Today’s candidates demand more from you!

Today’s online users expect and demand a much higher level of quality and engagement from the brands they interact with. They have become accustomed to simple, beautiful online experiences where they can easily find and interact with the information they need, and then undertake sophisticated transactions in real-time, right from their mobile devices.

Today’s candidate expects no less from you.

The sad truth is that over x% of company career sites fall well short of meeting the most basic expectations of the modern candidate. And for millennials, the values of the company they work for are now as important to them as the job they perform. To meet their expectations, you’ll need to be able to clearly demonstrate your employment brand, your values and mission.

For your company to be competitive in attracting and engaging with the best quality millennial talent, it all starts with the first experience they have with you – your career website.

So, how does your career website stack up? Let’s find out.

The see, tap, click, and touch generation
People are getting lazier by the day. Or maybe not necessarily lazier – but we do expect things to be easier. If it’s hard, or I can’t find what I want, I’m out of here!

When it comes to grabbing the attention of an online visitor, xyz research suggest that you have y seconds to get your message across. Y seconds! So how do you grab the attention of this new generation?

Pictures are X% better at engaging people than text, and video is Y% more effective than images. People prefer to see and hear about your brand, your mission, and your values, than to read about them. The use of images and short, well crafted videos are key to building relationships with future talent.

The buyer’s journey
It may seem strange to be talking about a ‘buyer’ in an article about talent, but let’s think about it. You are in a war for talent. You are competing with that real estate company across the hall, the marketing company down the road, the tech company across town, and the direct competitor halfway around the world that you didn’t even know you had. You are in a war for talent just like Target is in a war with Walmart for customers.

If you are a marketer you will know (and probably love), the concept of the Buyer’s Journey (See Hubspot’s simple definition). Essentially, the Buyer’s Journey works on the premise that people don’t get married after just one date. They like to take the time to get to know each other, and understand what makes the other person ‘tick’. They want to ensure they are compatible and aligned before they get married.

Consumers take the same approach to buying products. They research, compare and discover, long before they decide. Today’s candidates take the same approach when considering who they want to work with.

Your career website is a key part of today’s Candidate Journey. They are ‘buying into’ you and what your company stands for. If what they see and the experience on your career website does not meet their modern experiences and expectations, today’s high quality talent will elect to apply somewhere else.

How do you get a second candi-date?
According to xyz, the average consumer needs to interact with a brand Y times before they decide to buy. Similar is true of today’s top talent. They don’t apply the first time they come to your website – they like to get to know you first. If your career website has nothing more than a list of jobs on it, they are unlikely to stick around.

The problem with jobs is that they are one point in time. It’s a point in time when the job you have matches the skills a candidate has, at a time they are looking to change. You don’t have time to build a relationship.

So what can you do?

You need to extend the time you are in a ‘relationship’ with candidates. This is best achieved through a combination of:

• Content that helps the candidate understand what your company stands for, your values, your mission, etc.,
• A  simple way they can interact with you, ‘date’ you, and check you out.

This is usually achieved by career website technologies that offer these capabilities:

• A content management system (CMS) so your marketing or recruiting team can easily create and publish content on the career website, and
• A talent community that gives candidates a simple and fast way to sign up and keep in touch with what’s going on at your company. The talent community would ideally keep that candidate warm until they are ready to apply. This may include sending automatic and relevant content such as personalized job alerts, newsletters, etc.

If your career website does not offer today’s top talent ways to get to know your company and a simple, low effort way to keep in touch, you are missing out.