Stories Inc. has created culture content for countless career site projects. Whether you’re relaunching, refreshing, or starting from scratch, we’ve seen it all. 

We’re sharing the best way to tackle content for a career site project based on more than a decade of experience. While so much more goes into launching a new career site outside of content, it’s content that will drive interest and ultimately help candidates opt-in or out of your opportunities. 

What your career site project needs

A career site is the hub of what it’s like to work at your company. Your job is to fill the hub with real insights into the employee experience. 

Your content needs to resonate with the right candidates so they take action like applying or signing up for your talent community. At the very least, your career site should leave a memorable impression about your company with its visitors. 

Most people visiting your site won’t be ready to apply right now and that’s okay. The goal is for the right candidates to remember you when the time is right.

In order for the magic to happen, candidates need to be served the right information at the right time. To achieve this, you need to understand two essential things: who your candidate is and where they are in their candidate journey.

Who are your candidates?

Intern, executive, mid-level salesperson, technologist: who are you targeting? The more specific you can get, the better personas you can create. Your content will best resonate with your target audiences once you’ve identified who they are and what they may care about.

Where they are in their candidate journeys?

The content across your site must resonate with candidates as they advance through the different stages of the candidate journey:

• awareness of your company
• consideration phases: application, interviews
• conversion: offer, acceptance

The content you use to communicate and convert candidates to the next stage in their journey is critical.

Employee stories at each stage

Employee stories are the most effective content on a career site. They give real insight into culture, prove who you say you are, and they’re memorable. They’re a talent attraction secret weapon, and they’re closers.

We’ve developed the employee story content personalization pyramid to show how compelling personalized content is needed throughout your career site and at every stage of the candidate journey. The story content becomes more specific and targeted as a candidate moves through the hiring process.

Employee story content for a career site project

When embarking on a career site project, you should aim to have content that addresses each category in the pyramid.

Universal culture content

This content speaks to the common employee experience, regardless of a team member’s tenure or functional expertise. It can include stories about general culture, diversity and inclusion, core values, or other themes that would be important to any prospective employee. 

This culture video from The Knot Worldwide tells the story of the employee experience and would be helpful content for any candidate interested in the company. 

Talent category content

This content speaks directly to people who share a common background. This could be different talent pipelines you’re building like early career talent, women in technology, or veterans.

In this example video targeted early career professionals, LaToya shares how Intel has created a welcoming environment since day one. 

Broader team content

What’s it like to work on the sales team? How about on the inside sales team? Specifics go a long way. 

Here at Stories Inc., we refer to this content as the Team Value Proposition. In addition to showing what a team does, it also tells someone why they should want to work on that team at your company. 

Persona content

What is it like to be a woman systems engineer in cybersecurity, interested in career growth? This content appeals to a person’s specific interests and uses a combination of pyramid perspectives to target candidates with similar experiences and attributes.

This video from Lockheed Martin showcases two women in tech who talk about the opportunities and growth they’ve found working at the company.

How to use content on your career site

Your job is to strategically place content where it most makes sense for candidates along their journeys.

For example, universal content should be featured on the home page and other general pages about culture. That’s for everyone.

For important topics like diversity and inclusion, create a broader page about your commitment. But don’t stop there. Employee story content about employee resource groups or other company initiatives brings diversity and inclusion to life for candidates who value it in a future employer. 

Other pages where you can use employee story content include specific pages for talent categories and landing pages for teams or specific careers like sales and technology. 

Successful career site projects are driven by employee story content

We reviewed all 100 career sites of the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work For list and found that employee story content is a best practice. 

Employee story content is ideal for any page on your career site. When candidates can learn about culture, roles, and benefits from actual employees, they’re more likely to connect to your organization and consider it as a future employer.

If you’re looking for help creating more meaningful content for your career site, get in touch to see how we can help!