How to Make Your Website a Recruiting Powerhouse

When designing a website, there are many things marketers have to consider: the layout, all necessary pages, easy contact options, etc. One of these important items is how easy it is for a potential client to find their way to the information they’re seeking. But have you ever stopped to think that clients might not be the only ones looking for something on your website?
These days, recruiting and hiring for your firm is no small problem. The job market is volatile, and experienced accountants are hard to come by. It seems like everyone is looking to hire, but they’re all having trouble finding candidates.
You’re Already Doing the Work
Using LinkedIn, Indeed, and Zip Recruiter are all important to landing new employees for your firm, but consider making your site and employment opportunities easier to find. Use your web design expertise to not only target potential clients, but potential employees as well.
The good news about adjusting your site to accommodate job seekers is that you can use a lot of the same methods you’re most likely already implementing. It’s basically adding “employees” as a new audience to target. Things like SEO, user experience, and page design are all essential to drawing in applicants.
They’re Searching For You Too
Let’s start with the all-important and almighty element: Search Engine Optimization. For many firms, getting potential clients on the right pages of their website is first and foremost. Service pages are king, and other pages like job listings tend to take a back seat. But what would happen if you put the same effort into optimizing your career pages?
If you treat your career pages and job listings like your typical service page, you could see heavier traffic and more applicants finding you as their potential employer. You should already be doing SEO for your website, so make sure you don’t neglect your employment opportunity pages. If you can rank alongside sites like Indeed or Monster when people search for specific jobs, your chances of being found go way up.
Make It Easy
Next, let’s talk user experience. You should have your site designed so that no matter what a visitor is looking for, they can easily find it. That extends to job seekers as well. Take some time to make sure your homepage includes obvious directions to the careers or job listings page on your website. Take a look at your website and put yourself in the shoes of someone looking to apply to the firm. If you can’t get to the listings as easily as your service pages, you should make a change.
If you want to take it a step further, you can really make it convenient by having separate directions to career listings and other types of work opportunities like internships. Remember, students are hunting for opportunities as well as professionals. Making it easier for people to find what they’re looking for will improve your chances of finding that new employee or intern.
Make Job Hunting Fun!
Finally, focus more on your page design. Just because you have to have blocks of text describing every position you’re hiring for doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Remember that ALL site pages need to be visually appealing. Try making job posts drop downs instead of just big blocks of descriptions. Break up space between listings with images or even videos.
Be sure to include awards your firm has won, especially workplace excellence and satisfaction awards. Include videos about company culture. Make sure you drill home that people WANT to work there while they’re scrolling through job listings.
It’s a tough market out there for employers right now, and experienced accountants are already hard to come by. Make your life and your potential employees’ lives easier by making your job listings and career pages as easy to find as possible. Treat your career pages like your services pages. Really dig in and boost your SEO, make job posts easy to get to from your homepage, and make sure they’re not a drag to look through. Keep these things in mind and you’re sure to find the next big star for your firm.
About Jake Fugett
Welcome to CPA Growth Trends — your source for information, insights, tools and best practices to drive growth within an accounting firm.
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