Today, job candidates are grading brands based on how seamless their candidate experience is. A strong candidate experience is no longer a “nice to have”, it is a requirement that prospective talent use to qualify the employer brand and decide if this organization will be a good fit for them. Another shift on the horizon is further disrupting the talent pipeline: job-seekers now expect the process to be as seamless and efficient as other digital transactions. The candidate experience needs to mimic the level of fluidity, usability and recognition that digital consumer interactions have in everyone’s day to day life. This means the pressure is on talent acquisition teams to upgrade their career site and other recruitment channels they use to engage talent. In fact, 62% of companies report pressure from senior leadership to improve the career site experience, underscoring how talent acquisition has risen to the C-suite agenda.

Why Owned Channels are Poised to Win in Recruiting

While job boards can help elevate visibility to get in front of active job seekers, owned recruiting channels can activate your employer brand and create a healthier mix of candidate sources. To be clear, owned channels are things like your career site, your candidate CRM marketing, your video content, social media recruiting accounts or anything else which is under your organization’s control. They are your story telling channels to provide potential candidates a glimpse inside your organization.

Owned channels also give brands the opportunity to engage with passive candidates and active job-seekers alike who may be looking for ways to go beyond the job description and get to the next level of what it’s like to work at a company. Sharing content that candidates can digest on whatever channel suits them is a smart way to provide this window into your organization. Being open and honest about your organization and sharing authentic stories that can be easily found is a big part of the formula to stand out versus competitors who are doing the bare minimum. The more that job seekers search for jobs with additional context because LLMs let them ask more complex questions about potential jobs and employers, the more that recruiting teams and their partners in corporate marketing will be challenged to be ready to respond to these types of queries.

This allows organizations to retain job seekers and increase leads for future or alternate positions. When the Ninety Nine Restaurant and Pub implemented a second chance page on their career site, for example, approximately 10% of visitors to their career page were redirected to second chance pages instead of hitting an error page when the position they originally wanted had been filled. Recruiters who rely too heavily on third-party sites are missing out on this opportunity to engage qualified candidates beyond a one-off opening.

Why Upgrading Your Career Site UX is Imperative

Traditional career sites fall short when it comes to user engagement, often due to outdated and unintuitive interfaces since they often get little attention and resources. Corporate marketing is often focused on growing the topline numbers and the talent acquisition teams tend to struggle with systems that don’t allow for easy enhancements and updates to their career site. These subpar interfaces can also be plagued by ineffective search and filtering functionality that make it difficult for prospective talent to effectively navigate job opportunities. A site that overwhelms job seekers with irrelevant jobs or content, will not encourage candidates to move through the application steps and eventually the hiring process. Additionally, when users encounter various glitches,  errors, and broken links, it can delay their application or cause them to abandon the process entirely.

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