Blogs by tag - Websites · Barclay Jones

4 Mistakes You’re Making with Your Recruitment Website

With Google for Jobs, GDPR and Brexit really “helping” Recruitment leaders focus on a sustainable recruitment business model, your website has become front and centre of your marketing. You need it to make you money and not simply build your brand and clicks.With the launch of the new Barclay Jones website, I’ve been waxing lyrical to clients about my experience of the web development and launch process and I’ve come up with 4 mistakes that every recruitment website may be making.Recruitment Websites Need to Make Money!We regularly help recruiters with the project management of recruitment websites, and digital marketing strategies, so this was a busperson’s holiday for us.During the design phase of the new Barclay Jones web, it was clear to me that focus needed to be given in areas what we take for granted. Recruiters often forget about the journey that the website needs to take the 3Cs on:CandidatesClientConsultantsand Cash!Often, a recruitment marketer is too busy to see beyond the launch of the website – and hence the goal appears to be “launch and wave goodbye”. But any finance/managing director who has freed up marketing budget to buy a new recruitment website wants more money – they want candidates, clients, colleagues and cash (not just an online brochure).How to Build a Recruitment WebsiteThere’s lots of content out there about how to build a website, and many a recruitment marketer will know the pain of launching a new site whilst holding down their normal day job.There are a decent number of recruitment specific website companies – many of them offering really valuable advice… but I discovered few practical tips for recruitment marketers to help them drag surfers through the critical buyer’s journey.Recruitment Website Mistake 1 – Look Dumb!With GDPR, the focus on the 3Csand recruitment leaders wanting to invest more in their recruiters, personality has never been so important. But often I look at a recruitment website, then meet the business leaders and recruiters and it’s night and day! In the board room I see passionate advocates of their niche – online “we are the fastest growing, boring, USPless job board” (sorry – tough love!)Why? Because when recruiters “go online” they dumb down… they “de-niche” and they lose their personality. Confidence disappears and recruitment websites do not “sell”. And the blog just talks about “recruitment”Have a think whilst you read this blog about how you can inject some personality into your recruitment website.Recruitment Website Mistake 2 – Ignoring your 404 PageSo – this is the page you’d rather not have people go to – the page which people get to as they have entered an incorrect page on your site, or you have directed to them to a page which no longer exists. Why is it that some many recruitment websites go “doh!” amend don’t take the opportunity to drive the surfer to somewhere useful?Check out this blog about great 404 pages and then check out Barclay Jones’404 page– we loved creating this one for our very own Barclay Jones 404 error page.If people give a damn enough to come to your site, and then accidentally hit a page which has been deleted / moved, then why are you just saying “computer says no!”? Stick out your hand and guide them to where you want them to go.Recruitment Website Mistake 3 – Having a Pants Search Results ScreenTo be fair I did quite a bit of research on this and there was nothing that I could plagiarise! My instincts are that if people want to find “stuff” on your website, then making the results screen as engaging as possible is crucial. Have a think about how to get them to click on the bits YOU want them to click on to. And if you have any great ideas on this, share them with meRecruitment Website Mistake 4 – Contact Us – Or Rather, Kill the Lead!So you spend a fortune in time, money and emotion on getting people to come to your website. They surf about and bingo!, they want to catch up with you. Then you flick your hair and wander away…? Crazy recruiters!I feel that the Contact Us page is THE most important page on your site. They are coming in to your shop asking for help… Hubspot agrees and has a helpful blog about the best contact us pages.So many contact us pages are uninspiring, “templatey”, prone to getting people to NOT contact you.What can you do with your contact page to engage and CONVERT? It’s not enough that they come to your site and your Google Analytics stats improve. You want them to “buy” from you with a subscription (GDPR alert!) or a job application, or dare we suggest that they want to speak to you… Let’s get recruiters’ phones ringing again!Let’s Make Recruitment Websites Great AgainI couldn’t resist the “Trumpism”. Take a look at your site… figure out which pages you really want people to go to and then ask yourself if they are working hard enough for you… and can you use a little personality in them to drive conversions.Recruitment Takeaways…PersonalityCapitalise on errorsTurn searches into conversionsMake contact easy!Create a recruitment website that attracts and retains clients, candidates and consultants…I train and mentor recruitment marketers to generate the 4Cs: candidates, clients, colleagues and cash.HIIT Us, Recruiters!Our high intensity interval training - Recruitment HIIT - helps recruiters source, convert quicker, and develop healthy pipelines, and recruitment marketers attract, engage, and retain candidates, generate leads, and colleagues (3Cs).TRY RECRUITMENT HIITBOOK A CALL TO DISCUSS MARKETING TRAININGREAD ABOUT OUR MARKETING TRAINING

Mobile Only and the Death of Immobile Recruitment Websites

Are you a recruitment leader or a recruitment marketer who is on board with “mobile”…? But do you have a “mobile-only” plan? Deloitte thinks you should, especially if you hire a specific demographic. Read this 3-minute blog for some recruitment insight tp help you future-proof your recruitment business.Deloitte is predicting that 30-40% of the population will have mobile-only internet by 2022 – hence a deeper reliance on mobile/cell/tablet activities. This number may be even higher in certain countries, so international recruiters need to take note.This prediction means that the activities and buyer’s journeys of these people need to be at the front of recruiters’ minds… If people only use their mobile to interact with the web – what does this mean for recruiting workflows?Recruiters Can Rely on A Low Fibre Diet?With the prediction that your buyers have little need now for fibre networks, it makes them more mobile than ever. (No more letters to candidates asking them to be at the phone box tomorrow at 6pm for their phone interview!)Adverts, website content, surveys, calls to action, email campaigns… all of these need reviewing to take this trend into account… The use of more traditional systems to communicate needs review (eg. email only).What this does mean is that users will be even more beholden to their mobiles so accessing the 3Cs through them will never be easier… IF recruiters “get down” with new and innovative ways of communicating and attracting.Plus what are the typical behaviours of a mobile-only user and how will this potentially disrupt the candidate/client/consultant buyer’s journey? How is your content adapted for mobile users? If we start at awareness, and the content viewed (and ideally interacted with) on mobile is not fit for consumption or interaction, you lost me at “Hello”Mobile, Not Just for Executive Search RecruitersThe stats also tell us that the “mobile-only” theory will level out the playing field, in that this tech trend will not be restricted to the more wealthy. In fact, low-income households are more like to be mobile-only… so again, recruiters who want to attract this level need to plan.Which of you out there hires people on less than £30k? What is your “mobile-only” plan?The same can also be said for mobile-only being more about the younger talent pool, than the older – but you don’t need a Deloitte prediction to tell you that!Recruiters May Need to “Think Small”So – many recruitment marketers have gone a little crazy, colouring-in their websites and online platforms. This can “hurt” your buyers will slow rendering and high HTTP requests.We worked with Volcanic on a number of web audits and found that most recruitment websites suffered from speed issues due to these two elements.Note that mobile-only users are likely to suffer from slower speeds than their wired friends, and so your website needs to be sympathetic to this.Perhaps recruitment marketers need to have a “low bandwidth” version of their sites to compensate for this trend?What’s your plan for “mobile-only” in recruitment?Need more advice on getting your recruitment website up to scratch? Read our Blog on the Four Mistakes You’re Making With Your Recruitment WebsiteI train and mentor recruitment marketers to generate the 4Cs: candidates, clients, colleagues and cash.(Thanks Undercover Recruiter for posting this blog)HIIT Us, Recruiters!Our high intensity interval training - Recruitment HIIT - helps recruiters source, convert quicker, and develop healthy pipelines, and recruitment marketers attract, engage, and retain candidates, generate clients, and colleagues (3Cs).TRY RECRUITMENT HIITBOOK A CALL TO DISCUSS MARKETING TRAININGREAD ABOUT OUR MARKETING TRAINING