How to build a recruitment website for your agency

To build a recruitment website, commission the candidate and employer journeys first, then choose the design, prepare the content and test the connected systems. A clear scope gives your supplier something concrete to deliver and your team something concrete to approve.

Build a recruitment website: key steps

A recruitment website should help candidates find and apply for relevant vacancies, while helping employers understand your services and contact your team.

Organise the project around five steps:

1. Define your priority audiences, business goals and launch essentials.

2. Choose a template, semi-bespoke or fully bespoke design.

3. Prepare your branding, page content and privacy information.

4. Agree how vacancies and applications will move between systems.

5. Test complete journeys before approving launch.

Keep one acceptance checklist throughout the project, so design reviews and launch decisions work towards the same outcomes.

Define the scope and responsibilities

Your website scope should specify which recruitment enquiries matter, which audiences you serve and who will approve the work. “More applications” needs a clearer definition: completed applications reaching the right recruitment team is a useful outcome to measure.

Describe your recruitment specialisms and locations precisely. An engineering agency recruiting across the Midlands needs navigation and content that reflect those disciplines and locations. Employers seeking maintenance engineers should not have to interpret broad claims about recruitment expertise.

Separate launch essentials from later additions. Vacancy search, readable job details, working applications, employer service information and clear contact routes belong in the initial scope. A large library of salary guides can follow if preparing it would hold up those essentials.

Agree how you will record completed applications and employer enquiries before development starts. A replacement website also gives you an opportunity to compare those outcomes with existing performance.

Assign one project owner to consolidate feedback. Identify the people approving design and copy, plus the person who can authorise access to your applicant tracking system. Put their review deadlines into the delivery schedule, including time for corrections. Conflicting feedback from several directors should be resolved before it reaches the design team.

Choose your design and launch window

Choose a design approach according to the layouts and brand expression your agency needs, rather than the number of vacancies you publish.

As of October 2026, RecruiterWEB’s recruitment website platform includes unlimited job postings, pages and users on every plan. Design scope determines the plan, rather than platform functionality or support levels.

The recruitment website design options have different typical delivery periods:

• Template: typically 3–4 weeks. Start with an existing layout and customise colours, fonts, icons, imagery and homepage structure. Choose this when an established layout can support your positioning and content.

• Semi-bespoke: typically six weeks. Allow for the additional design work within the agreed scope. Confirm which elements will be adapted before approving the schedule.

• Fully bespoke: typically 8–10 weeks. Start with layouts designed for your agency. The process includes discovery, design development, revisions, coding, testing and content loading.

These are typical schedules, not guaranteed deadlines. Content preparation, feedback and approvals need their own place in the plan.

A template website typically reaches a working test version in week three, with launch in week four. That review should assess your actual copy and imagery, not just the layout. More bespoke design adds design and approval stages; it is not necessary simply to publish more vacancies.

Prepare your branding and content

Assemble your logo, brand colours, fonts and imagery before design reviews begin. Your existing brand or marketing agency can take part, so agree who will supply assets and approve their use.

Review existing copy page by page. Decide what to retain, improve or remove rather than moving everything unchanged. Copy can be written for the project or developed from material you already have.

Prioritise content that answers practical questions:

• Candidates: Which sectors and locations do you recruit in? How can they find vacancies, apply or contact a consultant?

• Employers: What recruitment services do you provide, which specialisms do you cover, and how can they discuss a requirement?

Prepare the homepage, candidate and employer information, contact details and privacy information before final review. Keep vacancy content tied to the agreed publishing process rather than treating it as ordinary page copy.

Match the content to the chosen layouts. A template still needs considered imagery, clear messaging and complete text. Review each page’s next action as carefully as its wording: readers should know whether to search jobs, apply or contact your team.

Connect vacancies and candidate applications

List your applicant tracking system (ATS), customer relationship management (CRM) system and any job-posting services. Agree where vacancies originate, where applications should arrive and who can authorise access.

RecruiterWEB’s recruitment website integrations support connected workflows that synchronise vacancies and return candidate applications to the ATS. Establish the required connection during commissioning, rather than leaving it until the website is ready to launch.

Include connection costs in the scope. Some integrations involve a one-time fee, while external job-posting providers may charge their own feed fees.

Google for Jobs integration is standard on every plan, with vacancies automatically formatted using JobPosting structured data. This supports eligibility, but Google does not guarantee that every listing will appear.

Keep the acceptance requirement practical: a published vacancy should contain the right information, offer a working application route and send the completed application to the intended system.

Test the complete launch journey

Review the working website against your original scope. Approval should cover candidate journeys, employer contact routes and connected systems, not just whether the design looks finished.

Mobile usability and applications

RecruiterWEB provides mobile-first design, with a dedicated mobile design option. Test vacancy search, job details and applications on mobile rather than reviewing only the homepage.

Submit a complete test application and confirm that it reaches the intended system. Check employer enquiry forms and contact routes too.

Use W3C’s WCAG 2.2 to guide checks for keyboard access, visible form labels, understandable errors and correction guidance. Review every stage of the application process: testing one page cannot establish accessibility across the whole journey.

Privacy and tracking controls

RecruiterWEB’s GDPR-supporting features include privacy-by-design measures, self-deleting job-alert data, and support for subject access and deletion requests. Your content preparation should also establish processing purposes, lawful basis, retention information and applicable rights.

The Information Commissioner’s Office requires privacy information when personal information is collected directly. Make it easy to access alongside application and registration forms; a privacy page elsewhere on the website is not enough.

Identify the actual purposes of analytics and tracking, then configure notices and consent or objection controls accordingly. The ICO’s current exceptions permit some narrowly defined uses without consent, subject to conditions. Do not assume every tracking activity qualifies.

Vacancy visibility and replacement websites

Test a vacancy’s full lifecycle: publish, update, apply and expire. Google’s JobPosting requirements apply to individual vacancy pages, with publicly readable details, matching structured data and a working application route.

If you are replacing a website and changing URLs, map old pages to relevant replacements. Test permanent redirects, internal links, sitemaps and indexing controls. Google recommends retaining redirects for generally at least one year. This migration work is relevant to changed URLs, not a completely new agency domain.

Set ownership and agree next steps

Before launch, assign responsibility for maintaining pages, checking vacancy accuracy, reviewing enquiries and monitoring application outcomes. For a replacement website, include monitoring indexing, errors and traffic after the switch.

RecruiterWEB administrators can add, edit, move and organise pages, with different access levels for users. Training materials, training videos and unlimited support help your team manage ongoing updates.

To discuss scope and delivery, request a demo with your agency’s goals, existing branding and content, current ATS, preferred design approach and intended launch window. Those inputs provide a useful starting point for agreeing what your website needs to do and how to get it ready for launch.

Author

Darren Revell, Co-Founder, RecruiterWEB

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