Creating a fully featured, engaging and informative careers website may seem daunting. Sure, there’s some planning involved, and a fair amount of copy writing to do. But the good news is that if you get the basics right, then you can progressively build a fantastic site that you’ll be exceptionally proud of that showcases your company in the best possible light.

Here are 10 really important basics to get right:

1. Content Management System (CMS) – don’t sign up for a careers website unless you’re handed the keys when it’s launched. You’ll want to be able to easily change and edit page copy, remove images when employees leave, and add fresh content on a regular basis in order to keep your site relevant and ranked highly by search engines.
2. Mobile Responsive – your job seekers are on the move, or on the couch(!) and want to be able to view content and jobs on their phones and tablets. A website that functions perfectly on desktop, tablet and phone is essential.
3. Google-like Job Search – allow your job seekers to quickly and easily find jobs via simple semantic search. Don’t force them through masses of clunky selection criteria.
4. Location based Search – if you cover several locations and geographic regions – offer a map based search so that job seekers can determine what their commute will look like
5. Talent Community – give every visitor a chance to stay in touch with you, even if they don’t find a job to suit them right now. Offer a way to sign up for job alerts, and for your talent pool / community
6. Job Alerts – give every visitor the option to hear from you in the future, with regular job alert bulletins
7. SEO-friendly URLs – follow industry standard conventions for crafting your website URLS so they are optimal for both SEO and users
8. News, events and blogs – make sure you can keep adding new content easily. This will both keep your job seekers up-to-date, and will improve SEO.
9. ATS integration – make sure your careers website can take jobs from your ATS and display them, via a feed / API
10. Content Delivery Network (CDN) – give your visitors the fastest experience possible, with a CDN that caches your content around the globe