The Secret to UK Hiring Success: Why Your Career Site Is a Game Changer

Brought to you by OakGar Recruitment, specialists in Health and Social Care — powering smarter, simpler hiring.

Not all applicants are created equal — and at OakGar Recruitment, we’ve seen this play out across countless UK hiring journeys. Some candidates arrive informed, motivated, and ready to engage. Others… aren’t quite the same calibre.

But here’s the standout insight employers often miss: Candidates who apply directly via your career site are up to three times more likely to be hired than those from job boards.

For OakGar Recruitment and the businesses we support, this insight has reshaped how we advise clients to invest their recruitment energy. Your career site isn’t just a job listing space — it’s one of your most powerful conversion channels.

Why Direct Applicants Are Your Highest‑Value Applicants

So, what makes these candidates different? It boils down to a few key factors:

• High Intent: People who visit your career site are doing more than just casting a wide net. They’re actively seeking out your brand specifically, which shows a genuine interest in your company.

• Better Fit: These candidates have taken the time to explore your site, learn about your culture, and understand your open roles. This self-selection often means they're a closer match for what you're looking for.

• Less Competition: Unlike applicants who apply to dozens of companies on job boards, career site visitors are more focused on you. This means less noise and a higher quality pool of candidates.

Simply put, career site applicants are often your most promising external candidates.

The Big Problem: Losing High-Intent Visitors

Despite this clear advantage, most companies aren’t making the most of their career site traffic. The sad reality is that a huge number of visitors leave without applying, signing up for alerts, or even engaging with a chatbot. This means many of your best potential candidates are slipping through the cracks. They came looking for you, but you didn't give them a clear path to connect.

How to Turn Visitors into Applicants

If you want to maximise the value of your career site, you need to focus on converting those visitors into engaged candidates. Here’s how you can do it:

• Personalise the Experience: Make it easy for visitors to find relevant jobs without a lot of clicking or searching. The quicker they can see opportunities that fit their skills, the more likely they are to stick around.

• Offer Low-Effort Engagement: Not everyone is ready to apply on their first visit. Give them a simple, one-click option to join your talent network or sign up for job alerts. This keeps them in your pipeline even if they aren't ready to take the leap right away.

• Follow Up Quickly and Effectively: Timing is everything. The highest engagement happens when you follow up within a day or two, not weeks later. When you do reach out, make sure the content is relevant to what they were looking at on your site. A generic monthly newsletter isn’t going to cut it.

The Payoff: Stronger Hiring Outcomes

By focusing on converting your career site visitors, you'll see tangible results:

• More high-quality applicants without increasing your ad spend on job boards.

• A robust, long-term talent pipeline for those hard-to-fill positions.

• A reduced reliance on external job boards for candidate volume.

Your career site visitors are a valuable, and often underutilised, source of top talent. By making it easy for them to engage and following up with relevant opportunities, you can build a stronger pipeline and dramatically improve your hiring results.

OakGar Recruitment is here to help you do exactly that.