7 powerful ways your website can attract top talent to your firm

7 powerful ways your website can attract top talent

May 27, 2022 10:31 AM

The competition to attract top talent for accounting firms is fierce.

With fewer people going into financial service industries — and the Great Resignation showing no signs of slowing down — accounting firms must use all available resources to attract top candidates.

In response, senior executives are asking their marketing teams to pitch in to find talent. These marketers are turning to an often forgotten tool to attract potential recruits: their company’s website. Unfortunately, not every website is built with this audience in mind.

Your website is the center of your employer brand

Like the journey buyers take when evaluating you as a service provider, potential employees are searching for information to help them make the right career choice. It’s common practice today for job seekers to check a company’s website for information about its culture, leadership team and services in preparation for a job interview.

Will they be able to find this information on your website?

If your website is disorganized or rarely updated, you risk scaring away your top prospects. Your website is a critical component of your employer brand, so it’s essential that you prioritize updating or redesigning it with future job candidates in mind. Let your website tell the story of your company’s culture, values and expertise.

Use your website to put your best foot forward

Let’s examine the seven best practices to attract the recruits you need:

Start with your 'Careers' page

Your "Careers" page is a job seekers’ first look at your company. Be sure to make it as strong as possible and include it in your main navigation, footer and the "About Us" page. Include photos of your team in action. Film a video highlighting company culture and describing what sets your firm apart from your competitors. And don’t forget to list common benefits and amenities that job seekers want.

Know what job seekers are looking for

What do job seekers want? Top candidates are looking for firms that can articulate their company culture and values clearly. Your "About Us" and "Careers" pages can help check this box. They also want to work with a strong team led by capable leaders. Prioritize building robust leadership profiles that share an individual’s background and credentials in detail. Link to a leader’s articles and speeches, and showcase notable projects and accomplishments. Such information gives potential employees a sense of who is leading the firm and their vision for the future.

Make your site mobile-friendly

More and more people are accessing B2B websites through mobile. Site designs that are beautiful and functional on a laptop or desktop display may be jumbled and hard to navigate on a smaller mobile device. To give visitors the best possible experience, responsive design creates sites that will adapt fluidly, elegantly and functionally to the dimensions of a user’s device — creating an excellent experience for all of your visitors. After all, users who have a terrible experience accessing your site on a mobile device will leave quickly and, most likely, not return.

Optimize your site for search engine indexing

Mobile-friendliness can impact your site’s ranking in search engine results, but there are many other “ranking signals.” Using them deliberately is crucial for building visibility online. Essential search engine optimization (SEO) techniques leverage relevant keywords and phrases that people use to search for information. But that’s not all; be sure that your pages have unique titles and “meta” descriptions, so Google (and searchers) can tell what each page on your site contains. SEO best practices evolve rapidly. Continually monitor your site’s performance, leveraging the data to increase traffic and produce more relevant content.

Create clear calls to action

Your website has intrigued a top candidate. However, they are unclear about how to apply for an open position. If they can’t tell what to do quickly, they may leave your site and check out your competitors’ offerings. Use attractive calls to action that tell users what to do next. They should stand out from the rest of the page. Their text should be descriptive, specific and active.

Demonstrate your firm’s expertise

Your specialized expertise sets you apart in the marketplace — and it can attract the job seekers you are looking for. Help visitors get to know you by providing detailed bios of the people in your firm, including their pictures, background, experience, recent projects and professional associations. Use imagery and language that will resonate with your potential employees. If your firm is comfortable with social media, link to team members’ social media channels that will be interesting to job seekers (and your clients). This connection gives candidates the chance to know their potential coworkers.

Make your site easy to navigate

We mentioned this one earlier. Your website might be full of exciting and essential information, but visitors might become overwhelmed if they cannot find the information they need. Keep your navigation menus simple and uncluttered, with no more than six top-level categories. You can guide users to more specific subsets of pages through dropdown menus. Avoid small, hard-to-read fonts. And remember, the user interface is crucial for SEO considerations.

No time to wait

We can’t say this enough: Your competitors are recruiting online too.

If finding top talent is a priority of your firm, it’s imperative that you evaluate your website and optimize it for job seekers. Tell your firm’s story through clear design, compelling content, and photos and videos that help top candidates imagine themselves as part of your firm.