hey can promote and sell services while using the same web site to recruit and sell the company brand through a robust company career section.

With the advances of technology, recruiting has changed dramatically. That’s no secret. Employers can quickly reach a worldwide audience through their company web site. They can promote and sell services while using the same web site to recruit and sell the company brand through a robust company career section.

But despite these advances in technology, many small businesses fail to leverage the company web site as a tool to attract and recruit candidates. They also fail at selling the company brand, which can hurt the company when job seekers are considering applying with your company. If your company is not putting the time and resources needed into developing a web site with a career section that sells the company as a great place to work, frustrated job seekers will look to competitors who provide more detailed information and better resources on their web site, as the place they want to work.

“Your corporate career website is the place where you can differentiate your organization from that of your competitors and really sell the company as a place where potential employees may want to work,” says Stephen Harrington, a recruiting consultant who blogs about online recruitment strategies and best practices. “This is your brochure and should work to compliment your efforts in social media and other recruitment strategies.”

Even if a company doesn’t post open jobs on their company web site – something rare with even the smallest of businesses these days –  a career resources section can be the place to provide more information about company mission and values, benefits and perks, employee testimonials, awards, news and information, blogs and access to company social media profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, YouTube).

A stagnant career page/section with dated job postings, dated content, broken links, old news and/or little recent update or content can result in good candidates quickly leaving the career site, moving over to your competitor in the process.

Nick Leigh-Morgan is the managing director and founder of Zodo, the company behind iKrut, a free applicant tracking system. In an article titled The 12 Ways You Can Improve Your Corporate Careers Site, Leigh Morgan says: “It’s am azing how many companies say that ‘people are at the heart of our business.’ Oh really? So how come so few employers bother to really develop their careers site to try to attract absolutely the best person for the job? How many bother to develop it beyond a simple list of current vacancies?”

For understaffed and overworked HR staffs, small businesses with no HR department and business owners, their business is often everything but managing the corporate career section. That’s IT’s responsibility. That’s the web team’s deal. That’s only needed when we have a recruiting push or a big announcement. Whatever the reason this is avoided, they are typically not good ones.

You don’t need a large team of IT professionals or a content marketing team sitting down and planning a complete web site overhaul to brand, sell and promote your company career pages. Using these 10 tips can help your employee career site go to work for you, so people will want to go to work with you:

Create a plan and point person:

 Develop a plan of how you want to use your company career section. Is it to post jobs only? Do you want to add a company career blog, produce video testimonials with current employers, discussing why they working with your company? What type of content do you want? Do you use social media? If so, include the social media links/icons so people can connect with you and follow you even if they don’t have to go to your career pages. That being said, use social media to direct people back to your company web site. What other information do you want? Perhaps sections for college/university candidates and one for experienced candidates? Information on campus recruiting visits or when the company will be at job fairs. What about a message (video) from the company president? Perhaps you want to add information on employee perks.  What about any YouTube videos highlighting the company services and a great place to work. Sit down and plan what is important and find a person who can be a point person for managing the content/development and updates to the site. It will help things get organized and stay on task.

Speaking of social media:

 Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are inexpensive and easy ways to connect with future candidates. They are great places to share company success stories, promote the company brand and sell the business as a place to work. Use these resources to your full advantage. If this is a task that is too big for current staff, consider hiring a social media intern to help assist with this implementation and development.

Find the fight mix of content, visuals, and video:

 A combination of content-driven marketing and career information, videos, blog and graphics – whether photos, images or infographics, can help your site look up-to-date and appeal to a large audience of visitors who all crave content in different ways.