8 Tips to Optimize Your Website for Recruiting

You know the old saying “You only have one chance to make a good first impression”? Well, the same can be said about recruiting. Follow these tips to make sure you're making the right impression.

Your website can help or hinder your recruiting process

When applying for a job, your website is often the first glimpse people get into your home care agency.

If they don’t like what they see, or they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll simply move on. So make that first experience a positive one. Use your website as a place to highlight your mission and showcase what your workplace is all about. Anticipate questions. Provide helpful information. Most of all, make it easy to apply.

1. Make Your Site Readable

The first step to improving your recruiting process is to make sure your site is current, easy to read, and interactive. Check that your website is just as simple to navigate from a desktop as it is from a phone.

People have short attention spans. Broken links or slowly loading content will cause people to close out of your site.

Also, be aware of how much scrolling needs to be done to find key information. Make sure graphics are to scale and allow enough white space for better readability.

2. Showcase Key Information

Place the navigation bar at the top of the home page, and make sure it contains a specific tab on careers. This sounds straightforward, but many companies often bury this information at the bottom of their home page.

To ensure user-friendliness, have someone outside of your business take a test drive. They should be able to navigate your site easily for the information they need.

Sometimes, when you spend so much time working on your own website it becomes invisible. An outsider provides more perspective. Make sure your test driver can easily find essential information on your website.

3. Highlight the Career

The careers page must link directly from your home page and should include detailed, current information about job openings and your hiring process.

Even if you’re not hiring at the moment, always leave something up. You never know when you might have an emergency opening.

Next, review the wording of each listing. Steer clear of quirky or unusual job titles. Instead, use titles that candidates actually search for.

In each listing, include the following information:

  • Details on your company’s mission
  • Job requirements
  • Salary
  • Benefits

Most importantly, always include a link to apply directly from the careers page itself. Make sure the link works equally well on a phone. Once more, use your test driver to troubleshoot the application process.

4. Answer the Important Questions

Create a frequently asked questions link on your site’s career page. Put yourself in a job seeker’s shoes. What would potential caregivers want to know before joining your team?  Ask current employees what was most helpful to them during their own job search.

Provide information about the hiring process. How do they apply?  When can they expect to hear from you?  Give information on job training. Let them see how they can grow professionally by becoming a part of your team.

Finally, provide caregiver testimonials. If possible, record the testimonials in the form of a short video. Reading someone’s rave review is one thing. But seeing and hearing the voice behind the words is another.

Vivid testimonials can be a powerful way to encourage applicants.

5. Provide Helpful Information (Helpful to them, not you)

Provide information of interest to potential hires.

Blog about topics that candidates might find useful. For example, outline specific on-the-job training caregivers may receive.

Talk about topics related to personal growth, like great CNA programs near you. Take the time to show people what it’s like to work for your company.

Share employee stories. Link your blog to your social media pages for greater exposure. All this makes for a more personal, more efficient recruiting process.

6. Encourage Applications

Make it easy for people to apply for jobs directly from your site. Outline your company’s hiring process, and give a timeline for when applicants can expect to hear back from you.

Create a thank you page that will immediately pop up after each application is received.

Go a step further and use that page to point applicants to additional resources, like client testimonials or published articles about your company. Continue to sell your business even after they have submitted their application

7. Take It Off-Line: Start a Relationship

When you get a solid lead, it’s time to make a personal connection. Establish a relationship with the applicant and let them know you mean business. Send a text using their name as a follow-up:

“Hello, _____!  Thanks for applying to join our team. We look forward to speaking with you soon about the great opportunities with our company. Our number is _____. Please add us to your contacts, so when we call you know it’s us. Talk to you soon!”

Reaching out with a personalized message is a great way to let candidates know you’re excited about connecting. And, encouraging applicants to add you as a contact increases the chance they’ll answer the phone when you call.

8. Get an Application or Scare them away… your choice!

Your website can either help with recruiting applicants or it can drive them away before they even get started. Optimize your website by making sure it’s user-friendly. Give information that applicants will find helpful.

Be sure to follow up immediately with any questions and respond to all applications. Give your applicants a sense of what it’s like to work with you before they even step in the door for an interview.

Do you need some expert guidance?

Are potential applicants unimpressed and confused by your application process? Are they unable to even find your job openings? Are they abandoning your application part way through and you are assuming those are just not good candidates?

Get some free advice about your recruitment process today from the marketing and recruiting experts at Providentia.

Looking for more articles like this? Check out Recruiting and Retaining Caregivers or Recruiting Ideas for Hiring Caregivers.

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