5 differences between a classic career page and a new generation career site
Why can we call new-generation career sites “smart” career sites?
More and more companies want to offer an application experience to match the talent visiting their career site. From a page that lists job offers, we're moving towards an environment that not only showcases the offers, but also reflects the employer's personality.
Why smart? Because these sites are not static, and use technologies such as matching or chatbots to enhance the candidate's experience as they navigate through the pages. They offer features that help the candidate get to the point without hesitating about what to do, where to click, etc.
There's nothing to stop them finding the right job, making sure they've chosen the right company and, ultimately, applying quickly and easily.
Career page VS career site: a very different candidate experience
The tools used to create and administer classic career pages and full career sites are often different, but the main contrast between these two environments lies in the navigation experience offered to candidates.
Quality of experience has an impact on performance indicators that are extremely important for recruiters, such as the visitor/applicant conversion rate, or the number of completed applications compared to the number of abandoned ones.
Here are the 5 main differences between these two solutions.
A list of job offers VS a guided path to find the ideal job offer
The aim of a classic career page is to list job offers so that candidates can find one (or more) interesting opportunity(ies). Over the years, filter functions and search bars have been added to facilitate the search.
But that's not enough! The digital world, particularly in the e-commerce sector (but not only), has got users used to getting the information they're looking for straight away, without having to spend energy or think about their journey to get it. The key is to allow them to skip to the essential.
A new-generation career site may offer a list of vacancies, but above all it provides access to vacancies that are perfectly adapted to the candidate's profile, who can browse the site by uploading his or her CV or answering a short quiz. Artificial intelligence (matching!) does the rest, saving the candidate a lot of time while delivering relevant results.
To keep in mind:
- Classic career page: a list of offers that may be of interest if the candidate searches carefully
- New-generation career site: a list of offers that really match the candidate's profile, with no effort at all
Our guided search feature is a gamification tool to help people access the perfect offers thanks to a few easy questions! Available on our career website management tool.
Classic job offers VS augmented job offers
The job description pages on classic career pages often don't allow you to layout the description the way you might like. They allow you to add text, skip lines and add a few formats to the text: bold, italics, etc.
But reading a job posting should be much more complete than that. Especially as candidates quickly lose interest in a monotonous read, even if you have great missions and clear benefits for them. Why miss out on some candidates who won't even get to the end of your job description page?
On new-generation career sites, job offers are “augmented”, i.e. your layout possibilities are greatly expanded, allowing you to structure your job offers in such a way as to make them more attractive, even captivating. Don't forget that you need to make people want to apply.
You can do this with:
- Add visually structured reading levels (color-coded bulleted lists, tables, multiple levels of headings, etc.).
- Add images and GIFs
- Add videos
- Etc.
To keep in mind:
- Classic career page: job offers in text format, with few formatting options that make them difficult to read
- New-generation career site: enhanced job offers: modular text, structuring titles, photos, images, GIFs, videos...
A single experience for all candidates VS a personalized experience based on the candidate's profile
On classic career pages, it doesn't matter whether you're a salesperson, buyer, product manager, technician or project manager. You navigate to the same home page, accessing the same offers. There's no specific content to match your profile. The only pages you can customize are the job offers, but that's not enough to show different candidates what you're setting up for their specific profiles.
Such a pity! Today's candidates expect to be understood and to have an experience tailored to them.
The advantage of new-generation career sites? As well as having job pages that are more tailored and customizable, you also have the option of creating other pages to complete them:
- a company presentation page (value, promise, commitments, etc.),
- teams presentation pages (projects, organization, objectives, etc.),
- profession pages explaining how a particular profession is evolving within the company.
- etc.
Job offers can be linked to these pages, and vice versa, so that candidates can navigate in a customized environment and feel welcome. Especially if all they had to do was upload their CV to get the perfect path.
To keep in mind:
- Classic career page: pages focused on job offers that are the same for everyone, regardless of profile
- New-generation career site: job, company and career pages that complement each other to offer content tailored to the profile of each candidate
Readable pages on a computer screen VS pages readable by all, from all screens
Classic career pages have often been designed for computer screens. As a result, navigation is relatively easy on this device. Proportions, layout, block articulation... everything is adapted to one screen format.
Yet how many candidates use their smartphone to look for a job? How many apply directly from that same device? There are a lot of them! And you're missing out on their applications if your career pages don't adapt to their preferences.
New-generation career sites adapt to all screens, from the smallest smartphone to the largest computer screen. Tablets are also included. The different blocks not only adapt to the screen, they also transform; it's not just a size reduction, the design changes and adapts to the screen!
Some new-generation career site tools also offer an accessibility module: adapted text size, color levels, contrasts, backgrounds, fonts... Everything can be modified if the candidate who is browsing is visually deficient. That's the case with CleverConnect's career site manager.
To keep in mind:
- Classic career page: pages accessible mainly on computer screens, with no adapted version for mobile or tablet reading
- New-generation career site: pages and frames that change size and design to adapt to the candidate's device
A page format with no opportunity for evolution VS easily editable and adaptable pages
Classic career pages are often integrated into your corporate site. Even if this isn't the case, they certainly use technologies based on fixed page templates. You've chosen a template, and it's not possible to make it evolve, except through development. This development will undoubtedly cost your technical teams time and/or a substantial budget if you outsource your upgrades.
On classic career pages, if the format no longer suits you, the only solution is a complete redesign.
New-generation career sites offer you the opportunity to modify them easily and free of charge, thanks to a CMS (Content Management System). This space allows you to add/delete/modify :
- spaces on your site - for example, add an entire section dedicated to your commitments
- pages - for example, add a new “career” page because you're opening positions in this sector and it doesn't yet exist on your career site
- modules and functionalities - for example, add a “video” block in 2 clicks to your company presentation page, and replace it with a new one in a couple of years' time
- and even translations - all your pages can be easily duplicated to create versions in other languages
- etc.
And you have 100% control with no restrictions! The tool is so easy to use that you almost don't need any training.
Good to know: to know what is relevant to change in your career site, you need to rely on tangible information. That's why a new-generation career site will always offer a performance tracking area for your pages and features. This way, you'll know which page is performing well, which other page is visited but left immediately, which job offer format triggers the most applications, and so on. Long live constant improvement!
To keep in mind:
- Classic career page: a fixed space, with a page template that cannot be optimized unless you pay for additional development
- New-generation career site: an adaptive space, where you can easily and freely add, modify or delete anything you wish
Checklist: requirements for a high-performance next-generation career site
When you choose to use a new-generation career site rather than traditional career pages, you know you'll be able to:
- Facilitate your candidates' path to matching vacancies
- Offer attractive job pages to encourage applications
- Show who you are as a company and as an employer
- Provide useful features that give your company a positive image
- Enable all candidates, regardless of who they are or what tools they use, to access your content
- Monitor the performance of your pages and suggest corrective measures
- Gain control over your entire career site, turning it into a tool for converting talent into candidates
Before jumping in, why not conduct an audit of your career space today?
👉 Discover our 10 career site audit points to check.
