Deloitte projects that in the next decade, 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled.
However, if you’re like many manufacturers, you’re struggling to fill the employment vacancies you have right now. To address these job vacancies, you might be:
- Working with a third-party company, like an employment agency, to help you fill open positions; or
- Partnering with nonprofit organizations in your area to help increase awareness of your company’s vacancies.
While these methods are effective for some, there are other recruitment tactics you can use that leverage your website and search engines like Google. To leverage these tactics, you’ll need to start by making improvements to your company’s website.
With these five website enhancements, you can improve your chances of recruiting talented and experienced millennials.
1. Create A “Careers” Page For Your Website And Make It Easy To Locate.
Potential applicants in the job market will go straight to a company’s “Careers” page to locate open positions.
Ensure that you have a “Careers” page and that it’s easy to locate. You don’t have to have the page in the main navigation at the top of the website, but at the very least, the “Careers” page should be listed prominently in the footer to make it easy for applicants to locate.
2. Refresh Your “Careers” Page On A Regular Basis And Provide The Ability To Subscribe To Updates.
If your “Careers” page isn’t kept up to date, potential applicants won’t know of the jobs you have available.
Ensure that this page has a list of the current positions available and include “Date Last Updated” at the top of the page to let potential applicants know you are regularly updating the page. You may also consider adding an RSS feed to your “Careers” page so that potential applicants can get notified by email of positions as they come available.
3. Put The Most Critical Positions On Your “Careers” Page In Plain Text.
If you’re using an applicant tracking system to manage openings and applications, you might be missing out on the opportunity to leverage search engines.
Recently, Google added functionality to its search engine that makes it the world’s largest job search engine. Potential applicants can use Google to search for “manufacturing jobs near me” or “Plant Manager jobs” and generate a list of open positions. Because not all applicant tracking systems are search friendly, your job postings may or may not appear in these results. Consider putting a list of the most critical openings in plain text on your “Careers” page and have a web developer add JobPosting schema to each job listing.
4. List All Of Your Company’s Benefits On The “Careers” Page.
If you’re trying to attract millennials, prominently listing all of your company’s benefits on the “Careers” page will make it clear that you care about your employees. Applicants want to know exactly what benefits you offer; benefits could make or break one’s decision to apply.
On your “Careers” page, list an overview of your company’s benefits above those critical vacancies and include a link to another webpage or a PDF that provides more detail about all the ways in which you support your employees. Include every benefit, every perk your company offers.
5. Embed A Video Of Your Company And Photos From Your Events On Your “Careers” Page.
Millennials want to know what it could be like to work for a particular company, so the “Careers” page is the prime location for high-quality video and photos. With media, you can show who works for your company, what their roles are, and some of the activities or events that employees enjoy.
If you have company potlucks every season, show photos from these events or a funny video with outtakes. If your company volunteers locally a couple of times each year, use a supercut to show highlights from recent outings. If you’re going the extra mile to invest in your employees and the surrounding community, using media on a “Careers” page is a great place for “show and tell.”
When it comes to filling the open positions you have today, you have to put your best foot forward to attract experienced millennials. In your recruitment and retention plan, ensure that updates to the “Careers” page are at the top of your priority list -- it might be the only page that a millennial visits before leaving to apply for a position elsewhere.
Claudia Pennington, Co-Founder and CEO of DIY Marketing
Claudia Pennington is Co-Founder and CEO of DIY Marketing.
