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A Recruiter, A Salesperson and Jeff Bezos Walk Into A Bar

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Jeff then takes 2 years trying to decide which stool is good enough for Amazon HQ2, the salesperson spills his business cards on the floor, and the recruiter says “ouch,” then she immediately looks the other two up on LinkedIn. 

Ok, I tried to think of a better punch-line and that’s the best I could come up with.

This blog is actually about how to Improve Your Recruiting Website to Be More Effective (with a little influence from Jeff and the Salesperson and Recruiter for good measure)

Why Does A Website Matter to Your Business?

Your website is your digital storefront. If you’re a physical store, you already know the following.

People that Visit Your Store Are One of These Three Varieties:

  • Random Visitors who will never buy what you’re selling – step foot in your store once – and leave, never to return, ever.
  • People that found you “randomly” who are curious about your business but leave without buying and will probably forget about you unless you send them a great coupon in the mail.
  • People who know who you are and come into your store because they’ve already purchased from you before and like your brand.

Our goal is to keep the attention of the second and retain the business of the 3rd.

The same is true for your website visitors. Some people find you in Google Searches and may or may not be interested in your services. Others may be interested but not ready to “buy what you’re selling”, and there are those that purposefully find your site again because they want what you have.

So – how do you optimize your website to attract – retain – and get return visitors? Here are a few tips:

5 Ways To Improve the Quality of Your Website’s Traffic

1. Lot’s of Calls to Action.

 

Mmm. Not that kind of call to action.

Many website have lots of “all about us” copy on their webpages but don’t include a clear place for visitors to then navigate to a page that gives THEM something! Image this. You have to go to Target to pick up a gift for a birthday party that you’re already late to. You park and walk to the front door. You walk in through the automatic doors and immediately are stopped by a formal looking sales person who insists on telling you who Target is a why you should shop there. Annoying, right? I want to be able to walk in, grab the cheapest toy and cash myself out at the DIY checkout stalls (I hate standing in lines. Can you relate?)

If you are loading tons of copy onto your web pages, you are missing the point that the person is already at your site – get them to a page that gives them information like a job post – then give them an easy way to “check out.”

2. Optimize Your Blog For Traffic Flow – Not Just as a Subtle (or not-so-subtle) Sales Pitch

a. Your blog should serve several purposes.

  • First, when you are regularly publishing blogs to your site – search engines like Google, perk up their digital ears, and your site gets more attention. Make sure that you have a keyword strategy to continue attracting the right searches.
  • Next, your blogs serve as an easy way for people to discover your brand and get them to your site, past the sales pitch and the “About us” mumbo jumbo. After people have visited your site multiple times, and you’ve built up enough brand currency and trust with them, you then are more liable to land a conversion, whether it comes in the way of a job application, contact form filled out, or a lead captured in an eBook download.
  • Next, make sure that you include clear calls-to-action in the side bar that are prominently placed. When your site’s bounce rate is 80% + , NOBODY is exploring the other blog categories or recent posts. Remove those from your blog’s sidebar and replace them with great looking, audience-specific banner ads that give them a clear action to take.

3. Make Conversions Easy.

Why do we expect people to fill out tons of information online when we’re going to ask them to fill out layers of paperwork when they come in for the interview? When I buy a fully-functional Star Wars lightsaber on Amazon, I’d don’t need to type anything else, just tap-tap-tap, and it arrived 3-5 business days later, AND there is a way for me to track it’s progress. (Just imagine if job candidates could see where they were at in your follow-up queue.) Giving people really easy ways to apply for a job or contact you opens the doors to more opportunities for you. If they found you on Google, they already typed in “Jobs Near Me.” There is no reason to make them type anything else.

Especially in a tight candidate market, your doors should be wide open, and double-wide. When researching job boards, ATSs and their applications here, you NEED to make sure they include the following:

  • Mobile friendly applications (not the ones you have to pinch to blow up the screen!)
  • Forms that allow browsers to autofill contact information
  • Easy apply buttons (everyone wants an easy button, right!) Apply with: Indeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, ZipRecruiter, and yes, even Amazon come standard on some applications. The applicant clicks the “Apply with…” button and their LinkedIn profile auto-fills the information for them. Bingo – bango – bungo!!! You have an application in a couple of taps on a phone screen – no typing at all!
  • The system should be able to provide you with analytics that tell you where the applicant came from (Organic Search, Indeed, etc.) and should be able to tell you how many times your job was seen vs how many applications came in for that particular job (The conversion rate).

4. Act Like Amazon!

No, don’t take over the world and start building starships (props to you Jeff). However, almost EVERY shopping site you visit on the web tracks you! Ever visited Amazon and you go to another site and see an ad for that exact diaper brand that you were shopping for a minute ago? It’s not black magic. It’s not your new iPhone spying on you (probably). Amazon has taken advantage of an inexpensive way to get you back to their site and complete the purchase of that 4 month supply of Huggies. This is called remarketing and is a VERY easy and inexpensive way to run ads. Google has a version and so does Facebook. Even if you don’t normally source candidates on Facebook, think of Facebook as another “Google” site and not as a social media site. There are 2.2 BILLION people using Facebook. You are missing out on getting potentially GREAT applicants back to your site because you like LinkedIn better. (303 Million regular users – 13% of the users Facebook has) Food for thought – mmm…speaking of food…

5. Be Real!

When you get together for Thanksgiving there are lots of personalities. Everyone reverts to being the son or daughter even if they are 50 years young with their own families. You can’t fake who you are. We don’t try to hide the fact that Mom makes the best turkey and sauce this side of the Mississippi (and she knows you’ll have another slice of pie.) Be real – accept the fact that you are still THAT kid! Similarly, your site should reflect who you are as a company but, more importantly, who your target audience is, and relate to them. If 99% of the people you place are in light industrial jobs, don’t include pictures of people in suits having really in-depth conversations around a board-room table, pointing to charts of paper with red arrows trending upward. You get the drift. Your imagery should be relatable and real. Not the best metaphor, but Thanksgiving is almost here, so…

Remember, your site is only as good as the strategy behind it. If your site’s not set up to move people through your marketing funnel, you might as well sell your wares door-to-door and stop paying rent for your brick and mortar storefront (I don’t recommend that).

And that’s no joke.

Want a Few Great Tunes to keep you motivated today?  Listen To My Country Playlist on Spotify

Email me with playlist or song suggestions! Also, you should definitely check out our Secrets of Staffing Success Podcast, where some of the brightest minds in the staffing industry tell all.

Also, check out this free to download of our Smart Recruiting Checklist for WAY more tips!

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