The digital experience you offer as a recruitment agency can directly influence candidate and client engagement. If your website isn’t up to par, they’ll simply look elsewhere. A user-friendly website really can make all the difference. That’s why prioritising UX web design is paramount for recruitment agencies.
With that in mind, here are 9 essential UX web design tips for recruitment agencies. These have been tailored by the KIJO to ensure your online presence is as effective as possible.
Related Read: Recruitment Website Design: 5 Inspiring Designs That Can Set Your Site Apart
UX means User Experience. In web design, this refers to all aspects of the user’s experience of and interaction with a website.
At KIJO, we purposefully design our websites to be functional, yet meaningful and engaging. These principles apply specifically to recruitment agency website design too.
At the end of 2021, mobile devices generated 54.4% of global website traffic. Candidates will often browse job listings and submit applications via their phones. A mobile-responsive design ensures your website adapts seamlessly to various screen sizes, providing a consistent and user-friendly experience. Test your website across multiple devices to ensure it functions smoothly no matter the screen size.
Related Read: KIJO’s 10 Guidelines for Responsive Website Design
Recruitment websites typically house a wealth of information, from job listings to company profiles and content marketing articles. A clean, intuitive navigation structure is crucial to prevent users from feeling overwhelmed. Implement a clear, hierarchical menu system, and consider using a search bar with advanced filtering options. Group related content logically and use descriptive labels that make it easy for users to find what they need quickly.
Creating specific user journeys for recruitment agencies is key to understanding how to optimise your UX web design. Typically, a recruitment website will be targeting three distinct user personas — clients, candidates, and recruiters looking to join the agency. Having a deep understanding of each group’s goals, pain points and motivations will influence how you develop and enhance your user experience across your website.
For example, these are a few of the general, key things those user personas will likely require for a successful user journey through a recruitment agency website:
For Hiring Clients:
Goal: Find qualified candidates quickly and efficiently.
For Candidates:
Goal: Find job opportunities and get placed in a suitable role.
For Recruiters Looking to Join the Agency:
Goal: Learn about the agency and evaluate it as a potential employer.
Whilst a good start, these examples aren’t specific to your recruitment company. The more specific your user personas are to your recruitment agency’s specialism, the more enhanced your UX can be. Read more about users in our guide:
Read More: How to Create a User Persona
Job seekers come to your website with a clear goal: finding the right job. Make this process as straightforward as possible by offering robust search and filtering tools. Allow users to search by job title keywords, location, industry (or by sector if your agency is already industry specific), and salary range.
Additionally, consider implementing features like saved searches, job alerts, and a simplified application process. The fewer steps involved in finding and applying for a job in your UX web design, the better.
Nowadays patience for slow websites is minimal. In a recent study by Kissmetrics, 40% of users claimed that they’d abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
A slow-loading website can frustrate users and cause them to leave before they’ve even explored your offerings. Optimise your recruitment website’s performance by compressing images, minifying code, and using reliable hosting services. As evident from the Kissmetrics study, you want to aim for a load time of under three seconds. This will keep users engaged and reduce bounce rates.
Related Read: KIJO WordPress Hosting
First impressions matter, and the visual design of your website plays a significant role in how your agency is perceived. Use high-quality images, videos, and a consistent colour scheme that aligns with your brand. However, remember to optimise your images and videos to a size that doesn’t compromise their quality, but also doesn’t slow your website down.
We recently built a website for SearchTech; a recruitment agency who specialise in hiring for and within the infrastructure industries. SearchTech wanted to stand out from the crowd by avoiding the usual tropes found in recruitment agency website design.
One of the ways in which we did this was by opting for black and white retro imagery. This was in line with the agency specialising in a typically traditional work sector that holds a no-nonsense attitude and approach. The images were “old-fashioned” but were married with a uniquely modern, yellow and deep blue design which helps set it apart from its competitors. However, its uniqueness absolutely entices and contributes to a positive user experience. Check out the SearchTech website here.
Read More: The KIJO SearchTech Case Study
To continuously improve your recruitment agency website’s UX, gather feedback from your users. Implement tools like surveys or feedback buttons to capture insights from candidates and clients. Monitor your website analytics to identify pain points, such as high exit rates on certain pages or low conversion rates. Use this data to make informed decisions about design tweaks or feature enhancements, ensuring your website evolves with the needs of its users.
Your website should be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Employers are now prioritising this in their recruitment processes. So, it makes good business sense to show prospective clients that your recruitment agency knows how to do this too.
Follow best practices for web accessibility, such as using alt text for images, ensuring sufficient colour contrast, and enabling keyboard navigation. Additionally, consider implementing screen reader compatibility and providing subtitles for video content. An accessible website not only broadens your audience but also demonstrates your agency’s commitment to inclusivity.
Follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure your website meets the optimum accessibility requirements too.
The digital landscape is constantly evolving. In order to stay competitive, your recruitment agency website should be too. Regularly update your site with fresh content, new job listings, and relevant industry news. Conduct usability testing periodically to identify any issues and assess whether your site still meets user expectations. By staying proactive, you can ensure your website remains a valuable tool in your recruitment strategy. This will also ensure you’re always delivering a high-quality user experience on your website.
The top recruitment agency website designs are making UX a priority. When you prioritise UX, you keep website users on your pages for longer. This, in turn, tells search engines that your website is valuable and worth ranking well. Ultimately though, following these recruitment specific UX design tips will help convert website visitors into candidates and clients.
If you think your recruitment agency’s website design could do with professional guidance regarding its UX, contact the KIJO team today. We’d be happy to help.
