With the national unemployment rate holding steady at 3.9%, employers are scrambling to fill positions as the competition gets fierce to lock down top talent. 
However, getting the best qualified job candidates to your website careers page is only half the battle. If your careers page isn’t engaging and informative enough, otherwise qualified candidates will lose interest quickly and leave your website in droves.
That’s why your careers page deserves a lot of attention. A well-crafted, properly optimized and user-friendly careers page makes an undeniable first impression and helps you recruit the very best job candidates to help lead your company into the future.
Here are 5 best practices for careers pages to help you attract the most qualified job candidates to your workplace:
1. Add Schema Markup to Your Careers Page
Adding schema markup (structured data vocabulary) to your website careers page ensures that the right job candidates find you in the major search engines. This helps your business get the competitive edge in the job market.
According to Google, adding structured data to your job postings features such benefits as “more interactive results,” “more motivated applicants” and “increased chances of discovery and conversion.”
2. Use SEO-Friendly Job Titles and Descriptions
By making your website careers page SEO friendly, you will ensure that you attract top talent to your front door. Perform keyword research to discover what words people use to look for the jobs you are offering.
It could be very different from your formal job title. Include those keywords on your careers page. Carefully add relevant keywords to job titles and descriptions (but do not engage in keyword stuffing!).
3. Clarify Remote Work Expectations
According to Glassdoor data, job searches for remote work were up an astounding 460% in the first two years of the global pandemic. Upwork estimates that 22% of the American workforce (36.2 million employees) will work remotely by 2025. This represents an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels.
Make sure to clarify what you mean when it comes to remote work by adding such phrases as “fully remote” (employees work from home during all working hours), “work from home flexibility” (employees get the option of working from home occasionally as a benefit) and “temporarily remote” (employees will need to return to the office in the near future).
In all cases involving remote work, it’s best to state your expectations upfront to avoid any confusion.
4. Highlight Top Benefits and Work Flexibility
Develop a list of all the top benefits and perks of working at your company and include it on your website careers page. These include health insurance, vacation/PTO and retirement plan options like 401(k)s and pensions.
In addition, add any unique perks that help you stand out from competitors such as free lunches or complimentary gym memberships. Also make sure to highlight flexible hours and work from home options if available.
5. Optimize for Mobile Friendliness
Make sure to optimize your website careers page for mobile devices. This makes your job postings easily accessible for job seekers from anywhere and anytime.
According to research from iCIMS, 70% of people have searched for jobs via mobile devices and 51% have applied for jobs using their mobile devices. Best practices for mobile-friendly careers page content include short paragraphs, dynamic images and short videos.
In addition to the above tips, make sure you keep your careers page updated regularly. There’s nothing more frustrating to a job candidate than to get an email stating that the job he or she just applied for has already been filled. Finally, don’t forget to share your updated job postings on social media for maximum exposure.