Points to consider when designing a recruitment website in 2008

Learn about the best practices in recruitment web design at the Onrec.com Online Recruitment Conference, taking place in Westminster, London, on the 3rd June Click here and complete the form and a member of the Onrec.com team will be in touch

As tempting as it may be, our expert advice is not to get carried away with flashy, superficial gimmicks. Websites need careful planning and consideration of how they will be used to be effective. Here are some points to consider:

Adele Poole at Hotlizard believes that creating an effective web site presence in 2008 is the sum of many parts. She says: ìThree to four years ago clients and suppliers would be focused on the creative design and/or functionality requirements but now it is imperative to focus more holistically on what will deliver. It is really about focussing on your target audience and looking at what traffic and results you are looking to achieve, so creating the basic framework for optimisation and accessibility is paramount and ensuring that this matches with the focus, theme and marketing message of the site.î

Kelvin Newman, Natural & Social Search Manager at Site Visibility Ltd advises very structured pages for easy jobsearching. He says: ìI donít think Iíve ever had a short job title in my whole career; and Iím not alone, itís worth remembering when structuring your site. The search engines and candidates love ultra targeted pages, donít just have a page just for management positions have one for senior management roles, trainee managers and any other way you divide up your sector. It helps visitors to your sites find exactly what they are looking for and at the same time helps you capturing the valuable ëlong tailí search engine traffic.î He also suggests what to avoid: ìDespite being the world biggest search engine Google still hasnít worked out how to use the on site search tools on your job board.

If you have to type into a search box to reach your jobs the search engine robots will never find your vitally important internal pages. But itís not only worth having a category for search engines, say Iím looking for a job as a tree surgeon, do I search for Arborist, Tree Surgeon or Arboriculture Jobs? With a well structured index of jobs everyone will be able to find what they are looking for.î
Rather than expecting jobseekers to keep searching for ideal jobs, Adele Poole is interested in other ways of engaging potential candidates: ìConverting traffic into high quality, volume applications and registrations comes through multiple points of touch and calls to action and reasons to interact and return rather than expecting candidates and clients to search for what they are looking for. Accepting that there is no one correct formula is also very important ñ what works for a commercial job board is not going to marry well with a financial executive search and selection company so getting the consultancy and workflow processes correct at the beginning is essential. For some the bells and whistles will apply for others they will detract from the main purpose of the site.î Kelvin Newman also thinks content is more important than fancy gimmicks: ìItís tempting to go for something flashy when it comes to web design but with out good old fashioned text itís very difficult for search engines to know exactly what each page is about. Itís like having a great big filing cabinet full of paperwork with no labels or order. You might have the information there but itís very difficult to know where to look. Looking pretty is important but search engines or anyone visiting your website with sight problems wonít have a clue what your website is about.î

For Harry Brignull, User Experience Consultant at Madgex, the successful philosophy is: ìIn a nutshell, our advice is to design for real people, not statistics.î They have a lot of experience building job board software and customising it for a wide range of major media clients including The Guardian, News International, United Business Media, EMAP and Centaur Media. He explains why this philosophy is so important: ìIn digital recruitment, site owners tend to concentrate heavily on the needs of recruiters, since they are a direct source of revenue. For this reason, they speak to recruiters regularly and listen to them intently. However, itís important to bear in mind that the recruiters are just part of the ecosystem. Equally important are the job seekers, but strangely, site owners tend to have very little direct contact with them. Analytics and statistics tell a lot about their presence and activities, but this information is shadowy, like footprints. You know theyíve passed through, but thatís about it.

While statistics play a key role, itís easy to forget that the numbers are composed of real individuals struggling to make big, life-changing decisions about their careers. Itís these end-users that make your business a reality: if you concentrate on satisfying their needs, they will reward you with good conversion rates and customer loyalty. At Madgex, we make this happen by investing heavily in user research techniques such as usability testing, diary studies and ethnography. This research gives us insights into how our products perform from an end-user perspective: what things they find frustrating and time consuming, what things they find useful, and where the new opportunities lie, allowing us to continually hone and optimize our offerings.

It might sound like an expensive approach, but when you think about it, the value is undeniable. By improving how you connect your customers with the things they seek, youíre directly addressing your business objectives.î

For Kelvin Newman, customer satisfaction is a high priority too, and word of mouth is still very worthwhile: ìWhen your website works well the best news is your candidates and visitors will work as your marketing team, theyíll recommend you to friends, link to you from your blog and contribute user generated content to your site. If you make it easy to use, the visitors you do get are more likely to apply and your advertisers are more likely to find the applicant they are looking for; if you can achieve this youíll have no trouble finding new advertisers.î

The attraction of social networking is something Adele Poole feels may draw in candidates: ìOne theme that we are seeing beginning to develop with the advent of social networking is more desire to develop applications for candidates to use recruitment sites and job boards as a central place for career development and providing functionality in this area could be key to owning the candidate space for your particular sector. On the other side of the equation, more self service for clients in terms of candidate sourcing and recruitment management as they become much more familiar with online as the most effective method of communication and processing.

So, less gimmicks in web design and greater customer satisfaction as a priority is the message from our experts this year. As Adele Poole says: ìIt is a very exciting time for online recruitment as expectations of candidates and clients are high as their general use of the Internet increases and many recruitment companies will find themselves out of the running if their online presence isnít seen as coming up to scratch.î

Learn about the best practices in recruitment web design at the Onrec.com Online Recruitment Conference, taking place in Westminster, London, on the 3rd June Click here and complete the form and a member of the Onrec.com team will be in touch