4 Ways to Improve Your Website's Navigation for Recruitment

Recent workplace trends reveal that virtual employee and volunteer engagement will be the norm as people prefer remote opportunities.

Focusing on online recruitment helps you reach a broader audience of potential employees or volunteers. To effectively recruit new volunteers or employees online, your organization’s website must be organized and streamlined to facilitate easy navigation.

This guide will review five ways to improve your website’s navigation to design a successful online recruitment process:

Whether you’re hiring for your small business or looking to grow your volunteer pool, these tips will allow you to design a website that supports your recruitment goals.

Calls to action (CTAs) buttons are the links you use to help visitors navigate your website. Your organization’s website should include CTAs that encourage audience members to visit your online store, donation page, or event calendar.

If you’re actively recruiting new volunteers or employees to join your organization, you should also include a variety of CTAs throughout your site that lead visitors to your online application.

For example, the Feeding America website includes a variety of CTAs on the “Take Action” page that help supporters get more involved in the nonprofit’s cause.

These links send visitors to pages where they can get information about becoming an advocate, volunteering, starting a fundraiser, and taking other mission-critical actions.

Kanopi’s roundup of the best nonprofit websites highlights other organizations with effective CTA strategies. Top nonprofit websites feature clear, prominent CTAs with straightforward language that encourages supporters to get more deeply involved. Your buttons or links might say “Become a Volunteer in 3 Easy Steps” or “View Our Open Positions.”

The same idea applies to corporate websites, too. You might include a CTA on your homepage and in your menu to drive traffic to your online job description or application.

When it comes to website navigation, your main menu is one of the most essential tools for helping visitors browse your site.

To help audience members quickly find recruitment opportunities, keep your main menu as simple as possible. It’s recommended to only have between three to five top-level menu items. Any more than that can become distracting for visitors and look cluttered.

However, your menu can also include sub-menu items that offer more information. For example, take a look at how the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy has organized its top-level menu. The menu includes just five main items and has a dropdown feature that reveals subcategories under each primary item.

Website visitors looking to get involved in volunteer opportunities can simply click the “Things to Do” menu item and find more information about different types of volunteer opportunities.

This navigation style keeps your homepage streamlined and uncluttered while still providing visitors with the detailed information they need to navigate your site.

To make your website a useful recruitment resource for applicants, it needs to be up to date. Your recruitment page should include an updated list of all of your open positions.

Keeping your recruitment page up to date ensures that you won’t receive applications for positions that have already been filled.

Each position should also include a detailed job description. Include the following information in your job or volunteer description:

Including this information helps potential applicants understand whether they’re actually interested in the role or qualified to fulfill it.

It’s also essential to provide a simple way for applicants to browse your open positions. For example, check out the career page for General Data, a business focused on helping companies streamline their operations and function more efficiently. The website allows visitors to browse open positions according to their location, department, and type (full-time or part-time).

Keeping your open positions updated and easily accessible ensures you aren’t wasting applicants’ or your team’s time with applications for roles that are no longer available.

As potential new employees or volunteers fill out your application, it can be helpful to offer them the ability to create an account on your website. This allows them to save their progress as they work and return to the application if they need to step away for any reason.

For instance, applicants may need to step away to look for essential information like their social security card or letters of recommendation. When they create an account and save their progress, they can return to your application whenever is most convenient for them.

Redesigning your website to improve navigation isn’t a simple task. You must audit your website’s current structure, take navigation best practices into account, and consider how to make the user experience more appealing for prospective employees or volunteers.

That’s why it can be useful to work with a professional web design and development firm to help optimize your website. Web development agencies offer services such as audience research, interactive design, and website support to enhance performance

If you aren’t sure where to start when it comes to updating your website’s navigation, meet with a web designer to create a game plan. In addition to improving your website’s navigation to support recruitment, your web designer can offer recommendations for improving other aspects of your website as well.

Whether you’re a business or nonprofit, your website serves many crucial purposes. Recruiting new employees or volunteers is likely a top priority for your organization.

When you redesign your website’s navigation to facilitate a streamlined recruitment process, you can connect with more potential employees or volunteers to find the right people to join your organization.