How To Integrate Job Listings

^{Image by Clem Onojeghuo via Unsplash}

Whether you're a mom-and-pop shop looking for a little summer help or a large corporation with many locations / open positions, the recruitment and hiring process can be a daunting one. Fortunately, integrating job listings into your website doesn’t have to be. Here are a few of the many available options, along with some context to help you decide which solution is right for your business. 

Starting Small

For a small organization, or one without a lot of turnover, you probably don’t need an integrated third party solution. They can be costly and overbuilt for the more free-form positions that small organizations need to fill, especially ones without a dedicated HR department. You also have a genuine opportunity to provide a more personal and curated experience that will help you attract an applicant that is in tune with your organization. Whether it’s a promo on your homepage, a blog post, or a dedicated page on your site that you are sharing around social media, take the time to showcase your company and the open position in a way that gives it the focus it deserves. If you only have one position open in the foreseeable future, skip the “Jobs” page. Don’t overbuild a system that will end up looking empty. Create a warm, welcoming post with as simple contact link (or form) for more information, and handle the rest of the process in person. 

A Dedicated Careers Page

If your organization consistently has multiple positions open at any given time, it’s worth building out a means of managing and displaying those positions within your site. A CMS like Drupal is perfect for this- leveraging your own custom “jobs” content type allows you to quickly add / remove listings and display them in a sortable / filterable manner. 

Note: If the traffic to your website is primarily coming to learn about your business, I recommend putting that “Careers” (or “Jobs”, plenty of debate to be had there…) right in the main menu, possibly under an “About Us” heading. If your site IS your business and your main menu is dedicated towards actually providing the services you offer, people will expect to find the link in a secondary menu, often in the footer. Either way, a simple url like /jobs or /careers will be a first guess for interested parties and is an easy thing to share elsewhere. 

This internal listing page could be further enhanced by the ability to take job applications directly through your website, but at the point where you are building out applicant management processes, it’s probably time to consider using a third party system. 

Managed HR Services

I’m a firm believer in not trying to build your own system if someone else offers an out-of-the-box solution, especially if that system provides methods to integrate with your site seamlessly.  Your needs are probably not as custom as you think, and a prebuilt system will enforce a little consistency and tame some of those odd (but common!) urges to do something unnecessarily unconventional. If you’re using one of these systems, it’s crucial that your site is displaying only the listings that are currently available, which means an integrated solution. Keeping two separate systems for listings is only going to create more headaches around what can already be a stressful process.

If you’re already using a third party system for hiring management, take a look at the spectrum of integrations they offer. If they don’t offer any (or most) of these, start shopping for a new service...

• Branded job listing page, with custom domain, logo and some control of styling
  This is the bare minimum. If you can’t point your audience towards a jobs.[companyname].com that has your logo and color scheme to view listings, you’re lacking a crucial part of the job search / hiring experience.
• Embeddable job listing widget
  Slightly better is the ability to utilize a simple embed that shows up-to-date job listings on a page in your site. Preferably this is done via a javascript widget and not via iframe (assuming and hoping that by this point your site is responsive and viewed on a host of device sizes). 
• Job Listing Feed/API
  This is my preferred approach, and I believe it is the right fit for most medium/large businesses. If you can pull open job listings, descriptions, and categories via API, you can have total control over where and how you display them in your site, and then send them off to the application process on the third-party service to fully take advantage of all of their bells and whistles.
• Job Application via API
  If your user experience cannot be compromised, this is your option. You get complete control over your application / form look and feel, and post application data via API into your management system so that your HR department can still use all of the advanced tools you’re paying for. You could even go so far as to provide your own internal management interface, leveraging the back end and organization of the HR app within your own administrative dashboard. The sky is the limit, assuming you’ve got a development budget to match. 

Good luck!

^{Image by Michael Cheary via Pexels}

Regardless of your industry or the size of your business, the best place for a prospective applicant to see an opening is through your company website. Whether you are looking for a custom designed single page job listing, an internally managed system to be added to your site, or integration with third-party industry leaders, we'd love to help you showcase your open positions in a way that represents your company culture. Drop us a line to start the conversation!