How to communicate about your take-home assessment on the careers page

The Careers Page Matters

The careers page is one of the most important pages on a company's website when it comes to recruiting and it's the first place candidates go to check out a company.

Why is that?

It's obvious, they want to know what the company is all about, what they can expect if they join the company, what the hiring process looks like (a very important one), what the culture is like, and so on.

In other words, they want to see if your company is a good fit for them.

What this means is that your careers page and the information you put on it will have a very high impact on a number of things:

• The candidate's decision to apply or not
• The number of candidates that you'll attract
• The quality of the candidates you'll attract
• The number of candidates that would be interested in doing a take-home assessment

Just by looking at all these things that career pages impact, it's easy to see why they are so important and why it's essential that you get it right if you want to attract the best candidates and if you want all of these things to improve.

What most companies are doing with their careers pages

Now that we know how important the careers page is, let's take a look at what most companies are doing with theirs.

If you take a look around you'll see that most companies are: writing about their perks (already in the job description), presenting their company and values (probably in the job description), sharing open positions and sharing employer branding content.

What's the problem with this?

Well, candidates come to the careers page with a lot of questions, like:

• How does the hiring process work?
• How long does it take?
• Why does a company have a skill assignment? What type of skill assessment they have? How much time does it take? When can I start working on it?
• Is the process the same for everyone?
• What is the most important to the company? What do they evaluate and how?
• Is the process discriminatory in any way? What practises company implements to make sure it is not discriminatory?
• Am I going to get feedback, in which form?
• What is the company culture like?
• Is the company doing well? Will I be able to grow in this company?

And as you can see, most companies are not doing a great job at addressing these questions.

In fact, they are doing a terrible job, which leads to a lot of confusion and frustration on the part of the candidates.

Because of that many candidates decide not to apply, not to do the take-home assignment, or drop out of the process altogether. And, I don't even have to say it, but this type of careers page doesn't help you at all with attracting the best candidates.

Now, what can you do about it?

Well, as a company, you have two options.

One is to pretend you didn't read this article, do the things most companies are doing and continue to be frustrated with the results you are getting.

Or, you can decide to put some thought into your careers page, make it a place where they can find the information they are looking for, and actually get the results that you want.

The second option sounds a lot better, doesn't it?

How to make your careers page more effective

If you read this far, I am pretty sure you are interested in the second option, so let's take a look at how you can make your careers page more effective and that will actually help you get more people interested in working with you and more people interested in doing a take-home assessment.

Have a special page under the career part of your website about recruiting process

Having a special page under the career part of your website about your recruiting process is a great way to make sure that candidates can find the information they are looking for.

Candidates want to know how the whole recruiting process works so by having a page dedicated to it you are showing that you care about your candidates and that you want them to have the best candidate experience possible.

On this special page, you should include information like how the hiring process works, what the different steps are, what is involved in each step, how long it takes, what type of skill assessment you use, how they can prepare for it, when they can start working on it, what practices you have to make sure that the process is not discriminatory, and what type of feedback they can expect, etc.

Basically, you want to be as transparent as possible so your candidates know what to expect.

Add FAQs Section

Another great way to make your careers page more effective is to include a FAQs section.

As we already mentioned, candidates have a lot of questions when they come to your careers page, and answering them in a FAQs section is a great way to make sure that they can find the information they are looking for and that there's no confusion.

When it comes to the question you should include, we already listed some of the most common ones in the section above, but for the best results, you should come up with a list of questions that are specific to your company.

There are a couple of things you can do to come up with these questions.

You can come up with the questions, you can ask your new employees what they were looking to find out when they were applying, or you can ask candidates during the interview if they have any questions that they were not able to find answered on the website.

Once you have a list of questions, make sure that you answer them clearly and concisely, and voila, you have a great FAQs section that will help candidates feel a lot more comfortable with the process and with your company.

Share your story and how the hiring and skill assessment process looks from the inside

One of the best things you can do to make your careers page more effective is to share your story and how the hiring and skill assessment process looks from the inside.

We already said that you should include a special page about your recruiting process, but here we are talking about going a step further and actually sharing your story on this page.

When you share your story, you are giving candidates a chance to see the process from the inside and understand how it works.

You can talk about what made you decide to start recruiting, what type of people you are looking for, what skills they need to have, how the take-home assignment process works, how they can prepare for it, how you decide who to hire, and also you can ask your hiring managers to explain what they are looking for to understand when they are giving take-home assessments, who is making the challenges/questions, based on what, etc.

Sharing your story and all these things with your candidates is a great way to connect with them on a personal level and show them that you are real people who care about their experiences. It also helps candidates understand why the process works the way it does, and it leads to more candidates willing to do a take-home assessment.

Do not be afraid to address concerns and to be transparent

One of the things that you should always keep in mind when it comes to your careers page is that you should not be afraid to address concerns and be transparent.

If you do not address these concerns and doubts, candidates will be left with a lot of unanswered questions and they will be less likely to apply, let alone do a take-home assessment.

What do we exactly mean by this?

Well, if you to put yourself in the candidate’s shoes for a moment and think about which

concerns would you have about a take-home assessment, you would probably come up with the following:

• "I will waste my time."
• "Hiring managers will spend 3 minutes on review"
• "Task will be boring or too extensive."
• "They will use me for free consulting."

And stuff like that.

Now, if you come to a careers page and it doesn't address any of these concerns you may have, would it make you more likely to do a take-home assessment? Of course not.

In fact, it would make you less likely to do one.

But if you come to a careers page and all your concerns are addressed in a transparent way, you will feel a lot more comfortable doing one, right? Obviously.

So how can you address these concerns in a way that is transparent and helpful?

First, you need to acknowledge the candidate's perspective. He might have a negative experience or have heard a horror story about a take-home assessment. Either way, you need to address this concern head-on and explain how the process actually works.

After that, you should try to explain your position:

• Yes, we know that some companies do not have skill assignments.
• We believe that the take-home assignments are the best way to see how a candidate thinks and solves problems. We tried to use whiteboards and leetcode, but none worked well.
• Take-home assignment was required for all team members, including your hiring manager. It makes sense to hire a candidate up to that standard.
• Some candidates are not empowered during the live discussions and cannot present their knowledge. This way, all candidates get fair treatment.
• Our hiring managers are not biased. They can see only your task, not your personal information.

And in the end, you can ask a candidate to put himself in the hiring manager's shoes and explain how a take-home assessment would help in the decision-making process.

In any case, always try to be transparent and helpful. It will go a long way in the candidate-driven market we live in today.

Examples of great careers pages

If you are like me, when you are learning or reading about something new, you like to see good examples of how others did it successfully so here are a few examples of great careers pages that will give you some ideas on how to address the concerns of your candidates and show them that you are a company they would love to work for.

Hubspot

The HubSpot candidate experience page is a great example of how to do things right.

They have covered everything, from why they do what they do, to the benefits of working at HubSpot, how it's like to work there, how the whole process looks like, how take-home assessment works, an FAQ section, and more.

Basically, they have thought of everything and it is all explained in a very transparent way. They even added a bunch of useful videos and blogs that can help you prepare for the interview and the take-home assessment. Isn't that amazing?

Calendly

Calendly careers page is another great example. It is simple, yet effective. Everything is explained in a very transparent and easy-to-understand way and all concerns of the candidates are addressed.

Murex

Murex did a great job with their careers page as well. They explain in detail how the whole process looks, especially the take-home assessment part in which they tell why they use it, how it looks and how it helps in the decision-making process.

Basecamp

When it comes to communicating about take-home assessments, Basecamp took it up a notch and wrote a whole blog post about their take-home assessment process. Now tell me, if a company is willing to go to that length, how can you not trust them?  They explained everything in such detail that there is no doubt left in the candidate's mind about what to expect.

Final thoughts

Now, after going through all of the different things, from why careers pages matter, to how to make your careers page more efficient and great examples of careers pages, we want to clarify something.

We know that you, as an internal recruiter, might not be in charge of careers on your website. There are many stakeholders involved, employer branding team and the marketing department but even if you are not in charge, you can start the conversation, present improvements, and influence others to change their opinion and make things better for the candidates.

And for the end, remember, it's a candidate-driven market, and you as a recruiter are not only selling them the company but also the recruiting process. So make sure to communicate about it. It will go a long way.