Using Your Website to Attract Employees

Posted 08.24.11

Business is good and your backlog of work is building up. You've decided it's time to hire. Looking in your files, you only have one lonely application from 6 months ago. What can you do?

Finding employees is work, and finding good employees is difficult work. This is especially true when you're getting very few applicants to pick from. This can lead to hiring a bad fit for your business or worse - letting your business suffer from being overloaded and behind schedule.

There is a simple way to reach more job seekers

Your website is your first means of communication with the world. If you're hiring, you need to say so! A mention is fine, but a more effective way is to add a page dedicated to hiring.

Some examples of what to put on your employment page:

Describe what it's like to work for you

Name things your other employees love about working for you

Briefly describe the positions you are hiring for

LASTLY name any RELEVANT requirements for the job

Make sure a link to the page is easily seen in your site's main navigation so your visitors can find it.

In addition to providing information, you want to make it easy for people to contact you. Don't just provide an email address, use a short contact form that they can fill out. Not only will a bare email address get automatically picked up by spam lists, but people without access to email at that moment may not remember to come back. Even for everyone else, a form is simpler and easier to use.

Be careful not to use the form as a full job application. A lengthy page full of questions will discourage people from filling it out and you may miss out on that perfect candidate. Keep your form short and easy - applicants will be willing to answer all your other questions later.

A form I have used in the past contains only the following:

Name

Phone

Tell us about yourself

Where did you hear about us (optional, but useful)

Compliment your employment page with job listings

While this page will bring in a few applicants on it's own, you will still want to go straight to a good source of job seekers. For many businesses Craigslist is an ideal (and free) place to go, but this will work with any job posing service.

Here a few simple guidelines to follow if you decide to use Craigslist:

Use the basic HTML formatting that Craigslist allows Use h tags for a heading, possibly in color

Link directly to your employment page from your listing. This puts your easy to use form right in front of them and makes it more likely they won't put off contacting you

Use an image tag to include your logo, or just upload it you don't know how to do that.

Include other images if you have any that are relevant to your listing

Try to keep your ad posted about twice a week. You will find nearly all of the responses you get click through to your employment page and contact you using your form, and the increase in applicants will be noticeable. Follow up with applicants promptly and soon you will have a healthy pool of great prospects ready to fill your position.

Recent Posts

Using Your Website to Attract Employees

There is a simple way to reach more job seekers

Some examples of what to put on your employment page:

Compliment your employment page with job listings