How To Keep Candidates, Clients & Talent On Your Website

Recruitment is cyclical, it’s either hard finding talent for your open roles or it's hard finding new clients with open roles for your candidates. Your recruitment website is a key part of the user buying journey.  

What’s harder? Attracting users to your website in the first place or keeping them engaged whilst on your website? Both are hard but we’ll be addressing the latter here. I’ll try to cover all potential users here, candidates, clients and potential talent but remember all will have different needs, behaviours, will be using different devices at different times of the day / week and will be looking for different things. For example, clients will likely be using their laptops or viewing your site on their desktop screens during working hours, Monday-Friday, while candidates will be less likely to use their work laptops and are more likely to be on their mobile phones or tablet devices, before or after work or during their lunch times. 

User-Friendly Design

Ensure your website is user-friendly and easy to navigate. A clean and intuitive design will encourage visitors to explore further.

Mobile Responsiveness

As we mentioned previously candidates & potential talent are more likely to use their mobile devices when visiting your site. And there’s nothing more frustrating than visiting a site that’s slow on mobile or doesn’t lay out properly. If you’re giving your users a poor mobile experience they’ll leave your site and visit the next search result down from you. 

High-Quality Content

Easier said than done but write content that your users will find useful, valuable, engaging, interesting and informative. It’s obviously a little harder in this instance as you’re writing content for clients, candidates & talent who will all be looking for different information. Candidates may be looking for interview advice, whilst clients may be looking for salary insights and talent could be looking for content on your company culture. If you have a blog or insight section make sure it is updated on a regular basis - at least on a weekly basis. 

Resource Center / Blog / Library / Insights 

We’d always recommend including a blogs page on your recruitment site. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how many people read your content but you won't be surprised how useful a tool it is for keeping users on your website.

Job Listings

Probably the key reason why candidates will be visiting your website. Ensure your vacancy page is visible, easy to navigate to, is updated on a daily basis ideally and has a full list of all your live vacancies. Failing to keep it regularly updated could mean you miss out on a fee from a relevant candidate’s CV or could risk frustrating a candidate if they apply for roles that have already been closed. Also if possible, display job listings prominently on your homepage - maybe the top 5 most recently added positions. On the vacancies page use filters and search options to make it easy for candidates to find suitable positions.

Personalization

If possible offer a candidate portal or registration facility for candidates and Implement personalization features that recommend jobs to candidates based on their skills and preferences. This is a brilliant way to directly advertise highly relevant roles to candidates as soon as they hit your website. 

Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs)

Use clear and compelling CTAs to guide visitors on what actions to take, whether it's applying for a job, contacting your agency, or signing up for your newsletter. Each page should have a call to action and you should be guiding clients and candidates on a journey through your website. 

Engaging Visuals

Aim to incorporate a range of visuals including images, videos, bespoke SVGs & icons to make your website more engaging. If possible ensure your content is personal to your business, such as photographs of the office, work socials, team portraits, well made videos, etc. Try to avoid stock images where possible. Professional photographers are relatively inexpensive for the value they bring. 

Testimonials and Success Stories

Consider including a dedicated testimonials page for your recruitment website or you can use a testimonials carousel on your landing page or possibly on the candidate & client pages to increase buy in and engagement. Include testimonials from both clients & candidates (placed and not placed). I wouldn’t bother including testimonials from employees as people will always be cynical of them. 

Social Media 

Display company social media buttons to encourage visitors to connect with you on social platforms. Please make sure the platforms are being regularly updated if you choose to use them on your website. 

Community & Forums

Consider adding a forum or community section where job seekers can discuss job search strategies and share experiences. This could take many forms, they could be online communities, Discord channels, the ability for users to comment on blog posts, a YouTube channel and so on. 

Chatbots and Live Chat

Clients are likely to get in touch with you Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm when you have consultants in the office but there’s a high chance that candidates and potential talent will be engaging with your website outside of these hours. How about implementing chat bots or live chat support to provide immediate assistance to visitors and answer their questions in real-time? HubSpot offers a free to use chat bot that is easily integrated with your website in a single line of code. Or Visitor Chat offers a live chat service, which is relatively inexpensive and responsive. 

Email Subscription

If you have a contact form already on your website, it’s relatively easy (from a technical perspective) to introduce a small banner section offering the functionality for users to sign up or to subscribe to your newsletter for updates on job listings, industry news, and career advice.

Interactive Tools

Develop interactive tools like salary calculators, salary guides, CV builders using AI integrations, or interview preparation guides, etc.

Social Media Integration

Promote your social media profiles on your website, on your Teams page for example and include “share this”  links on blog posts allowing users to easily share content across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Make sure you regularly share updates, articles, and job listings to keep your audience engaged.

Feedback and Surveys

Gather feedback from candidates and clients through surveys, feedback forms, via email, over the phone or face to face to continually improve your recruitment website and services.

Personalised Job Alerts

You can easily set up a form for candidates with a few simple fields such as name, email, job type, location and required salary to allow users to set up personalised job alerts based on their criteria, sending them relevant job positions via email.

Security and Trust Signals

Prominently display security seals, https/SSL, privacy policies, cookie policy, terms & conditions and contact information to build trust with your audience. Having a landline or virtual landline number, an actual office address (that isn’t just a shell company office - I’m looking at you 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London) and employee details on the site are easy ways to build trust and keep users on your site. 

Google Analytics and A/B Testing

All recruitment websites deployed by Abstraction Labs are integrated with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager allowing you as a recruitment agency owner or recruitment marketer to monitor website traffic and user journeys. Use this information to better improve the experience and place call to actions on pages where users seem to drop off your website. 

Performance Optimization

Once visitors hit your recruitment site, ensure fast loading times and smooth performance to prevent users from leaving due to slow page load times. If pages aren’t loading within a second or two then I normally leave a website.  

Membership Organisations 

If your recruitment agency is part of any recruitment membership organisations such as The Recruitment & Employment Confederation,  APSCo, Staffing Industry Analysts then be sure to include their logo in your footer or wherever you feel is most suitable. 

Awards 

Clients love to hear that their recruitment partner has won an award! It makes them feel secure in the knowledge that they’ve chosen you as a recruitment partner, that you must be good at what you do. Also potential new talent for the business love to see an award - it tells them they’re joining a growing and successful business. 

If you want any more guidance on how to keep candidates & clients on your website then just get in touch for a chat!