Recruitment website design: Two audiences, one website,
opposite needs.
Candidates want jobs and want them now. Clients want to believe you can find people. The same site has to do both without either feeling like they landed on somebody else’s page.
Job board·ATS·Candidates·Clients
The job
Most recruitment websites are a job board with a company website wrapped around it, and the join is where they fall down: roles typed in twice, a board that looks bolted on, and a client section that reads like an afterthought.
The integration is the whole job. If your ATS can publish a feed, the board is fed from it and nobody retypes a role. If it cannot, that changes what the site should be, and it is better to know on the first call.
Recruitment web design: The whole list, nothing extra.
Every one of these is in the price. If a job needs something that is not here, it is in the written scope before you say yes, not on the invoice after.
A board fed by your ATS
Bullhorn, Vincere, JobAdder, Recruit CRM and most others publish roles. Where a feed exists, a consultant posts once and it appears; where it does not, we design around that honestly.
Job pages that can be found
Each role its own page with proper markup, so it can appear in Google’s job results rather than living inside a search widget nothing can read.
Applying, without an account
CV, contact, apply. Every step between a candidate and a submitted application loses some of them, and the good ones are applying to three agencies at once.
The client side, on its own terms
Sectors, how you work, what your fees look like and why you rather than the agency down the road. Not a paragraph under the job board.
Registering when nothing fits
A candidate with the right skills and no matching role today is worth capturing. That is a different form from applying and usually missing.
Roles that have been filled
Expired jobs decided rather than left: closed, redirected or kept. Old job pages hold links, and a board that 404s hundreds of them is a slow problem.
Sitemap and page structure
What pages exist, how they relate, and what each one is for. This is where SEO is won or lost, before a line of code.
Design, if there is none
I will design it: a site that looks considered and does the job. If the brand underneath it needs doing too, that is its own piece of work and it has its own page.
Build
From your design or mine, on a platform that suits the team who will keep it running rather than the one I enjoy most.
Real content in
Your words and pictures loaded and laid out, not lorem ipsum with a note to fill it later. If an existing site is being replaced, moving it across is its own job: see website migration.
Accessibility and performance
Keyboard, focus order, contrast and labels checked, not assumed. Core Web Vitals measured on real pages, then fixed.
Launch and handover
A checklist worked through line by line, then documentation and a walkthrough with whoever picks it up.
Sounds like you if
“We have been quoted before and never seen what we were paying for.”
One page
A single scrolling page, £600. A launch, a test, or a business that needs to exist online by Friday.
Five pages
Home, about, services, one more, contact, £1,200. The standard small business site.
On WordPress
The same five pages on WordPress, £1,600. More to build, and more you can change yourself afterwards.
A shop
An online shop starts at £2,000: five content pages, up to twenty-five products, payments, shipping, tax and the policies.
Changes afterwards
£75 an hour, billed after they are done, or a monthly plan if there are enough of them to be worth fixing the price.
What is never extra
The sitemap, the redirects, the accessibility pass and the handover. They are part of the build, not a line added at the end.
Hosting and the certificate
A WordPress site on a managed host on my account, with the security certificate kept renewed, for £50 a month. The domain stays registered in your name.
Updated every month
WordPress, the theme and the plugins brought up to date, then the pages that matter checked by hand.
A backup every day
A fresh backup every day, and another before any update runs, so any change can be undone.
Changes when you need them
A reply within twelve working hours saying what it needs and how long it will take, before any of it is started. £75 an hour, or on a plan.
The note on the 1st
What was updated, what was changed and how many hours were used, next to the invoice.
Leaving, and what you take
A month's notice after the first three months, then a full backup and help moving it, free. The domain is already yours.
Sounds like you if
“The last person built it and then we never heard from them again.”
How a recruitment website is built: From hello to handover.
Step 1
12 hours max
I reply
Working hours, unless I am on holiday and have said so.
Step 2
Day 0
Scope call
30 minutes. Which ATS, how many roles live at once, and whether clients or candidates matter more.
Step 3
+2 days
Written scope
What the ATS allows, what the board will do, and the price. Fixed, before anything starts.
Step 4
Build
The feed first
Roles arriving and rendering before anything is designed around them, because the feed decides what a job page can be.
Step 5
End
Handed over
Logins, a guide, and whoever posts roles shown what appears where.
This is for you
Recruitment website cost: A recruitment website is for you
if any of these sound familiar.
- Roles typed into the ATS and the site
- A job board bolted on and obviously so
- Candidates dropping out of the application
- Clients who cannot tell what you specialise in
It is not, if
- You want a job board with no agency behind it
- The ATS has no feed and cannot be changed
- You want candidates sourced as well
Not sure which side you are on? Say so on the call. If I am not the right person, you get the name of someone who is.
What a recruitment website costs
Every price on the page,
before you call.
You should not have to sit through a call to find out whether you can afford me.
Staffing agency questions: Questions I get every time.
The honest answers. If yours is not here, it is the first thing we cover.
Ask me yours01 What does recruitment website design need that other sites do not?
A job board fed by your ATS rather than typed into twice, job pages search engines can read, and a client side that stands on its own instead of sitting under the board.
02 Can you integrate our ATS?
Usually. Bullhorn, Vincere, JobAdder and most of the established ones publish a feed, and where one exists roles arrive without retyping. Tell me which you run on the first call and I will say what it allows before you commit.
03 What does a recruitment website cost?
The build is priced by platform on the website design page. What moves it is the integration: a clean feed is straightforward, and an ATS with no feed is a different conversation I would rather have early.
04 Will our jobs show in Google’s job results?
They can, if each role is a real page with the right structured data rather than a result inside a search widget. That is a build decision, and it is one of the main reasons to have proper job pages.
05 Staffing agency website design?
Same job. Temp and contract work changes the emphasis, because roles turn over faster and the expired-role question matters more, but the build is the same shape.
06 We want candidates to have logins and saved jobs.
That is an application rather than a website, and it is priced differently: web app development covers it. Worth doing when it earns its keep, and worth avoiding when a good board would do.
Usually goes with: Recruitment websites
and website migration.
Where the board turns into something closer to software, this is the version that gets scoped and finished properly.
See website migrationOr one of the other three
Roles typed in
twice a day?
Tell me which ATS you run and how many roles are live. Thirty minutes, no pitch, and you leave knowing what recruitment website design can do with that feed.
- Within 12 hoursA reply
- Within 2 working daysA written scope and a price
- OrThe name of someone who fits better