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Blogs

Besides a well-forged website, there is more you can do to strengthen the candidate’s journey. Blogs can help strengthen the candidate journey by enhancing the involvement with your candidates and ultimately improving application success. In this article we are going to tell you exactly how to do it.

With your Booston recruitment website, you have multiple options to strengthen the candidate journey. In this blog, we will be discussing numerous variations that can be implemented with the Booston blog features. Moreover, the Booston blog features do not have to be used as a blog feed. Booston’s blog features are multifunctional and many configurations are possible depending on your wishes/strategy. The most used forms and shapes will be discussed in this blog: blog-, news- and showcase feed.

Why it is so important you ask? Many organizations spend huge funds on advertising their jobs to find good candidates. Unfortunately, many organizations come short when the candidate ends up seeing their recruitment website. The recruitment websites are hard to navigate and boring. Applicants are not being inspired, activated, or persuaded. In brief, it results in dreadful applicant conversion.

“First impressions last”. Everyone knows the saying but does not always understand its importance. Today it is not a warming smile and handshake anymore, the recruitment website is the first impression that will last. This creates the opportunity to inspire, intrigue, motivate, persuade and activate candidates on your recruitment website. You can achieve this by, for example: carrying out the employer brand so candidates get an impression of the work environment and -culture, showcasing the impact of their potential job to motivate candidates, and carrying out the mission, vision, and purpose to activate candidates, informing candidates with the latest news, or by telling about the latest projects to inspire, intrigue and persuade candidates. Possibilities are endless with Booston’s blog features.

Achieving a strong candidate journey by using blogs can be realized with different strategies. For example: informing, inspiring, persuading, or activating your target audience. In this blog, we will not answer which strategy is best for you, but we will show you how you can set up and use the new blog feature. With our new blog features, you can display your blogs where they are relevant and strengthen the candidate journey.

Do you want to know more about Booston’s blog features and how you can apply these features to your Booston recruitment website? Get in touch!


Contents

In this step-by-step article, we will show you which actions to take to enhance your involvement with your candidates and strengthen the candidate journey.

  • Strategy
  • Preparation
  • Set up the blog attributes
  • Manage your blogs
  • Set up a blog- & job page, and features
  • Search Engine Optimization

1. Strategy

We will be discussing various configurations that can contribute to strengthening your candidate journey: blog-, news-, and showcase feed. All strategies have something in common, their function is to: inform, inspire, persuade and activate candidates.

1.1 Blog feed

A blog feed is like a journal of an organization. Blogs are mostly focused on topics that are relevant to a target audience. Not only to strengthen the candidate's journey but also to be more relevant on search engines. Blogs can also be used to carry out the employer brand so candidates can get an impression of the work environment and -culture, or function to discuss particular trends or complications. Blogs can have a big part in activating candidates.

1.2 Newsfeed

As explained earlier, Booston’s blog features can take various forms and shapes. One of them is a newsfeed. With a newsfeed, you make sure your candidates are up-to-date. Your newsfeed needs to be jam-packed with articles that are relevant to particular disciplines.

For example, a couple of years ago there was a shortage of marketing employees. Another discipline where there was a shortage of jobs, was psychology. Students could not find a job suitable for their profile. Big marketing organizations recognized there was a huge opportunity. Because psychology students had learned many skills relevant to marketing. The organizations succeeded to persuade many psychology students to come work for them. They managed to do so by using relevant content about the latest developments and issues in getting a psychology job. This is a good example of how a newsfeed can reach, inform and persuade candidates.

1.3 Showcase feed

Besides all the above, the Booston blog features can also take shape as a showcase feed. A showcase feed is like a shopping window. In brief, a place where things, settings of occasions can be displayed most attractively or favorably.

With a showcase feed, it is possible to display the impact of their potential job to motivate candidates or show your projects. If you want to inspire, intrigue and persuade candidates to apply for the job, showing and telling about your projects is the way to go. Many possibilities exist to showcase your projects and are mostly discipline-dependent. But all possibilities have one thing in common, it should state clearly what differentiates the organization or job in particular.

1. Preparation 

Before you start using the new blog features, it is important to take a good look at your current content and possibilities. There are a few things you need to keep in mind: Which strategies am I going to apply? Which industries or categories can I distinguish? What categories can trigger and activate my target audience? Start by creating a strategy and distinguishing industries or categories. The plan all depends on the industries your jobs fit in, who your target audience is, what intrigues them and how you want to approach them. You can, for example, create overarching industries like marketing and sales or create categories like starting-, experienced-, and senior professionals. It is key to understand that you need to distinguish different target audiences so you can display your blogs to the right audience. Once you have defined your industries or categories, you can start following the steps and enhance your involvement with your candidates.

2. Set up blog attributes 

The first step is setting up blog attributes so you can connect your blogs to these industries or categories. You can easily add attributes with the press of a button. Log on to your Booston account and go to settings > attributes, then select blog attributes. In this menu, you can add your industries or categories and add a photo that fits the industry or category. By adding these attributes you are creating tags that your blogs can be tagged to. It will ensure that certain blogs’ industries or categories can be found easily on your recruitment website.

blog attributen 1


To connect your jobs to your blogs you will use general attributes. These can be found in settings > attributes. Use an attribute that contains all relevant target audiences. If necessary add additional attributes. If you are working with an ATS, you add attributes in your ATS and tag them to a job that is published to import them to the Booston backend.

blog attributes 2

Always make sure to index your attribute accordingly so Google for Jobs gets indexed with accurate and correct information. Go to settings > attributes and select your attributes. Index every attribute with the correct industry.

3. Manage your blogs

Next up, create a blog. If you already have blogs on your Booston recruitment website you can skip to 3.1.

Log on to your Booston account and go to content > blog, then press the create button to create your blog. Select the languages you wish to publish and press continue. At this moment you are ready to edit your blog.

blog management

First things first, page info. Set a relevant title that makes it easy to find on your recruitment website and search engines. Once you have chosen your blog’s title you can edit the main settings. Start by selecting an image, author, category, and keyword if necessary.

After finishing the setup, you can now create your blog in the main content. Once you have finished the main content it is time to publish your blog. To do so, press save. If you wish to publish your blog on a certain date and time, you can schedule the publication. To schedule the publication, press the socket wrench and set in the publication date and time.

3.1

Now your attributes come into play. In a subcategory of the main settings, you will find filters. Here you can select the attributes to connect your blog to jobs, in due course reach your target audience and display your blogs where they are relevant.

4. Set up a blog- & job page, and features

After creating your blog it is important to set up your blog page, job page, and features. Make sure you have completed all the steps above before you start setting up the pages. Without the correct attributes, the features will not work correctly. In addition, pages also must obtain side elements to show relevant blogs.

Imagine having a lot of IT jobs, it would be nice to show relevant IT content to potential candidates, right? By following the steps below, you will be able to show relevant content on your job pages. This can be accomplished by tagging IT jobs to IT content. With these features, you can strengthen the candidate’s journey and improve application success.

Start with setting up your blog page. This is a dynamic page that will generate all your blog pages based on the template that you configure in this step. Go to content > blog and press the settings wrench. Here you can edit your blog page according to your wishes.

An example of a blog page is shown below. The “Blogs list side” is key to showing other relevant blogs. To edit the page element, press the lock. In the menu “Blog presentation type” you can choose to show blogs with matching job filters. This setting only displays blogs with the same attribute tag, tagged to it, which will be shown in the side element. This ensures that relevant blogs are displayed to candidates, improving the candidate’s journey and improving application conversion.

When you have finished your blog page, it is time to set up your job page. Go to recruitment > jobs, press the socket wrench, and select the job page. Also, place the “Blogs list side” in the side element and repeat the settings as explained above.

Are both pages set up correctly? Your blogs will be displayed in places where they are relevant so you can enhance involvement with your candidates, strengthen the candidate journey and ultimately ramp up application conversion.

5. Search Engine Optimization 

Besides showing your blogs on your recruitment website where they are relevant, you also want your blogs to result in more traffic to your recruitment website. You can realize more traffic to your recruitment website by adding relevant titles and meta descriptions to your blogs. Meta descriptions are texts used on search engine platforms to increase the likelihood of getting candidates to click and go to your website, which results in a higher relevance on search engines which will boost traffic to your recruitment website: 

  • Developers Google
"A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. They are like a pitch that convinces the user that the page is exactly what they're looking for" (Developers Google, 2021) 

Do you want to improve your relevance and ultimately your findability? Go to content > blog, select the blog you wish to add the meta description to, and press the socket wrench. Here you will find the search engine optimization options, including the meta description.

Do you want to know more about meta descriptions and how to create a quality meta description? Read this article about meta descriptions.

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