Recruitment agency landing page: the wrong door

A recruitment agency has two customers, and many pages serve the one that is easier to show. Job seekers want a list of roles and a place to upload a CV. Employers want to say which role needs filling, how senior it is, and when they need a shortlist. When both sit on one page, the employer often reads the first button, sees find a job, and clicks it. The candidate form then asks for a CV and a current salary. The employer closes the tab, or emails an address they found in the footer.

• Does the first screen show a button for employers, labeled in their words, such as hire or fill a role?
• Does the role field accept a job title that is not on your list?
• Does the sector list include the industries where you actually place people?
• Does the inquiry form ask for a CV or a salary the employer cannot give yet?
• Does the confirmation say who will call the employer, and roughly when?

Many agency sites were built to recruit candidates first, because candidates are the supply the agency needs, and the page reflects that. The hero photo shows people at work. The first button invites a visitor to search roles. The employer section sits in the footer under a label such as companies. A hiring manager scanning for a way to hire does not read a footer. They see a list of jobs and assume there is nothing for them, or they click a button that opens a CV upload.

The fix is not a bigger employer section. It is a first screen where each visitor can tell which door is theirs at a glance, in words they would use about themselves. Candidates say find a job. Employers say hire, or I need to fill a role. The two doors should not share a form, a list of fields or a confirmation email, because each group reads the next step in a different way.

An employer who finds the right door can still stall on the inquiry if the fields come in the wrong order. A role field with a closed list fails when the title is a specialist one, such as clinical data manager or site reliability engineer, because the list was built for common roles. A sector field fails when the company's own industry is missing from it. An urgency field that asks for a start date weeks away makes a manager who needs someone this week pick the least accurate answer, or leave.

Type an unusual title into the role field on your own phone, such as the name of a job your agency has never placed. If the form offers an other option with a text box, the field works and the list is the limit. If the form refuses the title with no explanation, or the next button stays gray, the field is the cause. If the employer form only loads after the candidate form has been closed, the routing is the cause, and no change to the fields will fix it.

Landing page testing

Send one simulated visitor to your home page with this task: ask an agency to find a warehouse manager by spring. The visitor is a hiring manager at a company with a warehouse and no recruiter yet, reading the site on a phone at work. The test picks the employer door, fills in the role and sector, and reaches the confirmation. Use a made-up company and a made-up contact name. Keep real candidate CVs, real salaries and real employer details out of every run.

The first run finds the door. The fix puts the employer button first, adds a role field that takes any title, and widens the sector list. Run the same warehouse inquiry after each change, and after you add a sector, open a new office, or start an ad aimed at companies. A campaign for candidates can change the home page, and the employer route can break without anyone noticing.