What is a Career Site?

A career site (or career page) is a section of an employer’s website dedicated to job openings and employment-related info. Career sites are where candidates check out job listings, learn about hiring criteria, apply to open positions, join talent communities, sign up for job alerts, and better understand the company’s culture. There’s a lot going on in this piece of digital real estate! 

Choosing the right career site platform is crucial because it’s obviously a lotmore than just job listings; it’s a place to showcase your employer brand, optimize the candidate experience, and ensure seamless integration with existing talent acquisition (TA) tech stack, such as your applicant tracking system (ATS). When done in partnership with the right vendor, your career site will be a fantastic source of free, high-intent applicants and hires! 

Here’s how.

Candidate experience: A well-branded and user-friendly design – think mobile-responsiveness, personalized experiences, and customization – gives candidates the right first impression. This also includes fast loading times and intuitive navigation, all in the name of keeping those bounce rates down and candidate satisfaction up.

SEO: An optimized career site means better visibility in search results, which translates to more organic traffic. The right vendor will make sure your search engine optimization (SEO) is up to the mark and job postings are also picked up by Google for Jobs.

Recruiter efficiency: Robust job listings and search capabilities, integration with your ATS, and streamlined job application processes cut down on mundane work so recruiters can focus on human-centric tasks.

In summary, finding the right career site solution provider means evaluating many different factors. Make sure the solution is aligned with your organization’s goals and values. Done the right way, with the right questions, you’ll be well positioned to find a terrific partner that will help you create a winning career site experience for your applicants!

The Essentials

There’s a lot of great info in this doc, but we recognize it’s also a tad long! So here’s a quick checklist of the must-haves, in case you’re short on time.

About you 

  • Make sure you include a concise profile of our company’s presence, mission, vision, and jobs.
  • Outline the ideal candidate journey, from landing on your career site, to hire.

Goals and objectives

  • Outline your short-term and long-term hiring goals, including job volume projections and annual hiring targets.
  • Samples and inspiration will go a long way in helping potential vendors understand your vision.

Target audience

  • Include detailed descriptions of target audience demographics and qualifications.
  • Share insights on your audience’s online behavior.

Scope of work

  • Requested services and capabilities (job listing management, SEO, high-converting landing pages, etc.).
  • Are you looking for full-service, self-service, or hybrid management? 
  • How robust and easy-to-use is the content management system behind the career site? Will your team have the tech know-how to make content and other updates?

Applicants and talent community

  • Provide an overview of your application process, including length and conversion rates and a link to a sample application.
  • What are your chatbot requirements? 
  • What does your talent community currently look like? Long-term plans? 

Integrations

  • Confirm compatibility and integration capabilities with your existing ATS and other HR tools and systems you’re currently using.

Challenges

  • What are your challenges with your current career site (e.g. high bounce rates, lack of customization)?
  • How satisfied are you with current customer support? Why?

Support needs

  • Ask the solution providers to outline support levels, service hours, and any associated costs. Detail onboarding training availability, as well.

Budget

  • Share a budget range or specific amount, including setup and management costs.

Data and analytics

  • What are your expectations for analytics, reporting frequency, and key performance indicators (KPIs)?

Compliance and privacy

  • Share data privacy (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and infosec (e.g., SOC2) requirements.
  • Request/share data handling and security protocols.
  • What are your web content accessibility guidelines compliance requirements?

Contact info and timelines 

  • Key dates for the RFP process and contact details for responses and questions.
  • Preferred format and method for responses.

While the above is a great starting point, we strongly suggest taking a look-see at the detailed sections below! Now, read on for the whole shebang.

What Do Vendors Need to Know in Your RFP?

In the quest for an ideal partnership and amazing results from your request for proposal (RFP), transparency and clarity are key! This not only helps potential vendors tailor their responses to match your requirements, but also means a more efficient and effective selection process for you.

Below, you’ll find an outline of the info that we suggest including in your RFP, from your company and its career site needs, to organizational background, and specific operational and compliance requirements. By communicating this info clearly, you pave the way for a truly beneficial relationship! 

Company background

  • Provide an overview of your company, including market presence
  • Your company’s mission, vision, and values
  • Share your corporate brand guidelines

Objectives and goals

  • Specify whether your career site initiatives will be managed centrally or decentralized
  • Define what you aim to achieve with your career site, including both short-term and long-term goals
  • Include your monthly and annual job volume projections and the number of candidates you intend to hire in the year
  • Samples and inspiration – what’s best in class for you?

Current approach

  • Describe your current ATS, content management system (CMS), other tech you are using, and required integrations
  • Outline your current KPIs (or success metrics) and performance benchmarks
  • Explain what kind of candidate data is accessible to you and how it is being used
  • If you are using Google Analytics, consider providing access so your prospective partner can start to benchmark performance 

Target audience

  • Provide detailed descriptions of your target audience, including demographics, qualifications, and experience
  • Share any insights (or better, data!) you have about your audience’s online behavior, like previous successful campaigns

Scope of work

  • Outline the services and capabilities you are seeking, such as job listing management, personalized job recommendations, SEO optimization, integration with ATS, social media integration, chatbot, analytics, etc.
  • Indicate whether you require full-service management, a self-service platform, or hybrid 

Application process

  • Provide an overview of your application process, including the length, registration requirements, conversion rates from click to completed application, and any optimizations
  • Include a link to a sample application for vendors to review

Chatbot

  • What’s the purpose of your career site chatbot? 
  • Explain its key functionalities – answering FAQs, guiding users through the job app process, providing personalized job recommendations, etc.
  • Share metrics on the chatbot’s performance, including user engagement, satisfaction levels, etc.
  • Identify any challenges or limitations, and specify what improvements or new capabilities you are looking for.
  • What kind of support and maintenance does your chatbot currently require? How could this be improved?

Talent community

  • What tech stack is your current talent community built on? Are there any integrations?
  • What types of content are available on your current career site (e.g., blogs, videos, webinars, job postings)? 
  • Do you have any features or tools that are particularly important to your community?
  • Identify any challenges or pain points you are experiencing with your current talent community.

Challenges

  • Highlight any challenges you face – for example, difficulty building a talent pool, high bounce rates, lack of customization, misaligned branding, etc.
  • Share info about your satisfaction with customer support or advisory services with your existing vendor

Data and analytics

  • Communicate your expectations regarding analytics and reporting frequency, and specify the KPIs that are important to you

Compliance and privacy

  • Outline any compliance requirements, especially related to data privacy (like GDPR, CCPA) or infosec (like SOC2)
  • Set expectations regarding data handling, storage, and security protocols
  • Be sure to communicate your company’s preferred web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) compliance level requirements 

Budget

  • Provide a range or a specific budget for the career site project, including setup and ongoing management costs, as well as constraints

Timeline

  • Provide a timeline for the RFP process, including submission deadlines, vendor presentations, client reference calls, decision date, and intended project launch date
  • Mention any critical milestones or deadlines within the project scope

Contact information

  • Provide contact details for the person or team managing the RFP process
  • Include information about the preferred format and method for responses

Key Questions to Ask Career Site Solution Providers

Crafting the right questions for your RFP is pivotal – we cannot overstate how important this is! These questions will enable you to get a deep understanding of the capabilities, compatibility, and expertise of potential vendors so you can make sure they align with your specific needs and business objectives. 

This next section is designed to guide you through creating an RFP that covers aspects of career site development. From integrations to content management, personalization to SEO, each question is meant to get you detailed and insightful responses. 

Functionality

  • What core features does your career site solution offer?
  • Can you provide a list of additional functionalities?
  • Describe the job listing and search functionality on your platform:
    • Can candidates easily filter and search for jobs based on various criteria?
    • Will our visitors see personalized and dynamic content and job recommendations?
  • How does your solution integrate with our ATS platform?
  • When it comes to the application process, do you have:
    • an integrated application process? 
    • an application that adheres to our brand guidelines?
    • an application process that can integrate with our ATS?
    • screening enabled on apply processes?
  • How does your career site integrate with different social media platforms?
  • Can candidates easily share job postings, and can we promote our roles on social media?

Conversational AI chatbot

  • What specific functionalities does your chatbot offer for a career site?
  • Is your chatbot AI-native?
  • How does your chatbot integrate with our existing systems, such as ATS and CRM?
  • What kind of customization options are available, including personalization for different user groups and branding to match our company’s style?

Talent community

  • How do you personalize candidate experience within the talent community?
  • Can you segment users based on preferences and send personalized content?
  • What features does your platform offer that will engage and retain members of our talent community?

Application process

  • How user-friendly is the application process on your career site platform, including mobile devices? 
  • What customization options are available for application forms?
  • Do candidates have the ability to apply to multiple jobs simultaneously?
  • How does your application process help us improve candidate quality? E.g. validation, screening, knockout questions, etc.
  • What features do you offer to help reduce application drop off rates?
  • How does your application process integrate with our existing ATS, CRM, and other recruitment systems?
  • Can your platform support multiple languages and accommodate applicants from different regions?
  • Can you provide examples of how other clients have successfully optimized their application processes using your platform?

Customization

  • How customizable is the design and layout of the career site? What kind of customizations can be done without technical know-how and when will we require a developer’s input?
    • Can we make changes to the site without needing a lot of technical know-how?
  • Does your solution include a CMS that allows unlimited updates?
  • Can we add multimedia content like videos, animations, and images? For example, employee testimonial videos?
  • How can we highlight or spotlight select jobs on the site?
  • Can your platform create candidate personas and show relevant content based on these personas?

Site optimization and SEO

  • How do you ensure fast loading times and smooth navigation on your career site?
  • What measures are in place to minimize bounce rates and improve user satisfaction?
  • How do you track and report on website performance metrics?
  • How does your career site solution support SEO? Most importantly, will our jobs be optimized for Google for Jobs?
  • Can job postings be automatically distributed to job boards, social media, and other platforms?
  • What partnerships or integrations do you have with job boards and aggregators?

Additional features

  • Can your platform integrate with video players, for enhanced job postings?
  • Are there any additional features for video integration?
  • Does your solution support iFrame capabilities for external event portals and search functions?
  • Can you integrate with systems for event management?
  • Does your platform include a blog feature that allows multiple users to post and categorize content?
  • How user-friendly is the blog management interface?

Integration and partnerships

  • How well does your career site integrate with our existing TA systems, such as our chatbot, ATS, and CRM?
  • What is the process and timeline for integration?
  • Do you offer API access for custom integrations?
  • How do you handle data exchange between your platform and other systems?
  • If we use different vendors for media buying and creative services, how do you collaborate with these vendors to ensure seamless integration and tracking?

Candidate experience

  • Is your career site solution fully responsive and optimized for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices?
  • How does the mobile experience compare to the desktop version in terms of functionality and ease of use?
  • How user-friendly is your career site for candidates?
    • Can you provide a demo highlighting the candidate experience?
    • How does your platform enhance the candidate experience?
  • Are there features such as job recommendations, application status tracking, and personalized job alerts?

Analytics and reporting

  • What analytics and reporting capabilities does your platform offer?
  • Can we track metrics such as visitor traffic, application conversion rates, and traffic/applications by candidate source?
  • Can we create custom reports to measure specific KPIs?
  • How easy is it to access and interpret the data provided by your platform?
  • Can you measure and report on the candidate journey from the first engagement to hire?
  • How do you integrate media performance tracking with career site analytics?
  • Can you measure the employer branding ROI and impact on the talent funnel?

Compliance

  • Are there features to help with accessibility compliance (ADA, WCAG, etc.)?
  • How do you ensure that your career site complies with legal and regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, CCPA, and EEOC?
  • What measures are in place to protect candidate data and ensure privacy?
  • How do you handle data breaches and security incidents?

Onboarding and support

  • How long will it take to build and deploy a new career site for us, given our requirements? 
  • How transparent is your build process? Will we see previews?
  • What customer support options do you provide (live chat, phone support, dedicated account manager)?
  • What are your response times for different types of support requests?
  • Do you offer onboarding sessions, training programs, or educational resources to help our team understand and use your career site solution?
  • Do you provide dedicated client support and account management to ensure satisfaction and address concerns?
  • How do you project manage career site development, given multiple cross-functional dependencies? 

Pricing and ROI

  • What is your pricing model (subscription, per job posting, usage-based)? And what about additional features or future enhancements?
  • Are there additional costs associated with training and support services?
  • Do you offer a managed services option?
  • Are there any additional fees for setup, customization, or integrations?
  • How do you help us measure the return on investment (ROI) of your career site solution?
  • Can you provide examples of cost savings or improvements in recruitment metrics achieved by other clients?
  • Do you offer quarterly business reviews (QBRs) to report data and insights, provide recommendations, and be a trusted partner?

Conclusion

Your career site is such a vital component of your digital presence, showcasing job openings, company culture, and employment-related info. It is – or should be – more than just a space to list openings; it’s a strategic tool for attracting and engaging candidates. Choosing the right career site vendor is vital – it impacts your recruitment process, candidate experience, SEO visibility, and overall brand image.

A well-designed career site can help take your talent acquisition strategy to the next level. When there is seamless integration, a user-friendly and mobile-responsive interface, and robust personalization (among other items!), you’re sure to WOW your visitors. And, by addressing common challenges like navigation, and lengthy, complex application processes, you can create a truly stunning career site that not only attracts high-intent candidates, but converts more of them to applicants.

As you proceed with your RFP process, remember that the goal is not only to find a vendor with the right technical capabilities but also one that offers you true partnership, transparency, and shared growth. The journey towards selecting a care site development partner should be as much about building a lasting relationship as it is about meeting immediate needs. 

We wish you the best of luck in your search for the perfect career site partner. May your choice lead to successful recruiting campaigns and a fruitful collaboration! And if you have any questions along the way, we’d love to hear from you.

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