By Monica Pitts
Job searchers use around 7.6 job sites to find their next position. Short of paying for it you don’t have a ton of control over how online job boards display your listings. But here’s the good news, the next step in the journey of a potential hire is to search for your company to learn more about who you are before applying. The first thing they typically find is your website. And that is something you DO have control over.
What story does your website tell about your company?
Here’s the good news.
The good news is people searching for a career in construction in your area are likely using many of the same search terms to find your website as your potential customers. If your website displays well on Google, they will get to your site. But will it convince them to apply for the job?
Here’s the bad news.
Construction websites are generally built to sell services, not woo potential hires. Job seekers are trying to imagine what it would be like to work for your company and are concerned with how you take care of your employees.
Share the story job seekers are looking for.
1. Put your people front and center in your imagery.
Only 53% of construction sites use people-focused imagery and have people in their pictures.
Stand out by using photos of people and projects. You want to have photos of people working, and make sure they are sporting the proper safety attire. Show pictures of people working from afar, people taking a break and smiling, just people being people.
Don’t use stock photos. You don’t want to be that website. You want real pictures of your people doing their jobs.
2. Provide visitors a clear route to your hiring section.
20% of construction websites don’t have a careers link anywhere in their navigation, and 19% of construction websites nest the link in a drop-down underneath About or in the site footer. It doesn’t make any sense.
Companies tend to get creative about how they display the link to their careers section. Don’t do that. Put it on the top of your site next to your projects and your contact button. If your main goal is hiring people, the careers link should be on your main navigation loud and proud right up where people can find it. Don’t stinking hide it.
Pop it like it’s hot!
If you want to make your careers link pop, then make it a different color than the other buttons on your page. Or, put a box around it and make it look like a button, which is a great trick to make something stand out on your navigation.
3. Dedicate a page for each type of person you hire.
32.7% of construction websites don’t have a careers section at all, and 34.6% have a one page careers section.
People argue with me about this one. They’re like, “No, Monica, we just want to have one page.”
Think about it, though. Do your operators and management have the exact same qualifications? Do they have the exact same concerns?
They usually don’t. They’re very different types of humans motivated by different things. You should speak to them in a way they will listen to you and allow them to evaluate your company through their lens.
4. Showcase your flexibility
45% of millennials will choose workplace flexibility over higher pay.
There are a lot of millennials in the job market and flexibility is important to them. Even though your business may not be suited to let people work from a coffee shop that doesn’t mean you don’t offer flexibility.
Maybe you allow them to leave early when their kids have school programs. Maybe you aren’t building all year round, so they will have time off from their job during certain times of the year. Think about how you are offering and delivering flexibility and share that on your site.
5. Highlight community involvement
42% of construction websites showcase company culture in their career sections, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re talking about their community involvement, some just share their core values. Take it a step further and tell people about volunteering, fundraising, workforce initiatives, safety training and sustainability practices. You do them, don’t sweep them under the rug. These are your opportunities to inform the public and potential hires about your corporate social responsibility.
6. Make it easy to apply online.
It’s a two-way street. It needs to be easy for your applicants, and it needs to be easy for HR.
Your HR department is super important, even if it’s just one person. To keep everybody happy, you need something more sophisticated than a downloadable or fillable PDF.
Accept applications online.
Intaking handwritten applications and forcing your HR department to type them into their software is a hot mess. Instead, make your application into an email form on your website. Or use HR software that allows applicants to fill in the blanks. Then when they submit the form, the submission can go straight to the correct person in HR for processing.
You also need to make it mobile-friendly.
These days, it is more important than ever to have an awesome mobile presence. Mobile traffic increases annually on every website we manage. That’s because not everyone lives in a house with a computer handy. 28% of adults aged 18 to 49 live in a home without a laptop or desktop computer, and 51% of adults aged 18 to 29 live in a home with three or more smartphones.
We bend over backward to accommodate our clients. We at least need to meet our job applicants where they are.
The sooner you can implement these tips, the better your website will be, and the faster you can hire the people you need in your organization.
Monica Pitts is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of MayeCreate Design. She spends her days constructing a marriage of form and function; creating art with her design team to grow businesses through websites and online marketing. Monica considers herself an artist, marketer and web dork with the ability to speak geek and English.
