How to Create the Best Careers Page

Your website is your biggest recruitment tool, but are you sure yours is up to the task? A lot of companies tend to take career pages for granted and that ends up being detrimental when trying to attract and retain new talent.

If you’re thinking, “Eh, a career page isn’t that important” - well, think again. Global trends, uncovoered by LinkedIn, increasingly show that prospective candidates rely on the careers page during the application and interview process. The main pain points their research found included:

• Prospective employees weren’t able to figure out what it was really like to work at the company
• Prospective employees didn’t understand the role and what was expected.

Those are crucial pieces of information people are using when deciding to apply and/or interview that tend to be utterly neglected on an organization’s career page. Without a clear picture, prospective employees tend to lose interest or just don’t feel as passionate about the role.

It’s hard to figure out what makes a good career page, but consider these two issues your starting point. If you’re looking to improve recruitment, get better talent into the interview process and hire more, here are some steps you can take to make your career page go from okay to great along with examples of the best career pages we could find:

Show, not tell, how great your team is

You can spend paragraphs on paragraphs writing about how great your team is, but that doesn’t make for a good career page. It’s about showing how great your team is and who a prospective employee could be working with if hired. If you think about that pain point mentioned earlier around not knowing what it’s like to work at that company, this plays a big role. People feel nervous when applying for new jobs, or during the interview process.

Showing the team and their roles in the company really help candidates feel more at ease. Whether it’s candid shots around the office or a ‘yearbook style’ as demonstrated on software company Wistia's careers page (hover over each team member’s picture on the site for a fun surprise!), don’t be afraid to think outside the box and show off how great the existing team is.

(Screenshot from Wistia website)

Here's the easiest way to do it, with no coding or web design necessary: create a free public org chart and use it on your careers page! You showcase your existing team, but you can also embed the positions you're hiring for straight into the chart, so applicants know exactly where they'll fit if they join.

Honesty is truly the best policy

Cheesy perhaps, but important. Honesty is a vital part of making a great careers page because you have to give people the right perspective on what the work is like on a regular day. Retention rates tend to drop because new talent joins a team and quickly realizes they weren’t really told what the job was about, or where they really fit in the team. It ends up in mismatched expectations and higher turnover.

Here’s a great example of how you could potentially solve this issue, as demonstrated by digital agency DTelepathy's careers page. They use the space to show prospective employees what a typical day looks like at the agency from start to finish. Your careers page doesn’t necessarily need to tell them everything, but it should give potential employees an accurate glimpse into what the company is like, what the culture is like, and what they can come to expect.

(Screenshot from DTelepathy website)

Be clear about your expectations

Remember, if you’re not clear about what you’re looking for from the start, there’s going to be confusion. You’ll end up getting a lot of irrelevant resumes and qualifications that don’t make sense for the role. If that’s something you deal with often, consider retooling the way you write job descriptions and roles.

Your careers page is your main communication tool with prospective employees, so use it to help them understand what you’re looking for - and what they can do to give you the right information. Social enterprise TooGoodToGo lays out clear expectations in the example shown below about what they’re looking for and what they need to see from job applications. This way, prospective employees are able to send in a tailored application with clear requirements in mind. Plus, they get to know the hiring process a little bit as well, which makes it less of a nerve-wracking process.

(Screenshot from TooGoodToGo)

A thoughtful design helps

You might be starting to think that there’s a lot you need to cram into one career page and it’s going to be super overwhelming. But relax, it doesn’t have to be. Your careers page can host lots of great information...but if the design is all wrong, then it doesn’t really matter how much you put in. Once you figure out what information you want to include, the next step is thinking about how the page itself should look.

You’ll see some examples below of different elements of a career page. Think of these as your inspiration. Think about what resonates with you in each of these examples and what you gravitate towards.

For example, the Squarespace site is super simple. All it has a list of open positions and prospective employees can easily see the departments, locations, and the number of open roles. It’s helpful for them since they can quickly scan to see where they might fit. Squarespace opted to keep the top of the page on open positions and then more sections around work and culture as users scroll down.

(Screenshot via Squarespace)

Showcase what your organization has to offer

Analytics company PurpleAI chose to highlight their perks as part of the main career page. Prospective employees immediately land on the open positions and then see the global perks that are available. It’s a great incentive for employees, of course, but the placement makes it hard to miss - and a great way to convince candidates to apply! They’ve chosen to highlight why they're an attractive place to work right from the start.

(Screenshot via PurpleAI)

Make a lasting impression

Lastly, aerospace company SpaceX goes for a different look and feel altogether. Pairing bold imagery and headlines with strong call-to-action buttons, their careers page makes an impression. With the addition of the quote, it becomes an aspirational page, immediately imbuing a sense of purpose for anyone thinking about applying. It really highlights their uniqueness and fits well with the company’s innovative reputation.

(Screenshot via SpaceX)

What does this all mean to you? When thinking about what makes a good career page, your first step should be thinking about who you want to attract. It’s easy to say, “well, I want the best and the brightest and nothing else!” - but there’s so much more to it.

The best and brightest are attracted to places where they see how they’ll fit in a team, where they know, roughly, what they can expect once they take an offer and what the company’s values and culture are. Your careers page is a place to be honest about this while highlighting why your company is the right choice. To make a great careers page, it needs to encourage and incentivize people with making that next career decision to come to you with your careers page. Take it as an opportunity to show prospective employees how they’ll fit in different teams and how your company’s mission and value translate into everyday work.