What’s Wrong With My Recruitment Website?

As you can imagine I scroll through a lot of recruitment websites on a weekly basis and it’s rare for me to see a website that’s perfect (even ours’) so let me walk you through what may be wrong with your agency site so you can mitigate these issues or ask your developer to look into them and fix them. Some of this will be a little technical but it’s nothing you can’t learn and it’s all stuff you should know as a recruitment agency owner / recruitment marketeer. 

Accessibility

One of the pillars of the internet is website accessibility, in that everyone, no matter their ability / disability, should be able to access the web. Basic things to consider would be: am I am to use the Tab button to move around the screen and if I press the Enter button while on a button, am I able to interact with it? Ensure your agency’s website is accessible to all users, by adhering to WCAG guidelines - https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/.

Blogs / Content

I’d advise all recruitment websites to carry a blog on their website. Firstly it’s great for SEO purposes and secondly people actually read them. It’s a great way to attract and engage with candidates & clients. Now what are you doing wrong specifically? If you don’t have a blog - then get a blog for your website. If you do have a blog on your website but you’re not updating it at least once a month then make the effort to write some content. And if you are writing content make sure it’s readable and engaging content. Ideally pay someone for this service, writing is a skill like everything else. And don’t use Gemini or Chat-GPT to write your blogs - your readers will notice and won’t bother reading it and the search engines will notice and penalise you for that. 

Cookie Consent 

If you’re collecting site visitor data then you need to show a cookie consent pop-up to allow them to opt in or out of this. Collecting data without a user’s permission is a major offence and can result in huge fines for your recruitment business. I’ve seen a huge number of recruitment websites that have a Google Analytics integration and have started collecting and sending my data off without me giving consent. If you're interested in learning more about this then you can read our blog about cookies here.

Design

First impressions really do count and outdated designs, clashing colour schemes, a poor choice of font, text that’s difficult to read, text that’s too small to read, poor web design, and bad branding can all lead to clients & candidates navigating away from your site within seconds. 

Errors/ Messages

Sometimes pages may “error” when trying to load an image or accessing a third party library. If these errors aren’t handled properly by the developer then they may log an error or message to the developer console, which could prove to be a security flaw for your website. To access the developer console you can use Option + ⌘ + J (on macOS), or Shift + CTRL + J (on Windows/Linux). Or right click on your website, select Inspect and then select Console. Scroll through the pages on your website while the developer panel is open to see if errors are logged to the console. 

Images

I often see several issues around images that contribute to a poor recruitment agency website. A lot of the time I’ll see images that are not being sized properly for the screen size so may be too large or too small for the user’s screen size. For example you don’t want to serve a large, high resolution image on a mobile screen as it will take up a lot of the user’s bandwidth and it will take time to download that image and likewise you don’t want to serve an image that is too small for large desktop screens as the resolution / quality of the image will look poor. One way around this is to have two different image sizes in your app, a smaller image size for mobile screens and a larger, higher resolution image for desktop screens. 

I still see websites using PNG or JPEG images instead of Google’s WebP format. PNG & JPEG image formats are still valid and can still be used for websites but they were invented in the early-mid 90’s and computers have come a long way since then. The WebP format was specifically designed by Google for use on websites, they are much smaller in size, meaning a faster website for you and they sacrifice only a small amount in quality, which isn’t really noticeable to the average user. 

Images missing alt attribute tags. The alt attribute is an HTML attribute to specify alternative text that is to be displayed in place of an element that cannot be rendered. Essentially each image on your website should have an alt attribute, which is a description of the image being shown. If the image fails to load this text will be shown instead. It's also incredibly useful for those using screen readers as the screen reader will read out the text for the partially sighted user. Your website should be accessible for everyone and it’s one of the main pillars of the internet. 

Integrations

Integrations can be incredibly useful but they are also likely to slow down your website. In the majority of cases I would argue that the sacrifice in speed is worth the integration but make sure you are selective about the integrations you use and that they are indeed useful to you, your clients, consultants & candidates. 

For example integrating your website with Google Analytics and LinkedIn Ads can be extremely useful for you and your marketing team to see how your website is performing, the level of traffic it receives, the most popular pages, the performance of LinkedIn advertising, how to adjust it and so on. Likewise integrating your website with your CRM is likely to save consultant time through not having to input extra data and will mean applications are less likely to be lost in inboxes. However if you're a large recruitment agency then integrating your website with WhatsApp for example might not be needed.

Google Analytics

Elaborating on the point above you can pre-connect to third parties such as Google Analytics to increase load times. 

Lazy Loading

Lazy loading refers to only loading the parts of the website (including images) that are needed at the very beginning - those first couple of seconds of the user journey. You can save on the size of the initial download and increase your site speed by only loading the key parts. Also sometimes it may be appropriate or reasonable to load just the HTML (the words and layout) and CSS (colours & layout) of the webpage and defer the loading of the JavaScript (the part that makes it interactive). Also images further down the screen can be loaded after the initial download as they’re unlikely to be needed in the first second or so. 

Links

Links are great components of your website and should be used to take your visitor on a defined journey, for example a candidate lands on your Homepage, you then direct them to the Candidates page, then direct them to the Jobs page, then hopefully they apply for a role. 

Often links to other parts of your website will be denoted with buttons or clickable links. Generic text you should avoid includes, “click here”, “click this”, “go”, “here”, “this”, “start”, “right here”, “more”, “learn more”, etc. Ensure the text is short, simple & descriptive so good examples could be “Candidates”, “Clients”, “Contact us”, “Vacancies”, “About us”, "Our process", "What we offer", "Our fees" and so on. 

I often see buttons and links missing “aria-labels”. Similar to alt attributes, aria-labels provide a text description for assistive technology such as screen readers. For example you may have a Submit button on your Contact Form so the aria-label for that button could be "Send message" or "Send email" or "Submit contact form". 

Low Code / No Code Websites

There are a few recruitment website providers in the marketplace that offer low code or no code websites, allowing you greater flexibility to quickly create your website as you see fit. Now the flexibility to update all parts of your website does seem like a great advantage but there will only be a few pages you tend to update on a regular basis so it’s probably not a great advantage. However the SEO, performance, best practices and accessibility scores are always very low when it comes to these kinds of websites, which means a low ranking and slow website for you. 

Templated websites are likely to also face limitations in functionality and are harder to scale as your recruitment agency grows. It would likely be a better option to opt for a custom coded website earlier on and scale that, rather than migrating to a more robust platform a few years later in order to accommodate growth.

The customization options of template websites are often restricted so engaging a professional developer for a custom-built site may become essential to realise specific functionalities or designs.

Pre-built templates are also likely to come with bloat that affects website performance. There will essentially be a whole load of code to cover a bunch of options that you may never opt for but you can’t remove it, so you’re left with a heavy & slow website. 

Meta Tags

All websites, including recruitment websites should have a set of meta tags describing the web page, however sometimes some or all of these tags are missing, which can affect your search engine ranking. These tags tell search engines like Google, Bing, Firefox, etc. about your web page. Each web page should have 5 main tags, “title”, “description”, “charset”, “keywords” and “author” on top of the “robots” and “viewport” tags, which are likely to sit in the root file of your website..  

The title will be displayed in the browser tab, in search engine results and it’s used as the clickable headline in search results. It may also show in social shares, when sharing a page to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

The description will sometimes appear below the clickable headline in search engine results, providing a brief summary of the page. Also some social platforms display the description to provide context about the link you have shared.

The charset is not visible but it defines the character set used and is critical for correctly rendering content. It will likely be UTF-8 and essentially it’s a table that converts characters (a, b, c, 1, 2, 3, etc.) into binary code for computers. 

Keywords are terms you’d used to describe the web page and are not visible. They are sometimes used by search engines for ranking websites.

The author should be the name of the company so mine would be “Abstraction Labs”. It’s not typically visible to users in browsers but can be accessed by viewing a page's source code. 

OG Tags

Very similar to meta tags, og tags ensure your website links are displayed properly when sharing them across social media platforms such as LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, etc. These tags allow you to dictate how the links look and will display information such as the title of the page, description, an image, the url and the type of link. 

Mobile Responsiveness

The large majority of recruitment websites I come across are mobile responsive at least across a few major device screen sizes. However I’ll still come across sites where they’re just not displaying properly on my mobile device. Given that the majority of your traffic will be on a mobile device this is a big mistake. Ensure your developer adopts a mobile-first design approach ensuring compatibility across all device sizes.

Here at Abstraction Labs we test your website across 20 different mobile and desktop screen sizes. 

Performance 

Slow websites can frustrate and deter users and are likely to affect your website’s SEO rankings. You can mitigate this by minimising HTTP requests, optimising images, and leveraging browser caching to enhance your website’s speed. Websites, which use frameworks like Angular tend to offer smoother user experiences with quick navigation and less reloading.

Robots.txt

Nothing to do with robots per say. This file on your website lets search engines crawlers know if they can crawl and index your website and which parts they can and cannot index. It’s a simple file but if not set correctly it can mean your website won’t show up on search engines such as Google & Bing. 

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a list of pages of a website within a domain. To access your sitemap, simply navigate to your homepage and add “/sitemap.xml” to access your sitemap. This should be a list of all the pages on your website, including all the live blogs & jobs you’ve posted. Your sitemap should be dynamic so that it updates itself every time a page (including job & blog posts) is created or deleted. 

Security

A lot of websites these days use a front end framework such as Angular, React or Vue. However some older websites or legacy systems may use a third party library such as jQuery to support the website's JavaScript code. I often see that this is not being kept up to date and poses security flaws as hackers can use its vulnerabilities against your website. Also WordPress websites use several “plugins”, essentially pieces of code written by someone else that your developer uses to carry out certain pieces of functionality. If these “plugins” are not kept up to date then your website can break and can be hacked. 

SEO

A lack of SEO optimization makes a website less discoverable on search engines so ensure that you incorporate SEO best practices, including keyword optimization, quality content, and creating high-quality backlinks. You can test how well it has been optimised by running a Google Lighthouse test on it. Simply enter your website url into this website - https://pagespeed.web.dev/. 

SSL Certificate 

All websites these days should have an SSL certificate, which essentially adds a layer of security to your website. An SSL certificate helps to encrypt transmitted data from the user’s (client’s / candidate’s) browser to you. This is especially important for recruitment websites when you’re asking candidates to send across their full details with a CV attached, via an application or contact form. 

How do you know if you have an SSL certificate? Well you can log into where your website is registered/hosted and see if you have purchased one and if it’s up to date or you can simply look at the URL of your website. Your website will begin with "http" or "https", if it starts with “https” then you have an SSL certificate. 

Third Party Libraries 

Also sometimes developers will use third party libraries that perform certain functionality for them. It is often much easier to use a third party library than coding everything from scratch. Advantages of using third party libraries include, quicker development time and said functionality may be better than an individual developer could replicate. Disadvantages include security flaws if these libraries are not kept up to date and also performance hits. 

User Experience

You want your recruitment website to be easy to navigate for users, allowing candidates & clients to find what they need with speed and ease. I’ve come across several recruitment sites where I’ll be looking for a specific page but have to search through various navigation menus and submenus trying to find what I need. It’s annoying and frustrating and most people will give up very quickly. It should only take a visitor a few clicks to get to anywhere on your website. 

WordPress Plugins

WordPress is an easy tool to pick up and consists of around 50% of all websites on the internet we regularly use. Your average person with no coding experience could learn and put together a WordPress within a month - you could, by following a YouTube tutorial, create your own WordPress website quite easily. 

If you have a WordPress website, then developers will often use “plugins” to cut down on the code they have to write. A WordPress plugin is a piece of software or code that “plugs into” your WordPress site and adds new functionality or extends existing functionality on your site. 

They may also be a major cause for slow performance of your website and can also cause security risks if not kept up to date. If kept are up to date then they are relatively safe. 

This is a limited list of some of the issues I regularly see arise on recruitment websites. If you’re worried that your website isn’t up to standard and doesn’t reflect your agency then get in touch with us for a chat to see how we can help.