Where & How To Find Images For Your Recruitment Agency Website

Images make a recruitment website and the choice of website images will dictate your brand’s personality. When a client or candidate lands on your website, the first thing their eyes and attention will be drawn to are the images so carefully curating a selection of complementary images is key. In some circumstances images can date within a few years so I’d recommend updating your website images every few years to keep your recruitment website inline with contemporary styles. 

One important point I’d like to make early on is you can’t just search for photos on Google Images and use them. All of them are likely to be copyrighted images and you may end up receiving an email or a letter asking you to remove the image from your website. I doubt it would go further than this but it’s a hassle you just don’t need. 

If you need to edit any of your images then there are so many tools out there, ranging from Microsoft Paint to Canva. They’re all easy to learn, intuitive in use and relatively inexpensive, if not free in many cases. Also when it comes to selecting images make sure there is a cohesive theme with all the images and that they match the style and content of your website and also your recruitment agency. 

Anyway we’ve got a few avenues, both paid for and free, for you to source images for your recruitment agency website… 

Hire A Professional Photographer / Videographer

This is my preferred option for the main bulk of images on your website. You’ll likely need a professional photographer for team headshots, photographing the local area and also photographing your office. Two great options for photographers who know the recruitment industry well would be Michael John Oliver and Wendy Gannon. It’s also great to see video content of employees talking about the company, their roles and the work they do too. A few great videographers who work extensively in the recruitment sector would be James Corr at Peak Creative, Jonathan Foyne at SocialViddy and Neil Kemp at 432 Films.  I’d push this option for the majority of the images across the standard pages of your website. 

Your Phone Camera

I studied photography at school and I am honestly blown away by the quality of images you can capture using your own high end smartphone. Using images you’ve taken yourself is a great option and works incredibly well. It's a credible avenue for images on your "work for us" or "about us" pages, alongside your blogs. I would however avoid using selfies for headshot images on your team pages - they rarely work in my opinion. If you are on a tight budget and need individual team member photos then take all the images on one day, on one camera, at the same distance and in front of the same background. 

Paid For Images From Photo Libraries

I used to recruit for the media industry and I have either hired or headhunted from every single photo library in the UK - even the extremely obscure ones, I know them all! One option is to purchase images from photo libraries - you typically have three options in general here. The first option is to purchase a monthly subscription, which gives you access to download 10 or 20 or 100 images each month. Secondly you may have the option to buy a photograph but the company can still sell that image to other people. And the third and most expensive option is a unique licence where the photo library cannot sell that image to anyone else. With all three options you can use the image however you like, wherever you like and however many times you like. 

For the most part I wouldn’t recommend using this option for recruitment agency websites. It can prove to be expensive and there just isn’t the need for it. 

If you are looking for a paid for photo library, then here’s a few suggestions..

Getty Images

Shutterstock

iStock

Adobe Stock

Alamy 

Free Images From Photo Libraries

If you can steer clear of stock imagery then I’d recommend it but it’s a great option for small recruitment companies - I use a lot on my site. There are so many free stock image libraries you can use commercially on your website. Simply use the search bar with relevant keywords and download the size you want. Typically you’ll want to use “Small” for standard images on your mobile website, “Medium” for standard images on your desktop and “Large” for any full sized / full viewport images (hero images, etc.). I’d then recommend converting these downloaded images into a WebP format using CloudConvert. WebP images are brilliant for websites! They’re smaller in size to PNG and JPG but of a comparable quality. 

Unsplash

Pexels

Pixabay

Flickr Commons

Burst By Shopify 

StockSnap

Gratisography

LibreShot

Picography 

AI Generated Images / Video 

At the time of writing we’re just moving into high quality AI generated video from public user prompts so for the most part I’ll stick with AI generated image based content for this section. There are so many grant options out there but it’s worth having a play around with a few of them as they still have their own unique styles that they apply to the prompts you give them. I’d recommend looking at DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. 

Designer

If you don’t have the time to source or create your own AI images then you can always use a designer. UX/UI designers are a great option and are able to incorporate photographs and images that exactly fit the style of your website. If you’ve opted to work with a graphic designer or digital designer then it’s well worth asking if they can also source images too. If you do decide to go down this route then do your own research and ask to see some of their previous work. A good designer should be able to adapt their style to what the client wants but most designers have their own style and it makes the whole process so much easier & more successful if you like the style of their previous work already. 

Social Media

Seen something you like the look of on TikTok or Instagram? Then why not reach out to the creator to see if they’d let you use it free of charge on your recruitment site (maybe for a credit or mention) or maybe for a small fee. 

If you need help redesigning your new recruitment website or help with image content then just get in touch with us for chat.