by Jessica Stielau   5 minute read

Show pictures of real, live people who work at your company. Group photos or individual headshots (or both!)Your company’s website and careers page are the first places prospective employees will look and it’s a major part of what will help you grow your team. Building a hiring brand is a huge commitment but with a strategy and some creativity your ROI on recruiting will increase as people grow their understanding of what working at your company would be like.

Take a second and review your current company website and careers page: If you had zero information, what would your impression of your company be based on the website alone? If you look at your site and can’t determine anything about your company aside from some affiliation with high-fives and the Golden Gate Bridge, it might be time for a face-lift.

We’re going to try to break down a site revamp feature by feature, but here are some general messages you’ll want to convey loud and clear.

1) Where the company is going
2) Who the company is
3) The culture you want to create

These are all Very Big Ideas, but with some creativity you can include them in every part of your site. Here are some tips and tricks that will help you create impactful messaging to future hires:

via GIPHY

Be human
Show pictures of real, live people who work at your company. Group photos or individual headshots (or both!) will convey how awesome you really are. Enough so prospective candidates will want to be in those photos, too. For those who are asking, What if my company is tiny? Well, you can include photos of advisors or anyone else who’s helping you build your company on this page as long as they say it’s okay. You could even do an awesome group photo of your small team. Here’s a personal favorite for some inspiration.

There are lots of ways to update your site quickly with pre-baked CMS themes if your design and web development time is limited.Be a business
Talk about what you’re doing in a friendly and direct way so your prospective employees will have an idea of what they’d contribute to. For those asking, What if we’re in stealth mode? For you, think about what you’d tell a friend-of-a-friend at a party when they ask what you do. Then write that on your website.

Be fun
Show visitors to your site that your team enjoys each other’s company at and outside the office. Write a blog entry about your latest company picnic, link to your company’s social media feed, or share a list of upcoming events.

Keep your open jobs listings up to date
You’ll make better use of your recruiting time by reviewing the applications you’ll need to act on right away. Applicant Tracking Systems also have tools that will let you more easily manage your careers page. If you foresee yourself doing this frequently, we’d recommend Greenhouse, a favorite of ours. Did you just meet your headcount for Front End Engineers? Congrats! Now, remember to take the posting off the site to avoid having to send countless “the position has been filled” emails.

Perks are nice, but projects are better
Your job listings page should have a section that talks about the benefits and perks you offer employees. A quick summary is fine since new hires will likely learn more about your pre-tax commuter benefits program, work from home Fridays and your Kaiser insurance when they receive an offer. Use this section more to talk about how your employees can grow their careers with you. If your focus is engineering, start a blog! If you’re looking to hire more experienced team members, talk about how they’ll have more ownership and less bureaucracy at your startup.

Keep it clean
Your teams and jobs page will show prospective employees and partners your company at its best. Leave the four-letter words and “we have unlimited beer” for your next baseball game company trip.

Design your site knowing you’ll update it regularly
Design = credibility.
Did you last update your website in 2009 with rounded corners and a word cloud? Well, it’s no longer 2009 – minimalist color schemes and responsiveness are now in. There are lots of ways to update your site quickly with pre-baked CMS themes if your design and web development time is limited.

Final thoughts

We realize building and maintaining a careers page is a lot of work and requires periodic design input, maintenance and rebuilding. If you’re looking to scale in the long term this is one solution that will serve you well over time. You can think of it like recruiting and hiring. Once you get a hire do you just sit back and relax? No! You onboard them and make sure they’re successful at your company and you check in with them to make sure they’re growing in their job. Do the same with your website.