You’ve invested in employer branding. You’ve built a great team. You’re promoting jobs across channels. But if your best candidates aren’t applying—or worse, aren’t even engaging—there may be a silent culprit undermining your recruitment efforts: your career site.

One study shows that 40% abandon applications due to poor career site user experience. Sites that are outdated, slow, difficult to navigate, or poorly optimized for mobile cause high-intent candidates to bounce before ever submitting an application.

And here’s the kicker: in most cases, you’ll never know it happened.

Job seekers behave more like discerning consumers than passive applicants. If your site doesn’t deliver a seamless, engaging experience, they’ll simply move on to your competitors. That’s why career site optimization is no longer optional—it’s foundational.

In this post, we’ll explore how your career site might be quietly pushing top candidates away, what signs to look for, and how smart optimization strategies—from SEO to mobile responsiveness to frictionless apply flows—can help you re-engage talent, reduce time-to-hire, and strengthen your employer brand.

How Will I Know If My Career Site Is the Problem?

If you’re asking yourself, “Is it my job descriptions? My media strategy? Or is something broken in the experience?”—you’re not alone. The truth is your career site could be creating friction in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Here are four key red flags that signal it’s time to take a closer look:

1. High Traffic, Low Applications? That’s a Conversion Problem.

If candidates are visiting your site but not applying, it’s often a sign that something’s off. Whether it’s a confusing layout, hard-to-find job listings, or a tedious application process, usability issues quietly tank conversion rates. Great candidates don’t have the time—or patience—to struggle through a clunky experience. They’ll simply move on.

Pro tip: Compare your site traffic to your completed applications. A large gap = friction somewhere in the process.

2. Poor Mobile Experience = Lost Candidates

The Appcast 2023 Benchmark Report shows that over 60% of job seekers now apply via mobile devices, and that number keeps growing. If your site isn’t optimized for smartphones—meaning fast load times, touch-friendly buttons, and easy job search—you’re losing qualified talent the second they hit your homepage.

Not sure how your site performs? Pull up your careers page on your phone and try applying to a job in under a minute. If it feels frustrating, it is—especially for the talent you want most.

3. Slow Load Times or Clunky Navigation Are Deal-Breakers

Candidates expect modern, responsive websites. If your pages take too long to load, or if the path to job listings is buried under unnecessary clicks, they’ll leave before engaging. Remember, every second counts—pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load can lose up to 40% of users (Google Web.dev Report, 2022).

Clean navigation, logical job categories, and clear calls to action are non-negotiables for today’s digital-native job seekers.

4. You’re Not Showing Up on Google for Jobs

73% of job seekers start their job search on Google (CareerArc Future of Recruiting Study). If your jobs aren’t appearing on Google for Jobs, Indeed, or other aggregators, you’re missing massive exposure. Many career sites aren’t structured to be crawlable or indexed properly—especially older platforms or sites not using structured data.

Optimizing your job listings with SEO best practices and schema markup is essential for discoverability. If you’re invisible in search, you’re invisible to passive and active talent alike.

Bottom line: If any of these issues sound familiar, your site may be working against you more than you think. But the good news? Every one of these problems is fixable—and the payoff can be huge.

Ready to Fix It? Here’s How to Start Optimizing Your Career Site

Now that you know the signs your career site may be underperforming, the next step is action. The good news? You may not need a full rebuild to start seeing results. With the right approach—and the right tools—you can turn your site from a silent dealbreaker into a top-performing recruitment engine.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Audit Your Current Site

Before making changes, assess where you are now. A simple audit can uncover the hidden barriers that are costing you talent. Here’s a quick Career Site Self-Audit Checklist:

• Page Load Speed – Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check load times.
• Mobile Experience – Open your site on a smartphone and apply to a job. Was it intuitive?
• Application Funnel – Track drop-off points. Where are candidates abandoning the process?
• SEO Visibility – Google some of your job titles. Are your listings showing in Google for Jobs?
• Navigation and UX – Is your search bar easy to find? Can candidates filter by location or role?

2. Measure and Improve

Optimization isn’t a one-and-done project. To get lasting results, you need to track performance and refine regularly.

Metrics to monitor:

• Traffic-to-apply conversion rate
• Mobile vs. desktop engagement
• Top exit pages and drop-off points
• Which jobs are getting the most search visibility

Use tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar to get actionable insights.

3. Invest in Recruitment Software That Enhances the Candidate Experience

Once you know what needs improvement, it’s time to equip your team with tools that can solve real UX and visibility challenges. If you don’t have web developers at hand to make updates to your current site, consider a platform like HireControl that uses data from your existing ATS and acts as a front-end experience layer, offering:

• Persona-led candidate journeys tailored to job seekers’ personas, backgrounds and intent.
• Optimize data from your ATS to ensure exposure on search engines and job boards
• Custom-branding that match your employer brand—not your ATS’s default template.
• Dynamic on-demand landing pages for campaigns and events.
• 10-second easy apply that minimize friction while maximizing conversion.

Why it matters: Tools like HireControl don’t just make your site prettier—they make it perform better. The result? Higher engagement, lower bounce rates, and a pipeline full of right-fit candidates.

Final Tip: Start Small, Improve Fast

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Prioritize quick wins—like simplifying your apply process or making your job listings indexable on search engines—and build momentum from there.

Late millennials, those born between 1985 and 1995, grew up before smartphones but came of age with social media. They know what the workplace was and what it’s becoming. That blend of perspective and digital fluency makes them unlike any other generation in today’s workforce and an important one for hiring organizations to understand.

Late millennials are at a point in their career where they know what they want, and they’re willing to walk away if it’s not there. The question is whether your employee value proposition delivers on what matters most to them.

A Demand for Purpose and Authenticity

Late millennials want to work for organizations that genuinely stand for something. They look for alignment between their own values and those of their employer. However, don’t assume your messaging is landing. Test it with millennial colleagues. They’ll know if it feels authentic or performative, and when it’s real, they’ll help you amplify it.

Champions of Continuous Growth

Gallup reports that 87% of millennials consider career development a top factor in choosing a job. That drive to learn and adapt keeps them sharp. If you want to attract and retain this group, you need to show how your roles create real opportunities for growth.

Reframing “Entitlement” as Ambition

Speaking of a desire for professional growth, the ambition and drive of late millennials can sometimes be misinterpreted as entitlement. But organizations that fuel innovation and long-term organizational growth can see and openly embrace the difference.

Balancing Flexibility with Structure

Autonomy matters to late millennials, but so does clarity. They want flexibility, especially around where and how they work, but they don’t want to operate in the dark. Nearly half prefer fully remote roles, according to recent workforce data. The organizations that win their loyalty strike the right balance by providing both freedom and clear expectations.

Late millennials are experienced enough to bring perspective and ambition, yet agile enough to thrive in a digital-first, purpose-driven workplace. If your roles deliver on purpose, growth, flexibility and opportunity, they’ll see your organization as a place worth building their next chapter.

We’ve all been living in the world of SEO for years. But there’s a new kid in town thanks to AI: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and it’s on track to replace traditional SEO by 2028. Truth be told, that shift is already happening. Candidates aren’t just Googling job titles to find opportunities. They’re asking AI to tell them who to work for. 

When talent asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini about your company’s culture, or for career opportunities they are seeking with organizations that share their core values, what answer will it give? 

Your career site is the hub of your employer brand. It’s where your story can come to life. Unless that story is structured and optimized in ways that AI engines can understand and surface it, you risk being invisible in the very places candidates are already turning to, and inevitably will in the future, when they search. 

Here are some practical tips to consider: 

Optimize for “Who” Not Just “What” 

Traditional SEO strategy emphasized “what” people searched (software engineer jobs, nurse jobs near me). GEO is about the “who.” Who’s a great employer for data scientists that makes sustainability a business priority? Who actively supports veterans transitioning from the military? So make sure your site answers the “why work for us” questions to your ideal talent personas. 

Make Storytelling Your Strategy 

A list of employer perks isn’t usually all that memorable. But a nurse describing why he stays, or an engineer explaining the impact of her work? That’s not just the content job seekers crave. It’s the type of content that AI engines are more likely to pull into summaries. Build stories in testimonials, videos, and day-in-the-life spotlights and strategically place them across blogs, job descriptions, and campaign landing pages for the most impact. 

Structure Content for Machines and Humans 

Your site has to serve two audiences and that’s people and algorithms. Clear headers, logical site navigation, and schema markup (for jobs, events, and FAQs) help AI engines, including Google which is now serving up AI overviews, parse your information. Pair that with conversational copy that humans can actually connect with and you’ve got a great combo.

Audit with AI in Mind 

Run your site through an AI search yourself as if you were a job seeker. Ask ChatGPT: “What is it like to work at [your company]?” Then see what comes back. If the answers don’t reflect your true story, you’ve started to uncover gaps to fill on your career site. 

By 2028, GEO may fully overtake SEO, but every day between now and then, more candidates are increasingly going to use AI to help find the right job for them. As they say, the future is now and there’s no better time than the present to make sure your career site is optimized. 

Is your career site feeling more “meh” than magnetic? If it’s outdated, clunky to manage, or doesn’t reflect the story you’re trying to tell, you’re not alone. Many TA and employer brand leaders know that their career site isn’t where it needs to be, but getting budget approval can feel like climbing Mount Everest. 

Here’s some good news. You don’t need a 50-page business case to get the conversation started. You do however need a few clear, compelling reasons to share with the people who hold the purse strings. 

Attract the Right Talent, Faster  

Your career site is often the first impression candidates have of your company. If it’s hard to navigate, generic, or contains uninspiring job postings, you’re losing people before they even hit apply. A refreshed and content-rich site that brings your employer brand to life not only pulls in more talent, it improves conversions with the right talent for your organization. 

The numbers back it up. LinkedIn research has shown that companies with strong employer brands see 50% more qualified candidates and reduce cost per hire by as much as 50%. That’s tangible ROI. And with 78% of job seekers saying the candidate experience shows how much an employer values its people, a career site that’s easy to explore, visually engaging, and authentic to your culture is not a nice-to-have. It’s essential. 

Eliminate Bottlenecks and Keep Momentum 

We’ve all been there. You need to publish a campaign landing page, update messaging for a hiring event, or refresh content for a key role that’s really, really hard to fill ASAP. Instead, you’re waiting days for a ticket to be addressed to push the changes you need now through.  

A recruitment marketer-friendly career site platform eliminates that lag. It has the ability to build pages, test content, and personalize the experience for different audiences without a developer. That agility translates directly into recruiting outcomes. A modern, flexible career site lets you meet talent in the moment, not after the opportunity has slipped away. 

Show Leaders the Proof They’re Asking For 

Budget holders (and your hiring managers) care about impact. A modern career site is built to measure and prove its effectiveness. When leadership asks, “Is this working?” you can show them dashboards with metrics that matter, not just clicks. 

Right now, only 41% of organizations say they can measure employer brand ROI. That means most teams are flying a bit blind and struggling to defend budget. Sound familiar? Instead, turn your career site into a measurable, data-driven function, not just a cost center, because that’s the kind of story you want to tell and what decision-makers want to hear. 

Closing Thoughts 

In the end, making the case for a career site overhaul requires showing value. A stronger site attracts and converts the people you want to hire, eliminates inefficiencies that slow you down, and equips you to prove ROI with real numbers, not vanity metrics. 

So next time you’re teeing up the budget conversation, start with: “Let’s talk about giving our career site the upgrade our organization deserves because right now it’s costing us talent, time, and money.” And use these talking points to help make the case. 

Insights from: Built to Attract
The Evolution of Hiring: Moving from Recruitment to Attraction
Kindle edition, paperback and hardcover are available now at Amazon.com.

Employer branding and recruitment marketing are often positioned as the secret weapon in talent acquisition—but too often, they are built on a shaky foundation of flawed assumptions. In Chapter 9 of Built to Attract, I call out a few of the most dangerous fallacies that hold back recruiters, HR teams and even marketing departments from attracting the right talent.

What are some fallacies you should be on the lookout for?

The “We Can Just Repurpose Our Consumer Marketing” Fallacy

“We’ve got a great brand campaign—let’s just adapt it for recruiting!” Wrong. While your consumer brand may sell cars, software or medical services, recruitment is about selling purpose, belonging and identity. Candidates need to see how they will fit in—not how you sell. “Building to attract” means being open to completely rethinking your messaging strategy for talent.

The “Employer Brand Is HR’s Job Alone” Fallacy

Too many organizations treat employer branding like a side hustle for HR. In reality, it’s a cross-functional effort. Recruitment marketing sits at the intersection of communications, brand, operations and talent strategy. Successful collaboration requires respecting and embracing the value associated with shared ownership across teams—and knowing how to structure that collaboration.

The “If We Post It, They Will Come” Fallacy

Job boards. Social ads. Landing pages. All are sometimes necessary but also insufficient. Talent attraction doesn’t work like the movie Field of Dreams. The importance of a well-crafted messaging strategy rooted in authentic differentiators cannot be underestimated. After all, if you’re not focused on attracting—you’re just broadcasting. Organizations need to move away from random (or reactionary) acts of marketing and toward a cohesive candidate journey.

The “We Can’t Market What We Can’t Fix” Fallacy

Here’s the truth: Every organization has flaws. Don’t let internal imperfection paralyze your external storytelling. Almost daily, I help organizations understand the importance of being honest about the work-in-progress nature of their culture. This approach builds more trust than a polished employer brand ever could. Vulnerability, framed strategically, is a strength.

The “We Have to Say What Everyone Else Says” Fallacy

Phrases and words like “part of a family,” “innovative” and “collaborative” are so overused, they’ve become white noise. If you’re serious about “building to attract” you’ll accept—eagerly—the challenge to break away from industry cliches and define what’s unique about working within your organization.

As the competition for talent heats up again (and it’s going to heat up!), defaulting to outdated recruitment marketing tactics is a recipe for irrelevance. Whether you’re hiring nurses, engineers or retail managers, your message needs to do more than inform—it needs to attract. 

If you’re ready to rewrite the way your organization attracts candidates, I hope you’ll look to Built to Attract as your field guide.

Let’s set the stage for a story that is becoming increasingly more common in recruiting.

You’re a talent acquisition leader who has invested in crafting and refining a compelling employer brand. You’ve carefully articulated an employee value proposition (EVP) that is crystal clear at every candidate touchpoint. Your current team members boast about your innovative work environment, team-based culture and their high employee satisfaction on social media.

At this point, you’ve got a great pool of talent, but you just don’t have the bandwidth to handle the volume. So, you decide to streamline hiring by introducing agentic AI—an advanced form of artificial intelligence capable of acting autonomously to complete complex tasks without human intervention. You do your research and find a promising solution. With a little tinkering to the programming, you’re sure that it can be an engaging and friendly first touchpoint for candidate outreach and screening.

In theory, everything seems great. Even the first candidate who uses it is initially impressed—not just by the speed of the company’s response, but also by the ingenious use of AI. They may even think, “Wow, this company is ahead of the curve. This kind of efficiency must make it an incredible place to work. This is exactly what I would expect from a place known for innovation.”

But then things take a turn

The agentic AI solution starts getting into more in-depth interview questions than the candidate was prepared for in an automated screening. Instead of expected questions like “Do you have eight years of experience?” or “When would you be available for a call with a recruiter?”, the candidate is asked something far more complex, like “Tell me about a time you worked with a cross-functional team to solve a challenging problem.” The candidate pauses to collect their thoughts—but before they can respond fully, the bot chirps, “Got it! Great answer!” and moves on. The moment is gone. The candidate is left wondering, “Did it even register what I said? Who will review my response? Did I just blow my chance at this job?

This scenario isn’t just a hypothetical; it’s playing out right now in the marketplace. And frustrated job seekers are sharing real experiences like this on LinkedIn and Reddit. Hilke Schellmann, the author of The Algorithm, recently walked through a similar case that is worth a watch, highlighting how AI can create unintended roadblocks for candidates. And while candidates are tacitly receptive to the speed and efficiencies AI offers, they are leery about AI playing the role of human agent, or worst yet, a gatekeeper to their employment.

The Future of AI in Recruitment

We know that Agentic AI is projected to reshape HR and recruitment with the market expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Data from the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) suggests that 92% of HR leaders are planning to ramp up their AI usage. Additional projections indicate that 80% of Forbes’ Global 2000 are expected to expand the use of AI for training, onboarding and hiring by the end of 2025. The potential benefits in efficiency, data-driven decision-making and scalability are immense. But the risks of a poorly implemented AI strategy are equally concerning.

Striking the Right Balance

This is where an organization’s employer brand comes into play. AI can be used to reinforce components of an employer brand (particularly innovation), but if it fails at capturing the human essence of your brand, it can erode trust and engagement—two critical factors in attracting and retaining top talent. Companies that rely too heavily on AI-driven recruiting tasks without considering the candidate experience may unknowingly create a cold, transactional hiring process that contradicts their EVP.

The Takeaway

AI is not inherently good or bad for an employer brand—it all depends on how it’s used. If AI is your first touchpoint with candidates, ensure it reflects your EVP and balances efficiency with human connection. Otherwise, the very technology designed to help may end up harming your reputation in ways you never anticipated.

Candidates expect more than a one-size-fits-all experience that doesn’t reflect their unique needs and motivations during the hiring process. And if they do get what feels like a generic candidate journey, they just might move on. This can be especially true for top talent who know their worth. Persona-led candidate journeys can play an essential part in helping your organization stand out and help build stronger connections with the people you hope to hire.

What Are Persona-Led Candidate Journeys?

A persona-led candidate journey is a strategic approach to recruitment that moves beyond demographics and a job description to tap into what truly drives candidates for a specific role or job type—their motivations, challenges and career aspirations.

The power of persona-led journeys lies in their ability to reinforce your employee value proposition (EVP) to ensure that every touchpoint—whether a job description, career site, social media content or recruiter conversation—feels personal, relevant and compelling to the right candidate.

Key Benefits of Persona-Led Candidate Journeys

1. Personalized Candidate Experience: Customizing content, job recommendations and messaging according to a candidate’s persona enriches the recruitment experience, making it more relevant and engaging to convert the candidate into your pipeline.
2. Increased Candidate Engagement: By presenting information and opportunities that align with a candidate’s career aspirations and stage in the hiring funnel, persona-led journeys foster deeper engagement with your organization.
3. Improved Job Matches: Personalized job recommendations ensure that candidates encounter roles that more closely match their skills, experience and career goals for a more positive—and less frustrating— candidate experience.
4. Strengthened Employer Brand: A recruitment process that acknowledges and addresses the individual needs of candidates strengthens the employer brand, showcasing the company as one that values and understands its applicants.

How to Craft Candidate Personas

Collect Insights and Information: Start the process by gathering data. This step involves delving into the backgrounds of past successful hires, engaging with current employees through surveys or interviews, and keeping an eye on prevailing industry trends. Aim to collect diverse details, such as demographic information, job preferences, motivations and aspirations related to their careers.

Create Segments: Organize your potential candidates into clear segments that share common attributes. These segments will serve as the groundwork for developing your candidate personas. Typical segments might encompass categories, such as recent college graduates, or be role-based, like a nurse specializing in critical care.

Highlight Challenges: Pinpoint the specific challenges and obstacles faced by candidates within each segment as they navigate their job search or seek career progression. These challenges could range from achieving a satisfactory work-life balance to meeting salary expectations to finding opportunities for career advancement.

Understand Aspirations and Drivers: Get to the heart of what propels candidates forward in each segment. Is it the pursuit of a rewarding career, the desire for swift professional growth, or the search for an employer whose values resonate with their own? Clarify their underlying motivations and objectives.

Build Rich Personas: Using the insights from your research and segmentation, construct comprehensive candidate personas. Assign each persona a name and a visual identity to bring them to life. Flesh out each persona with critical details, including their job title, educational background, career ambitions, key challenges, where they go for news and entertainment, and what motivates them. This step transforms abstract data into tangible, relatable profiles that can guide your recruitment strategy.

Implementing Persona-Led Candidate Journeys on Your Career Website

Implementing persona-led candidate journeys on your career site involves identifying key candidate personas, mapping out their typical journey from job discovery to application to conversion into a talent community, and pinpointing where personalization can have the most impact. Think about:

• Improving ways to streamline navigation by creating easy pathways by persona.
• Removing friction by tailoring the apply process to different experience levels and job types. Develop and deliver content that caters to each persona’s needs, whether through personalized job recommendations, company insights, testimonials or storytelling,
• Adding rich content to job postings, such as a day in the life video, and authentic job expectations to encourage self-selection from candidates who might not be the right fit.

Utilizing analytics to track interactions across the journey will help you continuously optimize your persona-led journeys too.

The ROI of Persona-Led Candidate Journeys

In a recent Candidate Experience Report by Career Plug, 36% of job seekers said they have declined an offer because of a negative experience while 66% of candidates said that a positive experience influenced their decision to accept an offer. Adopting persona-led journeys yields significant improvements in recruitment outcomes, including higher application completion rates, improved candidate quality, reduced time-to-hire and stronger employer branding.

As an employer brander, you’re sold on storytelling. You know deep down in your heart that the people you want to hire aren’t going to be satisfied by reading a list of your company’s values on the career site. They want to see them in action. What does growth look like? How do coworkers collaborate and celebrate successes? What’s the reality of a day in the life for someone in the same role?  

When these questions are answered by your people, the effect is powerful not only for attracting and engaging new talent but also for inspiring pride and advocacy in employees. And with every story, your EVP, personas and messaging framework collectively serve as your strategy’s north star — guiding your approach to storytelling in ways that will connect with the right audience, stir emotion and leave a lasting impression.

Budget, resources and time can challenge even the most “sold” employer brand leader to get a working plan off their vision board. How to begin can seem daunting, but when mapped across the entire talent lifecycle, the incredible possibilities of such stories are endless, too. So, let’s think about a realistic and very doable plan in the forever classic crawl, walk, run approach.

Crawl: Start with the Basics

Oh, where to begin? A great way to start is by developing content in the form of an employee Q&A blog series. Create a standard set of persona-led questionnaires to make the process scalable, easier to produce and focused on connecting with your target audiences internally and externally. Think of the resulting blogs as storytelling snapshots with bite-sized insights perfectly tailored to specific talent groups. For example, if your target persona is a group known to be ambitious problem-solvers, include a question that invites them to share a memorable challenge they successfully tackled or learned a ton from.

Add some at-work or at-play photos to the mix (bonus points if they’re candid) and you’ve got yourself the start of some very clickable and sharable content. Across relevant career site pages, job descriptions, social posts, nurture campaigns and even your company’s intranet or newsletter, a blog series can be the gift that keeps on giving when integrated into a wide variety of activations.

Walk: Take It up a Notch

Next, consider stepping it up to UGC (user-generated content) videos. Get employees and leadership excited and comfortable with the idea. Frame the exercise as a way to share authentic stories about being part of the team because an employee’s point of view is the ultimate job description. Provide clear guidelines and a prompt for each video request, such as “What’s your favorite thing about working here?” Even better, share an example or two of great UGC videos to inspire employees. While you can also offer optional training or tools to help with audio and video quality, like phone stands or ring lights, the camera on their phone or laptop is likely all that they’ll need. We really want to keep these real.

YouTube UGC videos versus brand-produced videos receive 10 times more views. As a dynamic element to your many talent touchpoints, imagine the impact on generating very meaningful engagement and quality conversions. And don’t forget to acknowledge and celebrate the employees who participate. Shining a spotlight on their stories company-wide helps build trust and jump-starts advocacy.

Run: Invest in Production

Moving right along, give serious consideration to investing in a professionally produced video series. Now, don’t worry. “Produced” doesn’t mean polished to the point of perfection. Authenticity still reigns supreme, but a little cinematic flair can go a very long way. Produced videos can creatively highlight key stories, showcase leadership or bring your EVP to life in a way that’s consistent with the look and feel of your employer brand that adds yet another level of credibility. Plus, the footage, including the bloopers, can be cut and recut into all sorts of applications to motivate and retain top talent.

The ROI of Storytelling

Investing in storytelling isn’t just a feel-good exercise; it’s also a business decision. According to LinkedIn, candidates are 3x more likely to trust a company’s employees over the company itself. By sharing real employee stories, you’re building trust, shaping perceptions, engaging candidates and fostering a sense of belonging before a candidate hits the “apply now” button or a new hire fires up their brand-new laptop on day one.

When tenured employees see their stories valued and shared, it deepens their connection to your organization. They can become your most authentic ambassadors, amplifying your brand to their networks and expanding your organic reach exponentially all by genuinely wanting to share this type of content.

So, whether you’re crawling, walking or running, the key is to start somewhere and make authentic storytelling an ongoing and highly rewarding journey.

In this time of economic uncertainty and job insecurity, power has swung back from the job seeker to the employer in the hiring process. Combine this with possible lingering resentment from employers being “ghosted” by candidates and the job hopping of the last few years, hiring companies may be less invested in the candidate experience. Eight in ten hiring managers admit to “ghosting” candidates, and Kevin Grossman of ERE Media, Inc. predicts the “candidate experience will be in a free fall in 2025.” This is the time to positively differentiate yourself from your competitors and foster good will among job seekers.

A poor candidate experience can cause damage to your company’s reputation. According to Lisa Shuster in Forbes, “Not responding to candidates who take the time to apply or express interest in an open position can lead potential hires to believe your company doesn’t treat job seekers well or value its people. This sentiment can spread and harm your employer brand because applicants you’ve ‘ghosted’ won’t hesitate to leave poor online reviews and tell everyone in their networks.” While you may see a minimal impact upon your company’s reputation in the current economic climate, good candidates may still “ghost” you in favor of another job offer or may not apply at all. Those negative online reviews also don’t disappear so they can cause long-lasting damage to your company’s reputation and, when the pendulum swings back in favor of job seekers, your company may be on the outside looking in.

One consequence of a poor candidate experience you may not consider is damage to your overall business. As Lisa Shuster notes, “When my company iHire surveyed a Qualtrics panel of 600 U.S. job seekers this past March, we found that nearly 40% of candidates would be less likely to interact with a brand in the future (buy their products, follow them on social media, etc.) if they applied and didn’t hear back from the employer.” If job seekers feel slighted, the impact can go far beyond considering any future openings and affect the bottom line of your business. On the other hand, cultivating a positive job candidate experience can help your overall business. According to Kevin Grossman, a positive candidate experience can result in “more referrals, more revenue, and more brand advocacy.” As you can see, how you treat job candidates can reverberate across your whole company.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Ensure that there is an automated message confirming that the application has been received, and, if possible, an estimated timeline of the review process. The less mystery, the better!
2. If the job opening is for a hard-to-fill position (physicians, nurses, etc.), personal outreach from a recruiter will make a difference. A generic and/or automated response just won’t cut it.
3. Notify candidates in a timely manner if they are not being considered for the opening. They will appreciate the respect instead of silence.
4. For those no longer being considered for an opening, offer to add them to your company’s “talent community” (if you don’t have one, now is a good time to create one) so they may receive notifications of future openings they may be interested in and insights into what’s happening at your organization to keep them engaged.
5. For those you are considering for an open position, send regular updates at every stage of the hiring process, especially if the steps are taking longer than expected following an interview.

Job candidates have always valued genuine contact and honest feedback in the recruitment process and this is especially true now, when they feel less empowered and more vulnerable. Timely and genuine communication with a candidate will not only affect your ability to recruit the best candidates, but also can generate good will that helps your company in the long run.

In a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, CEOs of health systems are laser-focused on one paramount goal: improving patient care outcomes. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, this priority tops the list of health system C-suite initiatives for 2025. Yet, achieving this goal hinges on having the right physicians in place — a challenge that underscores the value of a robust physician recruitment function.

A strong recruitment strategy does more than fill vacancies. It also accelerates the time to hire, secures top-tier talent and minimizes the organizational and financial costs of prolonged vacancies. Here’s how:

1. Faster Hiring = Better Patient Outcomes

Physician vacancies create a ripple effect throughout the organization, impacting patient care delivery, staff morale and operational efficiency. Overburdened physicians may experience burnout, leading to errors, patient dissatisfaction and even higher turnover. A well-oiled physician recruitment function ensures your health system hires quickly, keeping teams fully staffed and maintaining high quality care standards.

Key Insight:

Every day a critical physician role remains vacant, patients may face longer wait times and diminished access to care. This can jeopardize a health system’s ability to meet quality benchmarks, adversely impacting patient satisfaction scores and reimbursement rates.

2. Quantifying the Financial Benefits of Reducing Time-to-Fill

Beyond quality-of-care metrics, unfilled physician roles have a direct financial cost. The average physician generates $2.4 million annually in net revenue for their organization, meaning every day a position goes unfilled translates to lost revenue.

Organizations can quantify this impact using tools like MissingPhysician.com, which calculates the financial windfall associated with reducing time-to-fill. This data allows CEOs and CFOs to see the tangible benefits of investing in physician recruitment infrastructure.

Example:

A specialty like cardiology, with an average time-to-fill of 180 days, could result in a $1.2 million revenue loss during that period. Reducing time-to-fill by even 30 days can recapture $200,000+ in revenue.

3. Investing in Recruitment Yields Long-Term Gains

Physician recruitment isn’t just about speed; it’s also about building relationships, understanding market dynamics and strategically aligning talent acquisition with organizational goals. By investing in a dedicated recruitment function, health systems can:

• Access a larger, more diverse candidate pool.
• Strengthen employer branding to attract high-caliber candidates.
• Enhance retention by identifying candidates aligned with organizational culture and long-term objectives.

Practical Action Steps:

• Utilize data-driven strategies to forecast workforce needs.
• Partner with recruitment specialists skilled in reducing time-to-fill for hard-to-recruit specialties.
• Integrate tools like MissingPhysician.com to align recruitment goals with measurable financial outcomes.

As CEOs champion better patient care, they must recognize physician recruitment as a cornerstone of this mission. A seamless, efficient recruitment function ensures that the right talent is on board to deliver on the organization’s promise of quality care. Moreover, linking recruitment success to financial metrics, such as reduced time-to-fill and lost revenue recovery, can secure buy-in from key stakeholders across the C-suite.

Physician recruitment is an operational necessity, but it’s also a strategic lever to achieve top-tier patient care and financial sustainability. By prioritizing recruitment, health systems can address the CEO’s #1 priority for 2025 while simultaneously unlocking significant financial gains.

Want to explore the financial impact of reducing time-to-fill at your organization? Start your journey toward recruitment excellence today.

People often first encounter a company via their job postings. While companies are well versed in presenting job duties and requirements, company culture, benefits and other quality of life considerations, they often forget the most basic thing: presenting the information and the job details in a well formatted, succinct and error-free posting. According to a survey by Indeed, “52% of job seekers say the quality of a job description (e.g. spelling, grammar, role description, formatting) is ‘very’ or ‘extremely influential’ on their decision to apply for a job.” Therefore, it is imperative that companies take time in posting their openings to their applicant tracking system and on job posting sites, such as Indeed and ZipRecruiter.

Here are some ways to create a professional-looking and easy-to-read job listing so that the candidate knows the duties and requirements and also comes away with a positive view of your company. Even if the candidate does not apply, they may keep your company top of mind for future job openings.

1. Make sure everything is spelled correctly, especially in the job title. A spellcheck program will find most spelling errors but be sure to read the listing again because no spellcheck program is perfect and often misses nuances that can result in an incorrect recommendation.
2. Use a consistent font of large enough size to read on multiple types of devices. What may seem like a good font size on a desktop may be too small to be read on a cell phone. And a listing with a variety of fonts gives the impression that the person who posted the job just blindly copied and pasted from one or more documents.
3. Avoid any grammatical errors. Again, a spellcheck program can spot many issues of this nature. However, be aware that many of these programs are less accurate in this regard so give extra thought to any recommendations from the program. An additional, careful read may be more reliable than any program in some situations.
4. If you copy/cut and paste from another document, make sure special characters (e.g., apostrophes, bullets) appear correctly. They may appear as question marks or other characters that are incorrect. Also, make sure any dates have not passed or are still relevant.
5. Bolding and italics are great ways to highlight items like sign-on bonuses, but don’t overdo their use or the job seeker may be confused as to what is most important in the listing.
6. Use headers and bullets or numbered lists for duties and qualifications. Doing so allows the job seeker to quickly assess what the job does and requires. Listings that put everything in a handful of paragraphs are harder to read and the job seeker may abandon the posting rather than sort through that information.
7. Do not make your listings overly long. According to Remko Glatzhofer of Indeed, “Shorter job posts (1-300 words) had significantly higher-than-average apply rates per view (the number of applications the job post got divided by the number of views).” Here are some ways you can keep the word count down in your posting:
   • First and foremost, only include information relevant to the job title, department, etc. For example, if you are hiring for an emergency department RN, do not have a generic nurse listing that includes qualifications for every department at your facility. Job seekers will not want to search for information pertinent to the position they are interested in. Also, limiting your qualifications only to the relevant job should dissuade unqualified candidates from applying.
   • You do not need to include any requirements that would seem obvious, especially if a more detailed requirement is also listed (e.g., if the IT tech position requires knowledge of a specific programming language, “computer experience” is completely unnecessary), or if the requirement is extremely basic (e.g., “ability to listen to others”).
   • If you have any qualifications listed as preferred, ask yourself if they are necessary for the person to qualify for the job. A few preferred items here and there are okay, but a potential candidate may feel unqualified and not apply if confronted by a list of preferred qualifications.
   • Avoid duplicating information. If you have benefits, for example, early in the listing, you shouldn’t list them again later. Also, if the earlier information doesn’t completely match up with the later information, it may confuse job seekers.

Investing in the appearance and readability of your posting from the beginning can potentially increase not only the number of applicants, but also the quality of those applicants. If your listing looks poorly written or requires too much time to read and understand, you may lose out on a quality candidate for not only the initial job listing they encounter, but any future listings. A well-formatted, professional-looking listing helps to win over a job seeker to an opening and to your company overall.

Timing is everything in recruitment. While certain months are peak hiring seasons for some industries, real success comes from a consistent, year-round effort. That’s where a smart checklist makes all the difference. It ensures you stay ahead, ready to connect with top talent and fill roles efficiently. To help you get started, here are some ideas you can build on to craft a checklist customized to fit your hiring goals.

January & February

• Develop a detailed and organized onboarding process — or refresh your existing one — to kick-start a new hire’s journey. A great onboarding experience sets a positive tone and establishes the foundation for lasting engagement and retention.
• Review your pipeline and reconnect with candidates you haven’t been actively engaging. They may not be open to a new job or conversation, but reaching out is never a missed opportunity.
• Start planning for spring, when new graduates (who are eager to start their careers) are entering the job market. While many employers often overlook new grads, viewing them as inexperienced, they typically bring fresh ideas, strong tech skills and a passion for learning.

March & April

• Create a conference engagement plan. Choosing which conferences to attend shouldn’t be left to chance. Some events will offer far more benefits than others, but the value you gain will depend on your specific goals.
• Establish your pre-conference marketing strategy. How will you measure success at the event? Through the number of new email leads you capture or the number of interviews generated? The answer may vary, but using consistent metrics across all your conferences gives you a meaningful comparison.
• Start building a conference playbook with key contacts, phone numbers, budgets, receipts and anything else you might need. Think of a playbook as your survival guide. If anything goes off track, a playbook keeps everything at your fingertips. It also frees up your mind so you can stay focused and fully engaged at the conference.
• Identify key dates in your industry — conferences, special events, observance days — and start crafting relevant content to share with future hires. For example, if you’re recruiting nurses, you could create content for National Nurses Week each May. In construction, you might earmark content for National Safety Month each June.

May & June

• Remember the goals you set in January? Review your progress and adjust, as necessary.
• Start prepping for fall career events. Late September and early October are the most popular times for career fairs, and graduating students are motivated to start looking.
• Create templates for invitations or social media posts for career events — and don’t forget to include a booth number, contact information and a link for registration.

July & August

• Reevaluate your employee value proposition (EVP) and brand. There’s ample evidence that a strong employer brand doesn’t just attract top talent — it drives real results. LinkedIn reports that 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. With a great EVP, you’ll fill roles faster and save on recruitment costs, all while boosting your bottom line.
• Evaluate responses from candidates you’ve engaged with over the year and find opportunities to refine and improve your job titles, posts and other messaging. Which subject lines got the most responses? Does one job post stand out and why? For inspiration, check out 12 Tips for More Effective Indeed Job Titles and Mastering the Art of Effective Job Descriptions.

September & October

• Assess your sourcing and marketing tools. Finding the right candidates is an art that needs targeted search capabilities and more. You should also start figuring out your top hiring priorities for the upcoming year and decide which recruitment tools to implement.
• Rethink incentives and compensation for your roles. Start with a hard-to-fill position and ask, “What does the ideal candidate for this role look like?” Use those traits to sharpen your search and adjust the incentives to attract the perfect fit.
• Review your budget and expenses compared to last year and start planning for the year ahead.

November & December

• The holiday season is the perfect time to recruit for many organizations. End-of-the-year rethinking has people reexamining their future, and you should take full advantage of it. Many potential candidates also have slower schedules or days off, which means more time to read your emails, search job boards or take a recruiter’s call.
• Review recent and past hires — and their lead sources — for valuable insights to improve future recruitment efforts. Do most of your hires come from the same source? Are some sources underperforming in lead generation? Ultimately, your ability to make quality placements hinges on how effectively you source candidates, so understanding where your best leads come from is crucial.
• Do you have candidates you want to hire, but know they’re not ready to sign on? Don’t risk losing them to a competitor or indecision. Try writing a letter of intent or “offer letter.” It serves as a written expression of mutual interest and good faith from both parties. While not legally binding, it can help candidates take an important mental step toward formalizing an employment contract.

Ready to step up your recruitment game? A smart checklist is your secret to staying ahead, no matter the season. Whether you’re gearing up for the next hiring wave or fine-tuning your year-round approach, AB&C is here to craft a custom plan that aligns with your unique goals and keeps you ready to attract top talent. Let’s talk.

Work and workplaces are changing at lightning speed. For organizations to operate efficiently to achieve success in today’s environment, it requires increased diligence and a willingness of business functions to collaborate. For instance, the overall aging of the population, organizations’ desire for the efficient and effective search for new customers, a rise in the use of technologies and artificial intelligence, variable return-to-the-office company policies and an increasingly competitive market for talent with in-demand skills is creating a greater need for marketing and human resources (HR) professionals to work together.

Marketing and HR are interdependent business functions that share similar goals, but for different audiences. Marketing is responsible for understanding and enforcing an organization’s brand and communicating it to customers to increase awareness, usage, loyalty and referrals. HR is responsible for understanding the needs and desires of an organization’s workforce, imposing employment branding and ensuring an organization is perceived positively by external candidates and internal staff who fulfill customer brand promises.

Your marketing team should work with your talent acquisition team to ensure they are bringing in talent that seeks to fulfill the organizational brand promise. HR can lean on marketing’s understanding of the unique components and needs of prospective audiences to bolster the hiring process with brand authenticity tied to your organization’s overall strategy.

According to LinkedIn’s report, The Future of Recruiting 2024, talent acquisition teams will need “new skills, new tools and agility to attract, hire and retain the best talent.” LinkedIn Research surveyed 1,951 recruiting professionals and hiring managers across 23 countries between October and November 2023. The research found that 49% of those surveyed say that employer branding will shape recruiting over the next five years, trailing only the need to measure the quality of hires (54%). In addition, employer branding is the recruitment function that’s expected to receive the greatest increase in spend with 57% of respondents predicting their investment in employer branding will increase in the coming year to match their authentic look and feel and the reality of what prospects find on employer review sites.

The Deloitte Insights 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey of 14,000 business and human resources leaders across multiple industries and sectors in 95 countries identifies a mindset shift for HR — what Deloitte terms “boundaryless HR,” the adoption of a “different set of practices, skillsets, metrics, technologies and even structural changes.” The survey report emphasizes that “For many organizations, nothing is more important than its people … Human connections drive the majority of value for an organization, including revenues, innovation and intellectual property, efficiency, brand relevance, productivity adaptability, and risk.” Over 80% of executives surveyed said working with other disciplines to solve business problems, improve employee engagement, align HR practices to the overall business strategy and create brand ambassadors is increasingly performed across functional boundaries.

These research surveys highlight the importance of marketing and human resources professionals working together to build and maintain an employment brand.

Good employment branding can help an organization attract higher-quality candidates, making it easier to fill job openings. It can also boost employee morale, engagement and retention by highlighting points of pride and commonality for employees. Good employment branding can give customers a positive image of — and correct misperceptions about — an organization. This is why HR and marketing professionals should work together to ensure that all external marketing and branding — employment and customer — is consistent across all media channels.

Hear are four tangible ways that HR and marketing can work together to make your employment branding equal your customer branding.

• Onboarding – Create an employee onboarding program that is based on your organization’s mission, vision, values and brand promise to spread the right messaging and get buy-in from the start of every staff member’s employment journey.
• NIL (Name, image, likeness) – Don’t use stock photography for marketing materials. Highlight staff quotes, personality and likeness in messaging and imagery in all internal and external marketing communications.
• Brand ambassadors – Your organization’s story and people are the foundation for your employment brand, and employees can be the best brand ambassadors of your organization’s values. Aligning and communicating your brand message effectively throughout your organization supports marketing’s mission of sharing it with customers and HR’s mission of sharing it with talent prospects.
• Social media – Just as marketers leverage social media to reach customers, HR can utilize social channels to bolster talent acquisition. Build and foster a consistent and active social media presence and encourage staff to speak freely. Promote your organization and staff achievements and accomplishments to enhance the perception of your brand internally and externally, as well as reach and engage talent.

There should be no line between marketing and HR in collaborating to ensure your employment brand is strong, driving your culture and helping to attract top talent, and to ensure that employees are sending out the right brand message to your organization’s customers through their actions and words.

As a recent graduate or entry-level marketer, you’ll quickly realize that not all marketing is created equal when you step into the vibrant world of marketing. One area that stands out for its unique challenges and opportunities is recruitment marketing. This specialized field blends traditional marketing techniques with human resources to attract and engage potential job candidates. In this blog post, I’ll delve into what makes recruitment marketing unique and how it differs from what you’ve learned in your undergraduate journey.

What is recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the process of promoting a company as an employer to attract and engage top talent. It involves discovering and promoting a strong employer brand, utilizing various channels to reach candidates, and ensuring a positive candidate experience. While traditional marketing focuses on attracting customers to buy products or services, recruitment marketing aims to attract candidates to join an organization by ensuring their target audience aligns well with the company’s core brand and, more importantly, its values and identity.

What are the key differentiators?

Understanding the key differences between these two styles of marketing was daunting in the beginning of my career. We’ve all heard the term “value proposition” a thousand times over during lectures, but during my first meeting as a new hire, I had heard the term employer value proposition (EVP) for the first time. What is an EVP, you ask? An EVP highlights the distinct advantages prospective employees gain by joining a specific business. It encapsulates the core of the company’s identity: their values and what they provide. This is something that new grads and entry-level candidates are seeking when applying for new positions. Studies show that 84 percent of the world’s top 100 most attractive employers (as defined by college students) have something in common: An employer value proposition (EVP), also known as an employee value proposition (EVP).

Let’s dive into what a company does to differentiate between its employer value proposition and the company’s core brand and identity!

Core Brand and Identity

The core brand and identity encompass the company’s overall image and reputation in the marketplace, including its mission, vision, values, products, services and market positioning. This is what we are commonly taught while in school and it provides is an important piece in setting the tone on how the company wants to be perceived. Not only that, but it also allows a company to set clear goals and begin thinking about the type of talent that they want to attract. Below are some examples of the building blocks that go into establishing your brand:

• Mission and Vision: Overarching goals and long-term aspirations.
• Values: Guiding principles and beliefs.
• Brand Promise: Consistent customer expectations.
• Visual Identity: Logos, colors, typography and design elements.
• Voice and Tone: Communication style with the audience.

Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

As mentioned, the EVP is the unique set of benefits and values offered to employees, designed to attract, motivate and retain them. This is something that is overlooked in higher education and should be taught while learning about the function of human resources. It is pivotal for a company to attract the right talent, but that’s only half of the battle. By clearly communicating your EVP and upholding its messaging, you can save precious time and money. Studies suggest that “Organizations that effectively deliver on their EVP can decrease annual employee turnover by just under 70% and increase new hire commitment by nearly 30%“. Elements that go into establishing your EVP are as follows:

• Compensation and Benefits: Salary, health benefits, retirement plans, etc.
• Career Development: Training, growth and advancement opportunities.
• Work Environment: Company culture, work-life balance, workplace atmosphere.
• Recognition and Rewards: Acknowledgment and rewards for contributions.
• Purpose and Impact: Meaningfulness of work and impact on the company.

Conclusion

Recruitment marketing is a unique and exciting field that requires a blend of traditional marketing skills and a deep understanding of human resources. By recognizing the differences between traditional and recruitment marketing and by focusing on building a strong employer brand, creating engaging content and leveraging the right channels, you can excel in this dynamic industry.

Stay curious, stay innovative and please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions about recruitment marketing! If not, let’s still connect and potentially collaborate.

Compelling content is a driving force behind successful physician recruitment marketing. Creating original content — think blogs, social media posts, infographics, and videos — can educate your audience and help you build relationships. After all, that’s what recruiting is all about, right? But coming up with fresh and engaging ideas is a whole other ballgame. That’s why we’ve created a list of seven valuable content ideas to help you capture the interest of physicians.

1. Express your gratitude on important recognition days. A full calendar of days, weeks, and months—such as National Doctor’s Day (March 30, 2025) and Women in Medicine Month (every September) — offers ideal opportunities for content marketing. Use the opportunity to engage with physicians and display your organization’s culture while showing appreciation and support for the people who make healthcare thrive. Other events on the healthcare calendar like National Depression Screening Day (October 10) and National Kidney Month (every March), also offer opportunities to raise public health awareness, promote preventive care, and talk about physicians in related specialties. Here’s a calendar of health observances and recognition days to get you started.
2. Use testimonials to harness the power of trust. Host brief Q&A sessions or one-on-one interviews with physicians and leaders within your organization to gather valuable perspectives and insights. You should prepare four or five thoughtful questions, including one like, ‘What made you choose (your organization’s name) for your career? Turn these responses into compelling testimonials that highlight your organization’s strengths, using direct quotes to add authenticity and impact. According to behavioral science, people respond more positively when they trust the information, so you could also feature testimonials from other respected industry voices to help build authority and connect with physicians.
3. Publish content that focuses on technology and innovation. Technology is revolutionizing healthcare, and physicians play a pivotal role in driving innovation and adopting new technologies. According to a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA), 85% of doctors believe digital health solutions can positively impact patient care. Physicians are also optimistic about digital health’s potential to enhance practice efficiency, improve patient safety, boost diagnostic accuracy, and even reduce burnout. To gain physician interest with your content, focus on product launches, technological advancements, and time-saving integrations that align with their core interests.
4. Share industry insights and updates that set your organization apart. Physicians are always eager to stay informed about the latest advancements in their field. Go beyond the headlines they might see elsewhere and tailor your content to highlight how your organization is not just keeping up but setting the standard. Whether it’s innovations in practice management, workflow improvements, or key trends in the medical specialties you’re recruiting for, connecting industry news to your own initiatives can provide value and position your organization as a true partner in physicians’ career growth.
5. Broadcast your efforts to address clinician well-being. Overwork, administrative burdens, and burnout are real challenges, so use your content to discuss how your organization is tackling these issues. Promote initiatives like wellness programs, peer support networks, or platforms that foster physician connections. By showing your commitment to clinician well-being, you position your organization as a supportive and caring workplace.
6. Shine a spotlight on real-world patient clinical experiences. Sharing detailed case studies that focus on clinical outcomes gives candidates a firsthand look at the meaningful work being done. By emphasizing success stories of innovative treatments, collaborative care, and new initiatives your organization is implementing, you create a powerful narrative that underscores your commitment to innovation and quality care. This approach goes beyond the typical recruitment pitch, giving physicians a compelling reason to see your organization as a place where they can make a true impact.
7. Maximize the value of third-party content by repurposing it creatively. This not only gives you opportunities to engage your audience and provides a nearly endless stream of content, but using credible sources also strengthens trust and authority. Whether you write an article inspired by a podcast or turn important insights into a social media carousel or infographic, always (always, always) remember the golden rule: give full credit to the original author(s) or organization(s), and link to the source — no exceptions.

Every piece of content you create can help connect with physicians and strengthen your brand as an employer of choice. At AB&C, we specialize in crafting content that resonates with healthcare professionals — and beyond — and helps attract top talent. Let’s talk about creating a recruitment marketing strategy that sets you apart and drives real results.