Digital / Hertfordshire Constabulary

Careers site

Laying the foundations

Our brief was to build on the success of the existing Hertfordshire Constabulary careers site and create the best possible platform for online recruitment. We set out to develop a site that supported search-driven campaigns, while providing a more engaging experience that catered for a wider audience and drove more applications.

Building on success

We benchmarked the existing careers site against the best examples from direct and indirect competitors. We wanted to understand how and where improvements could be made, and how other sites positioned themselves. In addition, we used input from a number of independent, third party sources including: the FT Bowen Craggs Index, Potential Park HR Top 100 research (2008-10) and the High Fliers Research (2008-10).

Adding fixtures and fittings

So, what did do? First off, we simplified the navigation to accommodate passive as well as active job seekers. Then we:

• Revisited the design layout and architecture to clarify the roles of Specials, PSCOs and Police Community Volunteers
• Introduced campaign promotion areas to raise awareness of the breadth of roles
• Created a more enhanced design interface between the careers site and the ATS, making the design consistent throughout and allowing a live data feed to display real-time vacancies
• Enhanced the existing role comparison tool and created an additional tool that allows users to understand where they would fit into the organisation – helping users distinguish between various roles and understand the variety of opportunities
• Developed a mobile version of the site to increase user accessibility
• Developed a new events tool that is customisable by geographic region and activity, and sits prominently on the home page
• Rewrote the site copy in the first person. Tonally this makes Hertfordshire Constabulary appear less corporate and more approachable
• Restructured the site copy to improve SEO

At its peak, the site was averaging over 1,242 visits per day (one third of the entire company). The UK & US represented the highest proportion of visitors, with Germany, Switzerland, Australia and Austria close behind.

Welcoming in visitors

Since launch, traffic has increased by 23.66%, with people spending almost twice as much time on the site per session (a 45.86% increase in average time on site). Over 17,118 people have already spent over 794 hours engaging with the new site (a figure that’s still growing by the day) and the site has a low bounce rate (14.09% vs. an industry average of c.40%). Beyond that, requests for more information have more than trebled, and some 73 Special Constable applications have been made (49 male, 24 female and 10 from an ethnic minority). 19 of these were scheduled for an assessment centre at the time of writing.