We’re able to fly to the moon, use Augmented Reality to feel like we’re walking around in Atlantis but we somehow can’t manage to smoothen the recruitment process for an applicant. Showing the most relevant vacancies to your visitors from the moment they enter your website, is one of the biggest struggles up to today.
In this article, you’ll learn a few smart hacks to make your job hunters convert and that will give you a lot of data you can use to both your advantages.
AI and a dynamic website will become your new best friends
Artificial Intelligence or AI is a computer’s ability to learn things and have human-like intelligence. These computers can be programmed to learn new tasks based on the data they get fed. The more data they receive, the more they will be able to learn and the better they will perform a certain task. AI is the force behind all sorts of new technologies like self-driving cars, translation tools, and search engines to name a few.
Another very important element to improve your online recruitment process is a dynamic website. This is a website that can automatically adapt itself to your visitors based on their online behavior. Data like their location, interests, visitor behavior, etc. will all be pulled from the moment they accept your cookies. The website will act upon all this data and show its most relevant self to them.
They go hand in hand and using them the right way will bring your recruitment process to new levels. You will not only get higher conversion rates but it will give you a major competitive advantage as well.
Smart tools that will make you stand out
1. Recommendation boxes
Nobody likes to waste their time, neither do your website visitors. Immediately show them the jobs they’re looking for instead of letting them browse the endless amount of pages on your website. Adding personalized recommendation boxes on your home page, search page and detail page will make it a lot easier to show jobs that match what they are searching for.
Recommendation boxes are generated with user data captured from your website. Ideally, you’ll only show them vacancies that they would like to apply to. The more you personalize the experience, the better.
If the job your visitor is looking at right now isn’t exactly what he is looking for, another vacancy on your website might be. Your dynamic website will analyze all sorts of criteria like location, contract type, industry, etc and act upon this data to show him other relevant jobs in the recommendation boxes.
These recommendations work just like the ones Netflix and Spotify use to show you the content that best fits your interests. Turn your page into the Netflix of recruitment and get extra applicants in no time.
Implementing this smart tool on your website will increase your online job applications by 29% and will boost the time people spend on your website.
2. Smart banners
The time of static banners is long gone, smart banners are the next big thing. A smart banner is able to adapt itself to your visitors’ interests and search queries. These changes will automatically be made based on browsing behavior and previous data like industries and jobs the applicant is interested in.
Applicants interested in office management jobs will, for instance, get to see a secretary. If the visitor, however, is looking for a job in construction the website will show a construction worker on the banner.
Combining this feature with the recommendation boxes will make it possible to make every visitor feel like the page is tailor-made to their needs. Improving relevancy will result in a higher satisfaction rate and a better online customer experience.
24% of your visitors will click through to critical job segments and you will notice a 12% decrease in bounce rate on your home page.
3. Pop-ups
Pop-ups are often seen as intrusive and annoying little things. The problem is that they are too often being used in a completely irrelevant way or to push customers towards things they’re not looking for at all. Using pop-ups to promote relevant content to your visitors can be of huge advantage and will result in great new opportunities.
The first pop up I’d like to introduce you to is the exit intent pop-up. This tool will reveal itself from the moment it detects your visitor is about to leave the page. It doesn’t shout ‘oh no, please don’t leave’ but will instead show the job hunter a few job openings that match the one he was looking at. By doing so, he gets to see jobs that are relevant to him and he otherwise might not have found.
This pop-up proves itself to be extremely useful to keep visitors from job boards on your website and to recommend other relevant jobs to them.
32% of the visitors that are about to leave the website end up applying for a job with the implementation of this small but extremely useful feature.
One more pop-up that proved itself very useful, is the ‘finish your application’ one. It keeps track of applicants that haven’t finished their application but are still actively browsing the website. The pop-up will asks them if they would like to finish their application and redirects them to the right page to do so. When landing on this page, they won’t have to start over again but will be able to continue right where they left the application earlier.
Reminding your visitors to complete their application will result in a 21% increase in finished applications.
Another case that shows the advantage of using a pop-up is aimed at returning visitors that haven't made an account yet. Showing them a pop-up to remind them they should make an account leads to an increase of 13% in registrations.
As you can see, pop-ups don’t need to be disturbing and can prove themselves to be extremely useful if you know how to use them.
4. Automated messages
A big problem with making an account on a recruitment website is that it takes too long and they very often don’t get completed. This results in recruiters having to make a call to the applicants to ask if they can complete their profile. You can easily automate this time-consuming process with smart email marketing.
A dynamic website keeps track of everything your visitors are doing on your website and knows what kind of data is missing to complete their profile. Implementing automatic messaging will allow you to send your visitors emails like: ‘Your account is 60% completed. Please complete your profile to get one step closer to finding your dream job’.
Sending emails to remind your visitors they need to complete their profile leads to 41% unique opens and 21% unique clicks in the email.
You already know what your visitors are looking for based on their online behavior. When using this data correctly, you can easily tailor your job alerts to it.
The only thing you need from your visitors is their email address. When asking for it, inspiring or convincing pop-ups stating something like ‘Sign up to receive updates about your dream job’ will definitely convince them to leave their email addresses. It makes long registration forms irrelevant and your applicants will take this step more easily. The messages will then be tailored to their needs and the system will be able to recommend relevant jobs.
Sending your subscribers job alerts that are relevant to them, will result in a higher open rate and a 26% click-through rate to the relevant job page on the website.
Automated messages will keep your candidates in the pipeline and keep them engaged.
Things to keep in mind
By personalizing your website and implementing these tricks, you will be more relevant to your visitors than ever. This will not only boost your conversion rates in no time, it will also improve your online customer experience.