Job portals help you to find the most appropriate current job openings fast and easy. These sites are intended for bringing employees and employers together, as website is the best method to reach both candidates and recruiters. Job websites focus around good user interfaces, but do they care about design aesthetics? In this post, we will find this out!

Here we are going to pay attention to what makes a job site user-friendly for any visitor. Design is crucial for catching more attention and traffic onto a website homepage, so are job portal owners aware of this?

Design and website structure go together on any website, so let’s talk about both these aspects now.

Job Website Color Palette

All job websites have at least one color in common – white. The more important thing is that all these designs use white as a background color. If you think that it’s easy to make your site clean and attractive just with a white colored background, you are wrong enough to make a rude design mistake. White background usage compiles certain rules and principles, as those you need to combine background with the overall design taking into account the smallest details, like button design or headlines typography. When used on the background, white has almost no meaning, it is just a supporting tone to make a complete picture. Minimal and clean background emphasizes clarity, that’s almost everything. White is not one variation of color you can turn to, white has a bunch of shades like snow, milk, or ivory. This small yet powerful detail creates favorable conditions for you to make a user-oriented site.

What colors can make a pair with white? Any if you like. As we noticed, job websites tend to warm and cool colors, as some of them use blue, green or purple, and others strive to make their designs brighter with orange and red. The colors we have mentioned have good meaning and they can’t spoil clean white designs, if are used a little bit.

Content Preferences

It is a regular thing to divide web content in two types: text and multimedia. Text is written content either in text blocks or on the images. Job website is a million of vacancy listings for job seekers and tons of resumes for employers. Such site is text giant, but do you think visual are not necessary here?

Let’s define the multimedia content types:

• image;
• video;
• animation;
• sound.

Images are not often used on the job portals. Still, there are some applications for them:

• logotypes (of the companies for example);
• photographs (if you have profiles and resumes for users).

Video is suitable for job websites. You can use video presentations from leading professionals to help users with resume compiling, or you can add useful interviews on your site. It is known that humans get visual information thousands times faster than text, so video tutorial or a set of tips will work much better than a regular text article. Sound content is not usually, even never, used on such sites.

Content Organization

Website is not a junkyard where trash is messed up, website has to be thoroughly organized with each content item being placed in a right way. The content organization model differs from website to website, but we will try to give you a general idea of how the content should be arranged.

Job website usually begins with a logotype placed on a regular place – top left corner. Then, many sites feature top horizontal menu bar (the menu variations will be discussed a bit later in this post), so the menu is the second thing a user notices after site is loaded. The third element of content structure is a search bar (there is a point below to talk about this item). More often it is a simple empty line where you need to type either desired job title or your location. These were top three components of the job website content structure.

The Header sometimes includes a sign in form. It is suitable for websites which are based on personal accounts and profiles. You need to register the first time and then just sign in with your password. It is a quick way to get to your customized search again, but not redo it each time you open a site.

The Ladders

Going below with a mouse scroll wheel, you can discover such elements as text articles with catchy headlines and vivid pictures. These are more likely to be useful stories or guidelines for users. The main content on the homepage is divided into columns. Multi-column layout is a superior option if the page is informative and you feel like users won’t get all info in case it is not broken into sections. If a website doesn’t include articles neither on the home page nor anywhere else, there is another content organized on a multi-column layout. Sure thing it is the listing of the latest jobs, hot offers if to say so.

Snagajob

Now, as we get to the bottom of the site, we need to explore the Footer content organization. Here job websites are similar enough: they all have social media buttons and another navigation menu identical to the top one. Job websites are not blogs with rich content layout and exciting posts that one can share with friends on Twitter or Facebook. Job websites should have ‘like’ buttons, not the ‘sharing’ ones. These ‘like’ buttons are links to your social accounts where users can get info as they used to – via social networks where they spend a half of their day. Plus, it is easy to follow the site news within social networks.

Search Options

Search bar is an inherent feature on a jobs site. It is explained by the primary aim of such websites – where one people search for job and other people search for employees. There are websites that have their homepages designed for a search function only. There is only a search toolbox, and white background. Other sites, and this is more common variant, have their search bars put in the Header but combined with the rest of website content.

If you think about building a job website, you need to pay your special attention to this crucial feature. Not just this bar need to be designed sharply, but each field of it has to be thought out well.

Make users able to search by all possible means. Firstly, include such fields as location (where allow users to type or choose from the offered countries and cities), company (many visitors know where they wish to work), job title, full- or part-time job option, keyword.

Indeed

Navigation Methods

Navigation is a part of design and it is a vital element of technical side, too. From the design point of view, we see navigation menu as a part of website aesthetics. From the functionality point of view, navigation is the way users experience a website with all its pages and it has to be really quick and easy.

All job websites that we have browsed had top navigation menu. This is the most typical type of website browsing for users and they like this consistency. Still, there are three variations of top menu navigation on various job portals. The first is simple navigation menu with tabs, the second is navigation with one or more drop-down section, and the third is fly-out menu which is similar to drop-down, but it is more detailed and all tabs have sub-tabs.

Consistent Interface

User interface, as we have admitted at the beginning, is a number one feature for job site owners. They know what’s what, so they make everything possible to perfect user experience on their websites. We know what users need, too. This is consistency and simplicity. Once a user does some action on one page, he expects all other web pages to work the same. Consistent interface gives users a better understanding of how to behave on a website, and this doesn’t force them to learn new things again and again.

It is especially important for job websites to be convenient and work fast. People go there to find a job, and chances are they do it every day.

Common Features of Job Websites:

• White background;
• More text than multimedia;
• Content structure with logotype, navigation menu and search box in the header, main content in the center and social media together with additional menu at the bottom;
• Search box;
• Top navigation menu oriented horizontally with either drop-down or fly-out sections;
• Well-thought user interface.

Job Portal Web Template

To Wrap Up

Our little investigation on job website design allows us to make a fair conclusion: job websites do have nice designs and moreover these designs are user-friendly. Yes, job websites focus on functionality more, because people who visit these resources have direct goals and they are not walking on the Web in search of excitement. This doesn’t hamper in making design classy, with good color choice (especially it is pleasant to eye and never irritates); needed portion of content and good division between text and visuals; many useful details like perfect navigation or well-working searching tool. Design matters for job websites.