The competition for jobs has stepped up a gear but does your recruitment website work to attract clients as well as candidates? Wave’s Emily Buckley details 5 ways you can utilise your website to reach, engage and convert employers into clients.
If there’s one constant topic of conversation that’s doing the rounds in the world of recruitment right now, it’s the lack of jobs out there. The rate of new vacancies has been slowing for some time and ongoing high business costs are forcing businesses to ease growth plans. Throw in a General Election and all the unpredictability that comes with it and the market has reacted. It’s tough out there.
Recruitment seems to operate in waves and when the market is job-rich, it’s easy to put less effort into business development. However, BD should be something that you engage in year-round, whatever the state of the market, as there will come a time (like now) that jobs aren’t in such great supply. One area that can act as a 24/7 BD tool is your recruitment website. But does yours work to attract clients or is it heavily focused on candidates? Many recruitment websites naturally focus on candidates – attracting them, engaging them, compelling them to apply for their jobs. Attracting the right candidates is vital but you’ve got to have the right jobs for them to apply for.
We’ve compiled a list of 5 ways that you can attract more clients to your recruitment website whilst continuing to attract candidates.
Design clear pathways for clients to take
The client journey should be distinct from that of the candidate, and that distinction should be made right from the start, on the homepage. Although clients may want to check out your job page to see how easy it is to use and how you market your jobs, they will primarily want to view pages that explain your services and process, your team pages, and any employer-relevant content.
To make it clear where potential clients should be going to find what they need, consider using different colours and images for a visual distinction between the candidate’s user journey and the client’s. Make the buttons that direct potential clients to the right pages big enough so that they are visually clear. Also ensure that there is a link to the client pages from the header so they can access them from whoever they are on the website. Think of all of these visual pathways as signposts, guiding users on the journey you want them to take.
Create employer-focused content
Create content that attracts and engages employers. With good SEO, not only will this help you to reach them via searches, it will demonstrate your expertise in both recruitment and the industry you recruit in. This is where your role as consultant can be highlighted. Through the content you produce, whether that’s written, audio or visual, you can position yourself as an authority in your industry, showing that you understand the market and the needs of businesses in the current climate and beyond. The content could be based on hot industry topics/news, hiring advice (interview technique, candidate priorities, etc.), employer branding, or employee retention.
Sharing your content on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, with links back to your website, will also allow you to further your reach, giving you exposure to potential clients that might not find you in a search or who aren’t ready to make decisions on engaging recruiters yet but could be in the future. Publishing relevant and valuable content establishes your position as an expert in your field, gradually building trust with those who view it.
Publish testimonials and case studies
How do businesses choose which recruitment agency they’re going to trust with their jobs? There are clearly a number of criteria but social proof is hugely compelling and can sometimes be the deciding factor, the push they need to use your services over the competition. Select your best clients and ask them if they would write you a testimonial, or you could put together a case study based on a client challenge that you helped overcome.
Ideally, you’d use the name of the individual giving the testimonial, as well as their role and company name, plus an image if possible. That serves to legitimise the claim, gives you credibility and instils trust in the reader. If you’ve worked with a leading employer in your industry and they agree to give you a testimonial, even better – if someone has an established reputation, what they say tends to carry more weight.
Any positive message from a happy client will boost your credibility but certain content can be particularly effective. If a client is able to produce numbers that helps the testimonial to become solid and quantifiable, e.g. “I have been working with x for x number of years and they always produce high calibre candidates.” Anything that counters negative preconceptions of recruitment businesses or perhaps a bad experience a client may have had in the past is also effective. For example, “I never felt x was spamming me CVs, they always delivered candidates that fit the brief.”
Use client-focused keywords
When approaching the SEO for your website, it’s important to think beyond keywords that will attract candidates and also intersperse keywords to target potential clients. Conduct keyword research by using a research tool such as the free Google Ads Keyword Planner or WordStream to establish the keywords and longtail keywords that potential clients will be typing into search engines when researching recruitment agencies.
Once you have your keywords, use them in headings and subheadings and integrate them organically into your content, including the introduction, concluding paragraph, and meta description. Always avoid keyword stuffing – not only does this ensure content relevancy and readability, Google will penalise content that is clearly overstuffed with keywords.
Beef up your About Us section
This is one of the most visited sections of a recruitment website as both candidates and potential clients want to know who they could be working with and it’s a great way to establish whether your values are aligned. Recruitment is a people-powered business – your biggest asset is your team so sell that here. A Meet the Team section makes you more approachable, instils trust and gives your company an accessible face. It’s a chance to build early relationships as your website is often the first contact you might have with a potential client. Include images and brief bios, plus email and LinkedIn details, so that visitors gain an insight into the individual consultants but also who you are as a company.
The About Us page is also a chance to explain your values, tell your company story, shout about any awards won, hammer home your expertise and experience in your sector, and generally let potential clients get a feel for what you’re all about. Utilising video and images – anything visual – is a great shout as it feels more personal. Words can sometimes be hard to remember, people can be hard to forget.
Ensuring your recruitment website is targeting potential clients as well as candidates is crucial at a time when the market has slowed and jobs aren’t in as plentiful supply as they once were. However, this should be done at all times so that you are constantly striving to develop your business. Your website should attract the 3 Cs – Candidates, Clients and Consultants – in order for your agency to flourish.
Wave aims to create a world where talent is never missed by providing an all-in-one candidate attraction solution through a combination of technology, data and human expertise via WaveTrackR (data-powered candidate sourcing tool, multi-poster, and analytics platform), WaveSites (high-performance recruitment websites) and WaveMedia (strategic recruitment media buying).
The post 5 Ways to Attract More Clients to Your Recruitment Website appeared first on UK Recruiter.
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