Labour market shortages — the defining trend of 2022. And it doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon. In fact, the market is tightening even further. We’ve never had this many vacancies before. To be precise: 163,000 more than in 2020 according to CBS statistics (CBS, 2022).

This means the candidate is in control. So how do you ensure you are found? Certainly not with mediocre campaigns and high budgets that lead to suboptimal landing pages.

You know very well there’s still a lot to gain, but solving this requires time, money, and expertise. You need to coordinate with your web developer to build landing pages, and work with marketers to make everything measurable. In short: too complex, time-consuming, and expensive.

That must and can change. In this article, we’ll walk you through the problem, its importance, and the solution step by step. Ready? TURN YOUR BOOST ON AND GET THAT JOB DONE!

The problem

Simply doubling your website visitors doesn’t always yield the desired results. Of course, visibility across as many relevant channels as possible helps, but a properly working careers/recruitment website should convert more visitors into applicants.

So what is desirable is doubling the number of applications with the same number of visitors. You can achieve this by managing your candidate experience!

Haven’t read our blog on enhancing the candidate journey yet? Read that first!

Why is candidate experience so important?

• A positive candidate experience ensures top candidates are more likely to apply.
• Candidates are 38% more likely to accept an offer after a positive experience.
• 69% of candidates won’t apply again after a negative experience.
• A poor candidate experience harms your reputation — online (Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, Facebook) and offline (word of mouth). Around 70% of
• candidates will talk about a negative experience. That damages your employer brand and drives away top talent.
• A positive experience sets the tone and makes the candidate feel like a valued team member.

(The far-reaching impact of candidate experience, 2017)

The importance is clear, but to create a strong candidate experience, you must understand the journey. What steps does a candidate take, and where can you make a difference?

• Step 1 – The start: The candidate opens a search engine and looks for jobs — by industry or very specific (100%).
• Step 2 – Potential landing pages: The candidate finds jobs on job boards, career sites, and job ads (e.g., Google for Jobs) (85%-51%).
• Step 3 – Push messages: Candidates also say they are reached via social media and land on career sites this way (28%).
• The final destination: The candidate looks up the job or career site to learn more about the vacancy (100%) (Bruul, 2022).
• Search engines 100%
• Job boards 85%
• Career sites 51%
• Social media 28%

This shows that the entire target group ends up on a career site. Whether via Google, job boards, or social media — candidates will check your site. This is where you can truly make a difference.

How do you create a career page that truly stands out? Booston now offers the solution. With Booston, you can easily design a web page linked to one of your job openings. No more standard vacancy pages! Create a complete environment that aligns with your employer brand and candidate journey to persuade candidates. You can follow the steps in this article without Booston as well, though results may vary.

In the next steps, we’ll show you how to create impressive one-page vacancies or career pages. This strengthens your employer brand, improves candidate experience, and helps you attract more applications!

The solution

Step 1: Create a page for your campaign

Imagine you have fantastic IT vacancies, yet not enough candidates are applying. They might opt for well-known players like Coolblue or Capgemini – even though your conditions are excellent.

This is a clear indicator of your candidate experience! But don’t get discouraged – you can fix this easily in the following steps. Your story is already there; now we just need to tell it smartly! It’s crucial to give candidates a clear picture of a company they’d want to be a part of. That’s how you create a compelling candidate experience. Start by creating a page:

1. Open your Booston environment and log in. Go to Content > Pages and click the create button to make a new page.

2. Then, select the languages you wish to publish and click continue. Enter the desired title and click save.

3. To complete this step, check a few more settings. Click the wrench icon and review the Page Titles and Slugs. Also, write a brief Meta Description about the content of the page and then click save. Want to know how to write a good Meta Description? Read our article on Meta Descriptions.

Step 2: Design the page

Now that the page is created, it can be filled with content elements. Keep in mind the journey the candidate is taking. First, make a rough sketch on paper: What should be on the page? What’s appealing about this job? And most importantly, what matters to the candidate?

Examples: three reasons why this job may or may not be the right fit for them? A look at a typical work week? The company culture? Who are the future colleagues? What fun activity did the team recently do, and what was the funniest moment? Maybe a short recruiter video summarizing the vacancy? The possibilities are endless, so get inspired and let your creativity flow!

Click Add new > continue and choose your preferred elements.

Step 3

It’s obviously important that a candidate can easily leave their information. So, be sure to add an application form to the page. But how does the recruiter know which vacancy the application refers to? Booston has a solution: you can now link application forms to specific job postings. That way, all applications end up with the correct vacancy!

Add the “Application form – Direct Application Form” to the page and click the lock icon. You’ll see a dropdown to select the relevant vacancy.

Step 4: Finalizing

Eat, sleep, copy and repeat. Building a complete career site or one-page vacancy can take time. That’s why Booston lets you easily duplicate pages. This allows you to reuse the layout for another discipline, vacancy, or client.

Go to Content > Pages and find the relevant page. Click the copy button, save, and voilà! Now you can easily adjust the text. It really is that simple.

That’s it. JOB DONE.