How to Increase the Number of Job Applicants

According to research, the average job description gets about 250 job applicants. However, that doesn’t mean your job description attracts many applicants automatically.

If you’re a startup, for example, it may be even harder to convince candidates to apply for your company since they don’t know much about you. However, there are some strategies you can use to increase the applicant pool you have to choose from.

Keep reading for the best strategies to ensure applicants find your job description. 

Create a Career Page

While many job seekers will look for job openings on social media sites like LinkedIn or job boards like Indeed, some may even go to your company website and search for information about your business. This is why having a career landing page is essential. Not only can it drive organic traffic to your job openings, but you can also access more analytics since it’s hosted on your website. 

Remember that if you want your landing page to be successful, you need to use your employer branding. Recruiting is just like marketing; you must ensure that the suitable job seeker knows the company the page is for and who you are. Showcase why you’re a great employer and why the candidates should apply to your job. 

You may also want to optimize your page for keywords so that it shows up on the first page of search engines. When you appear on the first page of a search engine, you have more of a chance of job seekers applying for your business. 

Provide Salary Information

While providing the salary information in the job ads is controversial, it can be a good tactic, especially if you offer a higher-than-average salary for that position. Keep in mind that in some states, like Washington and Colorado, it is now required that you put that information in the job postings. 

If you’re not hiring in a state that requires it, there are benefits to adding it into the job description. You will save time by having more job applicants who are okay with that salary, and you may also have better talent applying. 

If the exact salary is sensitive information that you don’t want to publicize, you can also include a salary range and provide more information during the early screening phase. 

Make the Application Process Easy

Applying for a job should be easy for the candidate, especially if they’re going to be applying to hundreds of jobs. If they find applying for a job at your company challenging, they may skip the overall hiring process altogether. 

You can make the process easier by ensuring that every step is crucial. If a different interview process doesn’t help you make a decision, then you should remove it. If you have the candidate upload their resume, you don’t need to ask them to fill out forms with all of the information from their resume. 

Overall, if your application takes less than five minutes to complete, the conversion rate of a job seeker to an applicant increases by 365%.

Write Simple Job Descriptions

In addition to making the application process more manageable, you should write simple job listings. With so much information on the Internet, people won’t spend much time during the entire part of your job description. They’ll likely skim it, so make sure it’s simple and easy to read.

That includes adding bullet points, bolding, and not stuffing too many words into the description. It would be best if it consisted of only the required qualifications for the position, rather than what might be nice to have in your job title. 

The job title should describe the position in language qualified candidates would search for and understand. This will help give them a good idea of whether or not they’d be a good fit for that position and decide to apply or not. 

Show Your Diversity

Whether you’re sharing job posts, updating your career landing page, or posting on social media, you should highlight your diversity and inclusion efforts. Show how your place is welcoming and inclusive, regardless of an applicant’s background. 

You can either show testimonials from employees at your company or testify about your diversity efforts. Or you may want to show different examples of how your company is committed to diversity and inclusion. 

In fact, according to some research, 67% of job seekers rank diversity as an essential factor when determining whether or not to apply. 

Have a Mobile-Optimized Site

Some research found that only 35% of Fortune 500 companies optimized their career site for mobile users. And according to a Glassdoor survey, more than half of their users use their phones when they apply for jobs.

This can be one area where you can jump in and snag talent applying to jobs on their phones. If it’s not easy to apply for a job from a phone, you could also be losing applicants. After all, most people search the Internet on their phones, and not having a mobile-friendly site could also hurt your brand and reputation. 

If you can optimize your application site for mobile devices while also streamlining the process, you’ll dramatically increase your applicant numbers. 

Use Keywords

While it’s essential to optimize your website, you’ll also want to optimize your job descriptions so those job seekers can find them. When you improve your SEO, your job description is more likely to reach more applicants.

If you aren’t sure what keywords to include, look for similar job descriptions on social media or Google. See if there are any common keyword combinations, and include those in your description. 

If you want more research, you can also look on Google Analytics to see how many people searched for a particular keyword. 

Including pictures in your job description can also help improve the optimization of your job description. And since images and videos are great at capturing people’s attention, they could help your ad stand out from all the rest. 

Leverage the Power of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that is revolutionizing the recruiting process. You can use it in many different ways, including analyzing your job descriptions and improving them so that you can attract the best candidates. 

However, if candidates aren’t applying to your job description, it can also help you go to them. While most of the talent in the job market is passive talent, AI software solutions can help you identify the best candidates for the job and then reach out to them. 

You can have a large talent pool using this solution and general job ad marketing. Once you have a lot of candidates applying to the job posting, you can even integrate AI into your applicant tracking system to help you sort through them.

Hire a Recruiting Agency

If you’ve tried all the strategies above and still not getting enough qualified applicants, it may be time to turn to a third-party recruiting agency for help. These agencies are experts in finding the best talent and advertising your job description. They also have all the teams and resources needed to grow your applicant numbers. 

You should try and find an agency that focuses on your industry niche. While general recruiting agencies can be helpful, finding someone who specializes in your place can increase the chances of finding top-qualified candidates. 

Hiring a focused recruiting agency is also especially important if you’re recruiting for executives or technical talent since these applicants can be harder to find. 

Hiring a recruiting agency is excellent for startup companies that don’t have the internal resources, but any company of any size can benefit from working with a recruiting agency. However, Recruiter.com isn’t like your typical recruitment agency. 

We make it easy to scale your recruiting team up or down with our recruiters you can hire monthly. In addition to that, we can also help you fix your job descriptions so that you attract the most clients. If you’re interested, contact us today to see how we can help you. 

 

Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.