Most mature businesses hire people, and most of them have a 'Careers' page on their website, right? We wanted to test that hypothesis. Our research shows that less than half of mature companies have a content-rich 'Careers' website page.
Before releasing our new workbook How to Write Content for a Careers Website Page, we wanted to do our own little research and see what kind of 'Careers' pages companies had on their business websites.
We analyzed 50 companies that visited our own website (tools such as Albacross let you see which companies your website traffic comes from), and here's what we found.
- 36% of companies had no 'Careers' section on their website
- 18% of companies only had the most basic 'Careers' page (a paragraph of text + email address, sometimes with a short list of open positions)
- 42% of companies had a content-rich 'Careers' page (a so-called one-pager with photos and well-designed content)
- 2% of companies had an entire minisite (homepage + subpages with rich content)
- 2% of companies had an entire top-level domain for recruitment purposes (those were usually huge multinationals).
The tool that we used to identify our website visitors by company name can only 'see' the more advanced companies (in geek speak: it only identifies the companies with their own dedicated IP address). What this means is that the actual percentage of companies without a 'Careers' page or with just the most basic one is probably much, much larger.
Two Major Types of 'Careers' Pages on Company Websites
#1 Basic, Text-Based 'Careers' Pages
18% of companies had a page similar to this one:
Basic 'Careers' website page. Source: chair.ch
Basic 'Careers' pages are most often text-based and usually only list the following information:
- a list of open positions, if there are any
- a means of getting in touch with the company (usually via email or an open application form)
#2 Content-Rich, Well-Designed 'Careers' Pages
Compare a basic info page with content-rich 'Careers' pages such as these:
Example of a one-pager. Source: telusinternational.com
Example of a one-pager. Source: damuth.com
In our research, 46% of companies had content-rich 'Careers' pages. Most were one-pagers (almost all content was presented on one long-scrolling page), and only a very small number of companies had entire minisites (with subpages) or entire domains (such as pgcareers.com, a Careers website of the company Procter & Gamble).
How Can You Use This Information?
You can use this research:
- To understand where you stand with your own website, and
- To assess your potential.
When we were researching the companies visiting our website, we wanted to know the following:
- Who were they?
- What business were they in?
- How many employees do they have?
- Do they hire people?
We did not research the companies in depth, but we've seen that most of them were in business for decades, had a solid presence online, hired larger teams of people, and were mature professionals in their fields.
And yet, 36% of them had no 'Careers' page at all. And another 18% of companies only listed the most basic info about working for their company.
Which is fine. We believe that everyone does the best they can at any given moment.
And it's fine if your company doesn't have a (rich) 'Careers' web page yet.
Let's look at the results of our research again:
The companies with the most potential to improve their websites are marked red.
There's huge potential for improvement for 54% of companies with an underdeveloped 'Careers' page, or with no 'Careers' page at all.
Your Next Steps
If you're currently researching other companies' 'Careers' pages because you're looking to improve your own, our DIY resources will help you skip hours of research and decision-making:
- Learn more in our free article: How to Improve Content and Layout of your Careers Website.
- Download our premium workbook: How to Write Content for a Careers Website Page. In it you will get visual and written examples, inspiration and guidance for writing and laying out content for your 'Careers' page. Dozens and dozens of examples similar to the screenshots in this blog post are included in the workbook.