In my last blog I talked about making the most from your online presence – which can be cost effective and delivery high yields. As promised this is the first in a series of posts about best practices for recruitment agency websites.
We review and support agencies across the UK of various sizes – some have thousands of jobs on their systems others have tens of jobs. Too frequently small companies with 30 to 100 jobs are sold a complex website offering their users detailed search options such as category, salary, location, hours and keyword search. Great isn’t it? Such a web site gives the user true search power to find what they are lookingfor- umm, in a word - NO!
The problem is the technology supplier is selling what appeals – the features and functionality of the big boys. To most small SME agencies this will look and sound the best thing possible – and in favour of the supplier probably the more expensive option.
The problem is no one is considering the user – the online jobseeker.
The key word that is missed is EXPERIENCE! What is the experience when I come across all these options?
Well I might fill in salary,location and some keywords and click search with a keen eagerness to find my next perfect job. Unfortunately more often than the user is faced with a page saying – “No results found”. This is a very poor experience and will probably end up with the user leaving the agency website for good!
Job seeking is highly pragmatic – the job seeker changes their expectation and ideal job throughout their job-seeking journey. Typically the search widens the longer they are seeking.
The online job search should provide the ability to get to the jobs that may be of interest quicklyand easily. Jobs should be returned when ever possible, there will be no application if no job advert is read.
The search complexity has to reflect the choice provided by the data. This is key to a positive user experience.
So the best practice rule 1:
“Only provide search options that will typically return jobs from the choice of jobs available – if all the jobs are in London then don’t ask the user to choose between London and Edinburgh”
This may seem obvious– but go and have a look at your site and your competitors sites – how hard isit to actually get the search to return jobs? You may be shocked!
Next time post–Browsing not searching and helping Google read your jobs