What is the best recruitment platform?
Choosing a recruitment website platform may not be top of mind when creating a business plan for your recruitment agency. You might already have some ideas about the importance of a strong digital presence. Knowing where to start with a website platform, however, is a different story.
Building a recruitment website isn’t everyone’s area of expertise, but at Access Volcanic we’ve made it ours. If you have concerns about setting up a recruitment website or changing from your current provider, we’ve written a guide to navigate some common questions:
● What features should be a critical part of a recruitment website?
● How will these features affect my choice of website vendor?
● Which recruitment website platform should I select?
Let’s go over the first steps to creating a framework for your website plan.
What features should you include when building a recruitment website platform?
So, what are the best recruitment agency website features and their benefits for users?
A recruitment website does more than just advertise your business; it should be central to your candidate attraction strategy, focus your recruitment marketing efforts, and automate some admin-heavy processes. Setting out your requirements based around these features is the first step to getting the best of what a recruitment agency platform can offer.
With that in mind, here’s our recommended top features to include when building a recruitment website.
Job Board
A job board with open roles that are easy to filter and simple to apply to will help get more applicants in your talent pipeline. This is likely to be a key element of your candidate attraction strategy.
Related features like job alerts or showing open roles on a map can help attract passive candidates. The easier it is for jobseekers to find new opportunities, the more likely your agency i will find a suitable match.
Social Media Sharing
Content doesn’t need to be limited to your own website. With a quick click of a “share” button, consultants can amplify your open roles to wider networks with little effort.
If your agency’s website frequently posts industry-relevant blogs and articles - as it should for recruitment SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), - a social share option makes it easier for anyone to link it and drive traffic to your website.
Candidate Portal
The processes of job search, application, and onboarding can all be simplified through a candidate portal. Rather than logging into multiple systems, a candidate portal acts as a hub for the entire experience.
A self-service profile where candidates can update their own information and apply to roles using auto-populated data will smooth the process of getting to a job offer. A bonus is that it saves your team admin time in sorting applications and documents.
SEO
SEO is critical to draw attention to your website. Search engine optimisation takes time and expertise, so inbuilt best SEO practices in the CMS (Content Management System) that sits behind your website platform will help you boost your website rankings without requiring specialist expertise.
Especially for a small or start-up recruitment agency, being able to optimise posts yourself will eliminate marketing agency costs.
Analytics & Reporting
Evidencing ROI on your ad spend can be a big concern. When your recruitment website tracks what sources are bringing in candidates, and which ones are converting to placements, you’ve uncovered a treasure trove of valuable data.
There are website analytics tools available, like Google Analytics. However, having reporting built into your website platform can get you better aggregated insights without another system to navigate.
CRM/ATS Integration
Some recruitment website platforms will offer an integration with your CRM or ATS. This means, for example, that a candidate can apply to a role on your website and their profile data will automatically be pulled or updated in your ATS or recruitment CRM.
Both candidate and job data can be synchronised between your website and candidate database, which can save in admin time for your team.
Mobile Optimisation
Not every website is designed to be viewed on mobile devices, and those that aren’t will be missing out . One study focussed on the US found that posting mobile-friendly job ads could increase applications by11.6%versus non-optimised ads.
When your agency is competing for talent, differences like this can add up. We recommend taking a mobile-first approach given today’s consumer behaviour as a way to broaden your reach to more potential candidates.
An excellent design that mirrors your brand
When it comes to recruiting top talent, having a website that stands out is crucial. A well-designed website not only attracts potential candidates, but also communicates your company's values and culture. In today's digital age, where candidates are just a click away from your competitors, having the best recruitment agency website design could make all the difference. A strong and engaging website can help you establish trust with candidates, showcase your professionalism, and ultimately attract the right talent to your team. Whether it's a redesign or starting from scratch, investing in a high-quality website is essential for staying competitive attracting candidates and engaging paying clients,
And what does this mean for your choice of recruitment website platform?
Now that you might have a better idea about the features, it’s time to look at choosing a website platform.
Taking a step back and looking at all the options, the choice may appear overwhelming. But some platforms may offer good reporting but no SEO tools, or the features you want but are too technical for your team to work with.
It’s important to find the right balance. When you’re evaluating website platforms, here are some of the basics that they should cover.
Intuitive Tools
Building the site itself may or may not be within your team’s capabilities. There are plenty of recruitment platform providers that include a set-up service to help your site go live.
But what happens after that? Websites will always need updates. We recommend looking for a website platform with an integrated recruitment CMS that allows you to manage your own content. This way, your agency won’t get slowed down by needing to lean on external resource.
Here are a few tips on finding a website platform that you can self-manage:
● Find a website platform with templates that can be easily edited
● Look for a drag-and-drop visual editor so changes are simple
● Add tools or plug-ins – if available – to integrate other features
Integration with your Tech Stack
A modern recruitment agency is likely to use a variety of tech, your CRM/ATS being the main day-today operating system. In addition to saving admin time with data import, an integration means a lower chance of letting key data fall through the gaps.
Some of the tools you might want to integrate with your website are:
● A CRM or ATS to auto-populate candidate and job data
● Job board multi-posters for ease of uploading adverts
● An open API to integrate your website to other tools such as web chat
Customisability
No one website platform will work for the needs of every agency – at least not out-of-the-box. Larger multi-brand agencies may have different requirements depending on workflows, specialisms, geographies and languages, so a website platform with a degree of customisation may be important.
When looking at a website platform, see how they handle:
● Bespoke or recruitment-specific features such as multiple geographies and languages
● Options for templates versus customised design
SEO Tools
To stand out, you’ll need your website to get found. Using SEO to rank highly on search results is going to draw more eyes to your page. If your website platform doesn’t have SEO functionality built-in, it can place you at a significant disadvantage.
A few ways your recruitment website platform might be able to help with SEO are:
● Using monitoring tools to check for SEO updates
● Optimising job posts to get a wider reach
● Compressing images to improve site speed
Evaluating the different options for your new recruitment agency website
Now that we’ve taken a tour of some features and platform requirements, you are hopefully a little closer to being able to make your decision.
There are three main paths forward to establish your recruitment agency website: using a generic website platform, hiring an agency to build a custom website, and using a dedicated platform.
Each of these choices will come with different timelines, budgetary requirements, features and support. And then there’s your own factors to take into account like agency size, growth plans and the technical knowledge your team has.
Here are the pros and cons of each option.
Using a generic website platform
A generic website platform will offer a content management system (CMS) that lets you upload content, usually without needing code.
Some of the advantages of a generic website platform are:
● Ease of getting up to speed with templates
● Communication with other users
● Cost-effective
And then there are the downsides:
● Some generic platforms require more technical skills so you may need to use a web developer
● You may need figure out how to add recruitment-specific features such as an integrated job board
● Higher potential security risk from add-ons and plugins
A generic platform should only be considered if you can dedicate resources to reviewing the site’s ongoing security management to ensure that all aspects and plug-ins are being maintained.
If you’re interested in this path, some popular generic website platforms options are:
● WordPress
● Wix
● Squarespace
● Joomla
● Weebly
Hiring a design agency to build a custom website
Explain that some agencies will provide a service whereby they build a custom CMS with bespoke features that you would like to see in your recruitment website design platform – discuss the advantages and disadvantages (e.g. significant increase in total cost of design).
With this option you’ll get the bespoke features and design that the agency can offer, alleviating you of the technical build.
There are some key benefits to working with a website design agency:
● Frees up your team to focus on other projects while the agency works on the website
● More ability to get the precise features and design you want
● High level of customisation
But there are potential issues to confront:
● Total project cost can be significantly higher and can creep as it will be a one-off project
● Need to pay design agency for future updates and there may be additional costs such as hosting
● Agency may not be experienced in the recruitment industry
Working with a design agency can be good for larger agencies for projects that require bespoke features and have more budget.
There’s an almost endless list of website design agencies out there, and the best choice will depend on your location and requirements.
You might ask them:
● To evidence their portfolio of recruitment websites in your sector
● The website features available based on your budget
● How they will integrate SEO into your website design
● What are you’re the ongoing support options and costs
Adopting a dedicated recruitment website platform
Discuss specialised recruitment website design platform like Volcanic as a third potential option – position this as more of a middle-ground choice, offering features that are created specifically for recruitment agencies (similar to a custom CMS) with the flexibility and customisability of a WordPress site.
Another option is using a specialised recruitment website design platform. This gives you peace of mind when creating your website with expert designers, and then the freedom to maintain the site yourself using a CMS as an integrated part of the platform.
A specialised recruitment website platform will likely include:
● Job board functionality
● CRM/ATS integrations
● SEO tools (including ranking on Google for Jobs)
● Design support to get your website live
There are several specialist recruitment website platforms for you to choose from. At Access Volcanic we power hundreds of recruitment agency websites around the globe and have different options for support and design, depending on what your agency needs.
If you’d like to check out other providers, you can investigate:
● Staffing Future
● Bold Identities
● RecWebs
● Strategies
● Reverse Delta
● Shazamme
Because of the different levels of support and features you can get, we'd suggest a specialised recruitment website platform for agencies of any size, looking for a SaaS solution with costs spread over the duration of the contract to make budgeting easier. The platform should include most features you need, with pre-configured integrations to eliminate development and risk on your side. .
A specialised recruitment website design platform can be a happy medium: giving you the expert design and technical help you’d get from an agency, plus the website hosting and security taken care of but without being too cost- or time-intensive.
To check out what Access Volcanic can offer, have a look at our recruitment website features here.
Next steps
Here's a quick recap of what we’ve covered.
To help choose the best recruitment platform, our recommended website features list includes:
● Job board
● Social media sharing
● Candidate portal
● SEO
● Analytics & reporting
● CRM/ATS integration
● Mobile optimisation
But a list of features isn't the be-all and end-all. We recommend also looking for these recruitment platform requirements:
● Intuitive development tools so your team can handle ongoing site edits independently
● Integration with your tech stack to simplify job posting and applications
● Configuration via modules to avoid a custom website build
● SEO tools to ensure your website ranks highly
These are the three main choices available for a recruitment website :
● Using a generic website provider if you want a fast solution and have the resource to maintain the website security
● Hiring a design agency to build a custom website if you want bespoke features and have a bigger budget
● A specialised recruitment website platform if you want recruitment-specific features and design and the right level of ongoing support for your team with costs budgeted for in a monthly SaaS model.
To explore how Access Volcanic can support your recruitment agency, take a tour of what our platform offers.
You might be interested in:
● An overview of Access Volcanic’s recruitment website services
● How to build a recruitment website: factors to consider
● How to integrate your recruitment website with your CRM and other back-office technologies
● How to create an inclusive candidate experience
