In looking at career site after career site,

Your users are on your site for two reasons: apply for a job, or learn more information. Everything else is something you are adding for your benefit, not the prospects. Examples? Oh, yes.

“Share this on social!”

How often is anyone sharing your job on their social feed? How does it benefit them? Obviously, it only benefits you, which is why it usually gets so much prominence in the design.

A massive “hero” image.

Leaving aside the fact that I’ve found two competing sites using the same stock image on their site (mostly-white dude in “business attire” talking on the phone in a “deal” manner rather than a “customer support” manner), your images are mostly useless. They are overly-polished and devoid of meaning. At best, they can be attempting to deliver some emotional message, but the overly-polished design and (all-too-often) political process by which those images are chosen, these images are as exciting as industrial carpeting.

(Points to companies using images of real employees doing real things.)

“Join Our Talent Community!”

Here’s the secret: there’s never any “community” in your talent community. At best, it’s a poorly-veiled attempt to get someone in your CRM, an prospects know that. Assuming you regularly communicate with your prospects (which few companies do) using information they can’t get with a casual Google search (which is almost never), anything you provide in these networks is designed to make it easier for recruiters to build a rolodex and not for prospects to do anything useful. Remember: your jobs are already going to  the job boards, so what’s so special about joining the community?

 

Corporate Navigation

If I’m looking for a job, why are you always showing navigation to your corporate site? I’m looking for a job, not something to buy. That navigation is distracting, confusing and takes up real estate that could be used to help someone understand why they should work for you.

Enough complaining. What should you have on your site? Jobs (and better written job descriptions). Maps that show where this job is. Stories about what this job is like and how it treats its employees. Make it easy to find your Glassdoor reviews (because they are going to do that anyway) and find your employees on LinkedIn (also, because the best prospects will be doing exactly that, as well). Don’t lean on About Us and Benefits as drivers of understanding, because no one looks at those pages (trust me, I’ve been in your analytics).

A great site gives a compelling reason for the right people to apply and a compelling reason for the wrong people to search elsewhere, then makes it easy to satisfy their interest and questions. Then they apply.

Everything else gets in the way.