Dos and Don'ts of Effective Jobs Web Sites
What's the most important Web site in your recruiting strategy – your own!
Is your employment Web site designed for desperate job hunters or terrific hires? Does it reinforce your institution's brand, or communicate all the wrong messages?
Take our quick challenge:
- Start on your institution's home page.
- Click the link for prospective students — you'll probably like what you see.
- Now go back to the home page and click the link for jobs – if what you see makes you wince, you’re not alone.
A top-quality faculty and staff is a key competitive differentiator for any institution. Yet at most colleges and universities, employment recruiting is perceived as an administrative chore rather than an important strategic investment. Nowhere is this more evident than on college and university Web sites, one of the most visible communication channels for your institutional brand.
How can you make a dreadful jobs site into one that sells your jobs to the best possible hires? It just requires thinking from the perspective of the candidate rather than the recruiter. And following Inside Higher Ed’s 10 do’s and don’ts of effective job recruitment Web sites:
| DO! | DON’T! |
| Create an obvious, prominent link to your jobs from your institution’s home page | Hide your jobs in confusing navigation or behind cryptic labels (“jobs” is a better link than “Join the team”) |
| Communicate your institution’s “brand.” Use your “prospective students” page as a model – many of the same qualities that attract students will attract employees | Communicate your ATS’s brand. Don’t make your applicant tracking system your recruiting page – remember that the FIRST thing great hires do is explore, not apply |
| Put smiling faces of real employees on your jobs home page | Use clip art! (it’s ALWAYS obvious) |
| Lead with the most compelling reason a great hire wants to works at your institution – this can be anything from your location to your benefits to your culture, but really sell it | Lead with off-putting legalese – at this point, you don’t have applicants, just prospects. Save the mentions of drug testing, criminal background checks, and campus crime statistics for later in the process |
| Feature your most interesting jobs prominently | Treat all jobs as equally compelling – nothing is more off-putting to a senior applicant than seeing a job list with custodians and VPs lumped together |
| Treat even your lowest level jobs as important – sell the groundskeepers as enthusiastically as the development directors | Consider ANY job a commodity – every hire (even those custodians) has a contribution to make to the success of your institution |
| Make faculty jobs as easy to find as staff jobs – even if they’re not in the same database, provide clear links and instructions from your main jobs page | Assume that no one’s coming to your site to search for faculty jobs – they are! |
| Sell every job! Start each posting with a clear, concise and compelling statement of why candidates want this job! | Use internal job descriptions as external postings or treat a database view as a publicly available job list. |
| Use language that creates a candidate focus - label the link to your application “I want this job” rather than “apply now” | Treat candidates as data entry clerks – ask only for what you really need at each step of the process and keep things simple. |
| Use technology to be polite – acknowledge receipt of applications, keep applicants informed as the search progresses, and remember that a polite rejection is vastly preferably to being kept hanging. | Use technology to commoditize your candidates – personalize e-mail messages and make sure message templates can be adapted to unique requirements. |
For more information on effective recruiting, see Reaching Passive Candidates and The Dos and Don'ts of Effective Job Sites
And take a look at our Recruiting Hall of Shame for some examples of effective (and not so effective) job postings - you don't want to land on next year's list!
