People who visit websites have a very short attention span. They expect to find what they’re looking for within seconds, and they want a good experience in the process.
A recruiting website design has to accomplish three basic functions within the visitor’s first five seconds. Otherwise, there’s a risk of losing them.
First, the visitor needs to know who you are. Second, they need to know what you do. And third, it needs to be obvious what action you want them to take, all within the first five seconds.
Your Internet recruiting efforts starts with your firm’s website. Below are three easy steps for optimizing your Internet recruiting efforts:
#1—Web visitors need to know WHO YOU ARE.
For most recruitment and staffing agencies, their website is their storefront. There is no “driving up” to a website. It’s more like being teleported and not knowing exactly where you’re going or what it’s going to look like once you arrive.
That’s why it’s important that the name of your company and your company logo (hopefully you have one) are two of the very first pieces of information the visitor sees when they arrive at your site.
Seeing the company name provides a sense of relief, since the visitor now knows they’re in the right place. To help them locate the company name more quickly and because most people scan websites from left to right, it makes the most sense to display your company name and logo in the upper left-hand corner on each page of the site.
#2—Web visitors need to know WHAT YOU DO.
Now that people know who you are, they need to know what you do. More specifically, they’re asking the question, “Am I in the right place to help solve my problems and meet my needs?”
They want to make sure that their time is going to be worth the visit to your site. To accomplish this, there needs to be a short, clear, and concise statement of the service you provide, and in some cases, who you provide that service for. It’s like a branding statement that can be comprehended quickly, without too much thought.
A good example of this is the website for JBK INTERNATIONAL (www.jbk-intl.com). As soon as you land on their site, there is no doubt who they are and what they do. Their concise statement reads,“RECRUITING EXPERTS FOR THE CASINO & GAMING INDUSTRY.” That statement is toward the top of the page and is offset in red so that it stands out from the rest of the site.
Keep in mind that the clear and concise statement becomes less effective the longer it is. Remember, most people browse a website, they don’t park and read. The longer your descriptive statement is, the less likely they’re going to read it.
#3—Web visitors need to know WHAT ACTION you want them to take.
One of the major goals of a recruiting website is to convert visitors into clients, candidates, or referrals. To increase the probability of this happening, the site needs to have an element on the page that grabs the visitor’s attention and elicits some type of action. This attention grabber is known as a Call-To-Action (CTA), and it needs to be obvious to the visitor within the first five seconds.
The main purpose of the CTA is to get the visitor to do something. Popular CTAs on recruitment and staffing websites include “View Hot Jobs”, “Submit Your Resume”, “Contact us”, or “Join me on LinkedIn.”
Most times, the CTAs are clickable buttons that are designed with a contrasting color to the site’s main colors, causing it to stand out. (For more about starting your own website, view the blog article, “Creating a Blog for Your Recruiting Website”).
CTAs lead the visitor down a specific path to either capture their contact information by asking them to fill out a form or prompt them to contact you. Either way, the goal is to lead the visitor down a path that prompts them to take an action.
Take this test: open a browser and type in your agency’s website address. Does your site answer the three basic questions of who you are, what you do, and what action needs to be taken—all within the first five seconds?
If not, then you may be losing visitors . . . and losing ground as you try to optimize your Internet recruiting efforts.
If you need a website built from scratch, you believe that it’s time to update the design or functionality of your current site, or you’re looking for more technical website services for recruiters, check out some examples of the top recruitment sites that we’ve created for recruiters.
For more information, you can contact me at 330.455.1433, x135.