In our latest webinar, Are you aiming high or failing fast in your careers section?, Richard Dixon, Chief Digital Officer at Black Sun, was joined by Lauren Purnell, Strategy Director at People Made, to explore how organisations can communicate digitally to attract and win the best talent in an increasingly competitive market.
The session examined firstly what candidates expect from careers websites and how companies can develop the narrative to meet these expectations. Secondly, the latest findings from Black Sun’s Digital Index and examples of emerging best practice. Thirdly, we explored how AI is changing the way candidates discover and evaluate employers and what organisations can do to strengthen the visibility and authority of their careers content.
It was a highly engaging webinar, with lots of questions from attendees covering everything from careers website platforms and authentic employer storytelling to analytics and AI discoverability. We have included these questions, together with the answers given during the session, at the end of this write-up.
Careers websites have traditionally been viewed as a way to showcase opportunities, attract talent and encourage applications. However, their role can be much broader.
A careers site is an opportunity to introduce candidates to the organisation they could become part of. It should communicate who the organisation is, what it stands for, what people can expect from it and, equally, what it expects from its people.
Rather than simply selling the opportunity, the site should bring the entire employment deal to life and help candidates make a more informed decision about where they want to work.
Careers sites are often one of the first places where candidates begin to form a meaningful impression of an employer. The language used, the people featured, the opportunities presented and the overall experience all help establish expectations about what working for the organisation will be like.
However, that impression is increasingly being formed before candidates reach the careers site. 70% of job seekers use AI to research employers before visiting their careers site, making it increasingly important that an organisation’s employer story is clear and consistent wherever candidates encounter it.
The candidate journey does not end when someone applies. It continues through the interview process, offer, onboarding and everyday employee experience. When those experiences reinforce what candidates were originally promised, they can build confidence, connection and belief in the organisation.
The strongest careers sites provide a genuine window into what it is like to work for an organisation.
They are human, allowing candidates to see real people, hear real voices and get a sense of the personalities behind the business. They are immersive, helping people picture the work they could be doing, the colleagues they could work alongside and the environment they could become part of.
They are also specific. Rather than simply promising great opportunities, they show candidates what those opportunities actually look like. Importantly, they are honest. There is a difference between presenting an aspirational employer story and creating an idealised version of working life that employees will not recognise once they join. The most compelling employer stories are exciting while remaining grounded in reality.
Distinctiveness is central to this. Every organisation has its own culture, strengths and ways of working. Bringing these qualities to the surface gives candidates a genuine sense of what makes working for the organisation different from working anywhere else.
A successful careers website has two important jobs to do.
The first is to make the employment deal clear. Candidates need to understand what they will get from working for the organisation, whether that is development, reward, flexibility, belonging or the opportunity to make an impact. They should also understand what it takes to succeed, including the pace of work, the standards that matter and the behaviours and attitudes that help people thrive.
Being clear about expectations is not a negative. For the right candidates, those expectations can be motivating.
The second is to make the employment deal believable. Organisations need to provide evidence, including real examples of people growing, contributing and succeeding. The language, design and personality of the experience should also provide a genuine sense of the organisation.
Ultimately, the goal is not to appeal to everyone, but to help the right people recognise an opportunity that is right for them.
For organisations looking to strengthen their careers communications, there are five practical considerations to keep in mind:
Ultimately, the careers site should go beyond providing a reason to apply and give candidates a reason to believe in a future with the organisation.
Black Sun’s Digital Index assesses corporate websites against best practice across content, digital experience and the use of AI. Within careers, this includes the employee narrative, communication of working life and opportunities, and the journey through searching and applying for a role.
Careers areas are often among the most visited sections of corporate websites, making them important destinations for job seekers. This year’s research points to greater emphasis on communicating what it is really like to work for an organisation:
Organisations are placing greater focus on sharing their culture and values and using employee stories and profiles to bring working life to life. They are also developing more targeted content for particular audiences, including early careers, specific roles and sectors of the job market. Greater attention is also being given to communicating learning, development and career progression.
Together, these developments point towards careers sites becoming more purposeful, with greater consideration given to how the employee proposition is communicated and how the right candidates are encouraged to explore and apply for relevant roles.
Careers content should not exist in isolation from the wider corporate story.
The employee narrative should connect directly with the organisation’s purpose, helping candidates understand how the employee value proposition relates to what the organisation is trying to achieve. Roles should also connect to the organisation’s wider mission, enabling candidates to see how their potential contribution fits within the bigger picture.
Sustainability is also an important part of this connected story. One of the most frequently travelled pathways through a corporate website is from careers to sustainability. Careers content should therefore communicate, even in summary form, the organisation’s sustainability commitments, purpose and approach to delivering a long-term sustainable future.
Several organisations provide examples of how careers communications can be strengthened.
NatWest Group uses an introductory narrative that connects opportunities with progress, while signposting priority audiences such as early talent and bringing employee stories into the experience. Its careers content also connects with the organisation’s purpose and behaviours, helping candidates understand both its broader philosophy and approach to employees.
Anglo American presents its careers narrative from the job seeker’s perspective and uses purposeful language to connect career growth, industry transformation and wider impact. It also communicates what working at the organisation is like, incorporates its Glassdoor rating and includes employee and senior leadership perspectives.
NatWest Group also targets graduates with focused content around graduate opportunities, alongside internships and apprenticeships. Information explains the programmes available, the application process and the support provided to graduates as they join. FAQs help candidates answer practical questions while also creating content that can be surfaced effectively through AI search when properly constructed and marked up.
Capita provides content targeted towards military service leavers, including relevant opportunities, perspectives that help bring the experience to life and practical advice on CVs and personal statements. This demonstrates an understanding of the audience while offering candidates support and encouragement as they consider applying for a role.
HSBC uses targeted content to explain opportunities in investment banking, the skills candidates can develop and what they can expect from the working environment. Frequently asked questions provide additional support and create a clearly structured experience for a specific candidate audience.
Together, these examples demonstrate the value of moving beyond generic careers information to create experiences that address the specific interests, questions and needs of different candidate audiences.
Employee stories play an important role in making an organisation’s careers proposition credible and bringing working life to life.
Although employee stories may not necessarily attract the highest page views across a careers site, they are often among the most engaged-with content. Candidates spend longer exploring individual profiles and hearing directly from employees about what it is like to work for the organisation.
Standard Chartered demonstrates how employee stories can help bring the organisation and employee experience to life.
These stories can also be used across the wider careers site rather than remaining as standalone pieces of content. Organisations can surface graduate stories alongside graduate opportunities, or stories from experienced hires and particular roles alongside the pages most relevant to those audiences.
This gives organisations an opportunity to enrich the careers journey with authentic employee perspectives at the moments when they are most relevant to candidates.
The careers experience also needs to make it clear to candidates what will happen when they decide to apply.
Standard Chartered uses its application zone to encourage candidates to search for roles while also clearly setting out the different stages of the application process. Breaking the journey down step by step gives candidates clarity about the process they will go through.
Capita provides information around the application process alongside FAQs designed to help candidates understand the experience and answer common questions.
FAQs can also have an important role in an AI-influenced search environment. By anticipating the questions candidates might ask and providing clear answers, organisations can support visitors to the site while also creating content that can be surfaced by AI systems.
Providing this clarity and support can help candidates as they move from exploring the organisation to searching and applying for a role.
Careers websites increasingly need to serve two audiences: the people visiting the site and the AI systems discovering and interpreting its content.
The human experience remains essential. Careers content needs to be engaging and informative. At the same time, candidates are using AI to evaluate companies and find out what it is like to work for them, meaning careers content must also be structured and published in ways that make it discoverable through AI search.
Around 60% of searches are now clickless, meaning users can receive answers without visiting the source website. Understanding how an organisation appears through AI search is therefore becoming increasingly important for careers communications.
The website nevertheless remains a source of truth where candidates can verify content, find out what it is like to work for the organisation and understand available opportunities. It sits within a broader ecosystem that can include job boards, social media and other external sources.
Delivering consistent messages through social media and the corporate website can also support AI authority and increase visibility for candidates using AI tools to explore future roles.
Careers content should work effectively for candidates while also being accessible and understandable to AI.
There are several practical considerations. Clear summaries at the top of pages and bullet points can help communicate key information and reasons to join. FAQs can answer candidates’ questions while also addressing the kinds of queries organisations want their content to answer through AI search.
Technical foundations matter too. Meta descriptions and schema markup were highlighted during the session as important considerations for AI visibility.
Organisations should also think across their wider communications ecosystem. Consistency across the corporate website, social channels and other candidate touchpoints can extend reach and help establish AI authority. This does not mean publishing identical content everywhere, but maintaining a consistent narrative, themes and terminology.
AI creates another important consideration for careers communications: transparency about how the technology is being used during recruitment.
The webinar highlighted that 75% of job seekers believe organisations should fully disclose how AI is used in the hiring process, while many also believe employers should be legally required to disclose when AI is being used to evaluate them. Despite this, many organisations do not currently disclose this information.
HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group provide examples of what good communication around AI can look like within careers.
The examples demonstrated two sides of the AI conversation. Organisations can be transparent about what they expect in terms of candidates using generative AI, including where they should and should not use it. They can also explain transparently how AI is used by the organisation itself within recruitment. Lloyds Banking Group, for example, was shown communicating directly about how it uses AI for recruitment.
This makes AI a two-way communications issue. As candidates increasingly look for this information, openness about both candidate and employer use of AI can become an important part of the careers experience.
Traditional website analytics remain important, but organisations need a broader view of the complete candidate journey.
Analytics should help organisations understand where candidates arrive from, including the specific channels driving them to the website, and how they then move through the careers experience. Social media activity can also be tracked to understand the impact of particular posts.
This can be considered by audience type. For early careers, for example, organisations can look at where candidates came from, where they go within the careers section, their conversion rate to apply and where they drop out. This can help improve signposting, cross-linking and the content presented to particular audiences.
Website analytics should ideally be integrated with the applicant tracking system, providing an end-to-end view of the journey from the careers site through to application and enabling organisations to identify where candidates may be dropping out.
AI creates another dimension to measurement. Organisations can examine which AI search tools are scraping their websites, including which pages and PDFs are being accessed. This can provide insight into the types of content being used to answer candidate queries.
AI authority analysis can provide another perspective by helping organisations identify the search terms they want to be visible for and understand whether they are being cited or mentioned. Heat-mapping tools can add further insight into how candidates interact with careers pages, including where they click, hover and scroll.
Black Sun supports organisations in evaluating and strengthening their careers communications through:
To find out more about how we can help strengthen your careers communications, please contact:
Abbie Dixon, Relationship Marketing Executive
adixon@blacksun-global.com
Do you typically build careers sites within the existing corporate website CMS or as a separate site platform? What are the pros and cons of each approach?
In most cases, an integrated careers and corporate website creates a more connected experience. It makes it easier for candidates to explore extended information about who the organisation is, its sustainability information and other areas of the corporate story than it would on a separate platform – and avoids repetition of content.
A corporate website can also provide greater flexibility, as some careers sites and applicant tracking system based website can be constrained in terms of the creative experience and tools they can provide.
If the careers experience sits within the corporate website, it is recommended that the applicant tracking system should be integrated so candidates can stay in the corporate site and search for a role – only having to leave the site to apply or wish to register a CV.
Bringing the experience together on one platform can also make end-to-end analytics easier and provide greater search and AI authority. If a separate platform is used, organisations should ensure the applicant tracking system can deliver the desired candidate experience.
How do you balance being honest about the employee experience while still making the organisation attractive to candidates?
An employer story at its best should be both an invitation and a challenge. Being honest does not mean being negative or underselling the opportunity. It means being clear about what makes the organisation different, including both the opportunities and the expectations.
For example, a fast-paced business with high-performance expectations could be very appealing to the right person. Communicating that clearly helps candidates recognise whether it is somewhere they will do well and succeed.
Ultimately, the goal is not to attract everyone, but to attract the right people for the right reasons.
What is the one thing you would recommend organisations do first if they want to improve their careers site?
Once you have identified your job-seeker audiences, start with an audit of the narrative, content and key messages against their needs and priorities. Look at whether there is a clear articulation of the employee proposition and whether the site covers the key areas candidates look for, including what it is like to work there, culture and values.
It is also important to look at how closely the story being told matches what employees actually experience. Speaking to colleagues, particularly new joiners, can help establish whether the reality has lived up to what they expected when they applied.
Organisations can then look at where they are making claims without much evidence, where they could be more specific and where real employee voices could bring the experience to life. Sometimes it is about making the content already available more credible, human and useful – and reviewing the user journeys across the site to make them frictionless.
What analytics would you expect a good careers site to have in place, and how do you measure the journey from careers content through to application?
Analytics should track where people are coming from when they arrive on the website, including the specific channels driving them there, and how they then move through the careers experience. Social media tracking can also help organisations understand the impact of particular posts.
Where possible, the journey should be considered by audience type. For early careers, for example, organisations can look at where candidates came from, where they go within the site, their conversion rate to apply and where they drop out.
Analytics should also be integrated with the applicant tracking system so the journey can be followed from the careers website into the application process, including application completion and any drop-off points.
Heat-mapping tools can provide an additional perspective by showing where visitors click and hover, how far they scroll and which links they use.
AI scraping and crawling provide another source of information. Organisations can look at which AI search tools are accessing their website and which pages or PDFs are being scraped. AI authority analysis can then help identify priority search terms and assess whether the organisation is being cited or mentioned.
What are the key elements of an AI discovery strategy for careers across the corporate website, social media and other candidate touchpoints?
The starting point is understanding the different audiences the organisation needs to appeal to and determining the key messages and touchpoints it wants to land. Organisations can then assess how they appear across different channels and develop a communications programme across their website, social channels and other candidate touchpoints.
Consistency is important for building authority. That does not mean publishing the same content everywhere, but delivering a consistent narrative and themes and using similar terminology across the digital ecosystem.
Organisations should then continue to assess performance against that overarching strategy. As Lauren Purnell highlighted, gaps or discrepancies between what an organisation says, what is out there in the world and what its people experience can also become apparent through AI.
If you had to prioritise three actions to improve AI discoverability for careers, what would they be?
First, look at whether careers content is developed and published in a way that works effectively for AI. This can include summaries at the top of pages and bullet points communicating key benefits and reasons to join.
Second, consider FAQs. These should answer candidates’ questions while also considering the terms and answers the organisation wants to provide through AI search.
Third, make sure technical foundations such as meta descriptions and schema markup are in place to support AI visibility.
Do you set SEO and GA strategies and manage technical back-end work, scripts and crawls?
Yes. Black Sun provides this service for a number of clients and can support organisations looking for help in this area
About Black Sun
Black Sun Global is a stakeholder advisory and engagement agency that's been driving transformation and positive change for ambitious brands for more than 20 years. With deep expertise in disclosure and reporting, ESG, sustainability, and digital engagement, we reshape how organisations connect with customers, investors, employees, and the wider world.
We are trusted partners to some of the most influential global organisations, sparking innovation and sustainable performance through our strategic insights, partnerships, and proprietary technologies.
As founders of the Positive Change Group, we are on a mission to create a new kind of stakeholder relations partner. Our world-class specialists work closely with executive leadership teams to protect reputations, inspire trust, and promote responsible business practices - building resilience and long-term value in a rapidly changing world.
For more information, please visit: www.blacksun-global.com
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