO strategy revolving around conducting keyword research, tracking where your website pages rank for various search terms, on page SEO, ensuring your website is technically perfect, crafting SEO friendly URL structures, creating backlinks, meta tags and creating helpful content. All of this will improve where your website sits in the search ranking and bring in clients & candidates for you. 

Getting Professional Help

I’d like to say that as a recruitment agency owner you can do a lot of the groundwork yourself but to do a great job and to achieve the level of quality your recruitment agency deserves, you’re going to need to hire professional help. That will include a professional graphic designer or UX / UI designer, a professional web / software developer, a recruitment marketer, a professional recruitment copywriter and ideally a recruitment marketer too. 

Key Takeaways

1) Design and functionality go hand in hand. Prioritise both aesthetics and user experience.

2) Understand your target audience and tailor your website to their needs and preferences.

3) Stay up-to-date with design trends and embrace new technologies like AI-generated content.

4) Invest in professional help to create a website that truly reflects your agency's brand and values.

By following these tips and continuously refining your website, you'll create a powerful online presence that attracts the right talent and clients, setting your recruitment agency up for long-term success.