It’s the age-old question we’ve been trying to answer since the beginning of recruitment!? If you look at TA team resources allocation (time, money, etc.) you would be led to believe that it must be our career sites. I can’t think of another thing we do in talent acquisition that takes more of our time and effort, as a single piece, than our career site!

Based on this, candidates must evaluate us on our career site! False.

The Muse did a study where they asked candidates directly to rank the resources they have available to them on they evaluate a company and this is what they said:

The Career Site actually does have real value!

So, it turns out, our career sites are actually valuable, or at least can be if we put the right information on them that candidates are looking for. Actual photos and videos of real workspaces and real employees, not stock content. Videos of employees talking about company culture, not your CEO explaining what they think company culture is. Details of your perks and benefits, not a list of things like: Full Medical Coverage, Paid Time Off, etc. Those aren’t details! Those are titles of details!

Job descriptions that entice someone to want to apply, not fall asleep. I get it! JD’s are legal documents! That doesn’t mean they have to be boring and awful. Make “Job Postings” and put a link to the actual legal job description. Hire marketing, content producers to build your job postings, and let your legal council write your job descriptions. No one gives a shit about your JD, except legal. Everyone cares about your job posting.

Give your employer brand social media feeds to your interns and let them have fun with them. The best-case scenario is they say something wrong and it goes viral and you have to apologize for an intern making a mistake. That’s the BEST case! Candidates don’t care. Your employees don’t care. It’s noise and you’re too damn buttoned up to get anyone to pay attention.

Glassdoor isn’t as important as you think!

Man, did Glassdoor do a job on us for like a decade! We were all running around scared of what someone might say about us! Turns out, candidates don’t care. I mean, they did when it first started, but then the world went sideways and now we all kind of understand Glassdoor is basically a site for corporate terrorists to hang out.

What candidates really want are real testimonials from real employees, not anonymous b.s. from someone hiding behind a platform that we assume got fired and is now hating. Pro tip: get an employee that left, but still loves you, to give you a testimonial! We all have those folks. Mary decided to leave and focus on her family, but if she was going to come back to work, it would be with you. But, also current employees who aren’t completely scripted in their response. It’s okay if they say some real stuff, as long as they also say the good stuff.

I hated to see employers being held hostage by anonymous reviews. I love to see employees fighting back with real, open, and honest content that people believe.