Visual and candidate-facing, career sites are one of the most tangible indicators of a mature recruitment marketing strategy. A great career site informs candidates about your jobs while showcasing your employer brand and inspiring people to imagine a future with your organization. The best career sites don't stop there they also constantly capture interest and candidate information for the long-term, no matter where a person may be in their journey. Enter recruiting-specific landing pages.
In a lot of ways, landing pages are the building blocks of your career site Ñ and how you build talent pipelines. These are pages dedicated to content on a specific topic with a focus on getting candidates to take some sort of action. Building great landing pages is a skill that teams develop over time, and advanced organizations are dreaming up new use cases for these flexible pages. One company leading the way is Sprint read on to see the five types of landing pages they employ to educate, excite and elicit action from potential candidates:
1. Sprint at a glance
Sprint's "Working at Sprint" page can best be described as a digital elevator pitch. While it doesn't have a true call to action (CTA) and thus isn't a landing page per se, it's still a critical jumping off point for Sprint's career site navigation and initiates engagement. It provides candidates with all the information they need to form a basic understanding of what it's like to work for Sprint before they dive into more tailored pages. Directly accessible from Sprint's main careers homepage, this part of the career site showcases employee benefits, walks candidates through the application and hiring process, and highlights company culture.
The page also features a highlight reel from employee social media posts with the hashtag #SprintNow, inviting candidates to explore life at Sprint through the eyes of real people who are building their careers with Sprint. With so much easily-digestible information in one place, it's clear this page was truly designed with the curious candidate in mind.
2. Team-specific pages
While the "Working at Sprint" page answers general questions about working for the organization, the Sprint team understands that many candidates want to dive deeper into their specific area of interest, especially those who may be further along in their career search. To make that possible, the team created specific landing pages for different areas of the business, like sales, corporate, call center/hourly, student opportunities and more.
These pages are focused on storytelling by providing specific highlights and benefits for tailored audiences, Sprint provides candidates with insight into what types of projects they'd be working on and what kind of impact they'd be making in the lives of Sprint's customers. This transparency helps candidates really picture their career at Sprint and helps them gauge whether they'd be a good fit before they even apply (a way to screen in and out!).
3. Creative sourcing
One of the more creative ways Sprint uses landing pages is as a sourcing tool. Sprint wanted to empower recruiters in the field to recognize great talent they come across in their day-to-day lives, whether a waiter who would make a great retail team member at a new store or an impressive sales person whose sense of humor would energize Sprint's sales team.
To do this, Sprint created business cards that included the line, "Whoa, your skills are impressive," and a QR code. If a member of their recruiting team comes across someone who would be a good fit for the company at any point, the business card is a great introduction to the brand on the spot (and a little bit of a VIP experience, right?!). When scanned, the code brings these select people to a special landing page acknowledging that they were singled out for being awesome.
Since a lot of Sprint's hiring is location-based, the page also displays local job opportunities. The whole idea is to make someone feel special and show them how their skills would be valued at Sprint. The approach has been a huge success on average, Sprint sees 20 applications per 100 clicks to this page (1 in 5,hello!).
4. Event pages
With nearly 1,500 retail stores across the U.S., high-volume hiring is a big focus for Sprint. They regularly host informative hiring events that are not store-specific, but instead introduce potential candidates to the company and show them what it's like to work in a store with retail customers. By holding raffles and encouraging attendees to bring a friend, Sprint creates a fun, party-like atmosphere.
To promote these events, Sprint prepares local hiring teams with an easy-to-use landing page template, which can easily be customized to display the time, date and location of the events as well as any additional details. By providing local hiring managers with this template, Sprint is eliminating the need to start from scratch every time they need to plan or promote an event. The easier these events are to host, the more frequently Sprint can have them, and the more people they can reach!
5. Partnership pages
Sprint's partnership pages are prime examples of targeting and segmentation. Sprint partners with relevant organizations to promote its culture and jobs to potential candidates in specific associations or organizations. For example, they partner with the Student Athlete Association, which sends out emails promoting Sprint's jobs to a database of student athletes. The emails include links to Sprint landing pages with content targeted specifically at student athletes, including photos of onsite fitness facilities at HQ and details about leadership opportunities within the company.
By using a trusted third party to tap into targeted groups, Sprint is able to create a positive brand image early in the job search, and potentially reach candidates who may not have otherwise considered them as an employer. This is especially effective with students who are just preparing to enter the working world and have a unique set of interests and questions.
By creating unique web and landing pages, Sprint invites candidates to explore what it means to be part of their team. The brilliance is in the diversity of uses; from pages with general information to highly targeted pages designed for an incredibly specific audience, Sprint ensures no one leaves their career site (or an interaction with a current employee) without a way to learn more and pursue an opportunity.
With the right strategy and the right career site technology in place, landing pages can be more than just hubs of information about your jobs. You can bring them to life and turn them into powerful sourcing and marketing tools that give you long-term value.
