4 Ways to Get More Applicants From Your Careers Site

94% of the job seekers who visit job landing pages don’t apply. As a talent acquisition leader who is probably facing ambitious hiring goals that figure might come as both a surprise and frustration.

Who are these people, where are they going, and most importantly why are they not applying for jobs?

When you consider the thousands of people who visit your jobs on a daily basis and do a rough calculation, it becomes clear what a huge impact raising that number by just a single percentage point can have on your recruiting.

Simple changes to your careers pages can help you attract more applicants, faster. Here are 4 ways to get started.

Include Two Calls-to-Action

A call to action is any sort of prompt that encourages people to take an action. The most common and important one for your careers site is the one that says “Apply” and encourages visitors to submit an application. That’s what your careers site is there to do after all.

However many job seekers won’t be ready to apply for a job at that very moment. In fact, the apply step has a higher rate of candidate drop-off than any other part of the hiring process.

Why? People are really busy. The visitors to your careers site might be in the middle of riding the bus, waiting to pick up their kids, or on their way to class, and not be ready to commit to starting a full-length job application.

Adding a second call-to-action that doesn’t make the hard sell but invites people to stay in touch can help you increase conversions. 

“Sign up for updates” or “Stay in touch” are examples of ways that you capture more visitors’ information, so even if they are not ready to apply instantly you don’t lose them forever.

Dalia’s pop-up (shown above) gives job seekers a second call to action.

Employers who use Dalia to add this second call to action are getting 2-3x as many conversions from their careers site.

Engage People Who Don’t Apply

Once a job seeker has finished the step above and signed up to receive job alerts from you, it’s important to nurture them by sending job alerts and helpful content regularly.

There are two reasons that many talent acquisition teams skip this step:

First, it can be time-consuming to send personalized alerts at scale if you’re hiring for multiple jobs in different locations. 

Second, it can take recruiters away from speaking with prospective candidates and force them to spend their day working in software.

That’s why many employers are using Dalia to automate this process. Dalia automatically matches job seekers with your latest jobs and sends them emails and text messages that bring them back to apply.

Here’s what a text message that Dalia would send on behalf of an employer might look like.

By capturing lost job seeker traffic from your careers site and re-engaging them with your latest jobs, you’re able to get more applicants without adding any extra work for your team.

Have a Mobile-First Mindset

You shouldn’t have to be sitting at a computer to apply for a job.

Anyone who has tried to apply for a job from their phone has probably wondered: a) How am I going to import my resume?; b) Do they really want me to write out my entire job history?; and c) How long is this going to take? 

Ensure that your career site and application process are easy to navigate from any device, and give job seekers a sense of how much further they have to go to finish applying. 

In fact, reducing the time needed to complete an online job application by 10 percent is associated with a 2.3 percent increase in job applications from mobile job seekers.

When it comes to visitors searching for your jobs and reading more about them, let people know you’re thinking of them by making everything mobile-friendly. Opening up your jobs to job seekers whose primary device is a phone will help you get more people to apply.

Simplify Your Job Descriptions

There are more things competing for our attention online than ever before. That’s why it’s important to get to the point, be direct, and speak with job seekers using plain, straightforward language.

The goal should be to minimize the job seeker’s mental workload. That’s because the second that they spot something in a job description that appears to be confusing or does not make sense, their attention will wander elsewhere.

If you include an acronym or industry jargon then chances are they will have to either: a) go to another website to look up what that means; or b) figure that since they don’t know the definition of that word they’re probably not going to get the job anyway.

About Dalia and how we can help

Dalia makes it easier for people to find jobs and for employers to hire more efficiently. Employers use our candidate experience platform to automate talent nurturing and connect with job seekers faster. We hear firsthand from job seekers about the ups and downs of their search and use that feedback to keep making it easier for them to find a job. If you’re searching for a job – sign up, and if you’re hiring – get a tour.