There’s something paradoxical happening with corporate careers websites right now. After years of broken links, mobile application nightmares, and clunky technology implementations, organizations are finally getting the basics right. Mobile experiences are improving. ATS systems are working properly. The longstanding problems we’ve talked about for years are finally being addressed.
However, while we’ve been busy fixing problems from 2015, the world has moved on. Candidates now expect conversational AI that can answer their questions in real time. They want personalized experiences that adapt to who they are and where they are in the process. Increasingly, they’re using tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to research employers before they even visit a career site. The question isn’t whether your career site works anymore. It’s whether it can deliver what candidates now expect.
My guest this week is Bas van de Haterd, who runs the industry’s largest continuous corporate career site research programme. In our conversation, he shares the surprising findings from his nineteenth year of research and explains what employers need to do to prepare their career sites for an AI-driven future.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How careers sites have evolved in the last 12 months
• AI application policies
• A reduction in DEI content
• The low adoption rates of conversational AI
• Improved mobile experiences and solving long-term problems
• Delivering a personalized experience
• Making career sites visible to AI tools
• How to make career sites fit for the future
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify.
00:00
Matt Alder
Corporate career sites are finally fixing decade old problems like mobile applications and poor user experiences. But while employers focus on solving these legacy issues, AI is already reshaping how people discover jobs. So is your career site ready for what comes next? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from MAKI. MAKI enables businesses to build intelligent, science backed hiring strategies that predict on the job performance and adapt as roles and markets change. Companies today face a surge of undifferentiated AI, inflated CVs and often rely on manual screening or inconsistent processes. This leads to missed talent, weaker performance and a poor candidate experience. MAKI combines science based assessments, behavioral signals and autonomous AI agents into one integrated engine. It evaluates every candidate, predicts who will succeed, and continuously improves hiring outcomes.
Teams hire faster, more fairly and at a lower cost while delivering stronger on the job performance and a better experience for candidates and customers. To find out more you can go to makipeople.com and Maki is spelled M A K I and that’s makipeople.com.
Hi there, welcome to episode 759 of Recruiting Future with me Matt Alder. There’s something paradoxical happening with corporate career sites right now. After years of broken links, mobile application nightmares and clunky technology implementations, organizations are finally getting the basics right. Mobile experiences are improving. ATS systems are working properly. The long standing problems we’ve talked about for years are finally being addressed. However, while we’ve been busy fixing problems from 2015, the world has moved on. Candidates now expect conversational AI that can answer their questions in real time.
02:33
Matt Alder
They want personalized experiences that adapts to who they are and where they are in the process. Increasingly, they’re using LLMs to research employers before they even visit a career site. The question isn’t whether your career site works anymore, it’s whether it can deliver what candidates now expect. My guest this week is Bas van de Haterd, who runs the industry’s largest continuous corporate careers site research program. In our conversation he shares the surprising findings from his 19th year of research and explains what employers need to do to prepare their career sites for an AI driven future.
03:12
Matt Alder
Hi Bas, and welcome back to the podcast.
03:14
Bas van de Haterd
Amazing to be back again.
03:16
Matt Alder
Always a pleasure to have you on the show and you are a very frequent visitor. In fact, you may have been the guest who’s appeared on the show the most times. So really good to have you back. For people who May have missed your previous appearances. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:32
Bas van de Haterd
So my name is Bas van der Haterd, and among other things, I run the biggest corporate careers research in the Netherlands. The biggest Dutch corporate careers event is combined with that. And I consult with companies on getting their corporate careers websites better.
03:51
Matt Alder
Fantastic.
03:51
Matt Alder
So careers websites is what we’re talking about today. And this is almost annual tradition. I don’t know how many years in a row you’ve been on talking about your career site research, but I checked back and it was this time last year that we looked at the research then. So let’s come dive straight in. So just a quick bit of background to this research. How long have you been running it and how do you get all the insights and information?
04:14
Bas van de Haterd
It’s actually the 19th year in a row right now. Although during COVID we did a lesser version of it with. With just a little fewer sites. But basically I look at over 500 of the major corporates in the Netherlands, 125 data points. I have students next year, actually an AI bot. But this year I still had students running, going through all the websites, answering the questions, applying at every major corporate. And everybody is included.
04:44
Matt Alder
Absolutely. So what’s changed? How have things moved on in the last 12 months in terms of career sites, what are you seeing?
04:52
Bas van de Haterd
Well, the data clearly shows that we have an insane amount of new careers websites simply because so many things changed massively. There was one of the biggest number of new websites going live last year than I’ve seen in ages. There was a massive upgrade. One of the things that we actually also saw, probably because of that, was the number of really stupid mistakes that were made. And with really stupid mistakes, I mean, links which didn’t come to page that they needed to go to, which had four. The number of 404 sites that we encountered was way bigger. So that’s one. Another really interesting part is that even though the number of podcast listens is increasing, everybody loves a podcast, but the number of careers websites linking through a corporate podcast or a careers podcast has dropped.
05:43
Matt Alder
That’s interesting because last year that was sort of the big talking point that we had, that people were using more podcasts in their sort of careers marketing. Did any indication why that might have dropped? Or is it, you know, what’s your kind of thoughts around it?
05:56
Bas van de Haterd
I have no clue, to be honest. Why? I mean, I can speculate that making a podcast as, you know, is a lot harder than a lot of people think. I can just say that the major Corporates have so many fewer people linking to their podcasts on there. So.
06:14
Matt Alder
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a. I think that’s a good theory. I think what we’ve tended to see with corporate podcasts is they kind of go in waves and people start doing them and you know, do a great job a lot of the time. But maintaining these, particularly with shrinking TA teams and pressure resources, is very difficult. So I’d imagine it’s probably a symptom of that. What else had changed?
06:37
Bas van de Haterd
Yeah. And just to go back to the podcast, Sorry. The weird thing I see in there, Matt, is even though you created it’s. If you created a good podcast for careers, very often it’s eternal content. I mean, not much changes. So there’s. If it was a good content podcast to begin with, about talent or talent development or whatever, those stories should stay relevant for me. It’s weird that they take them off and that’s usually because. And this is a shout out to employer brand people. Stop thinking that because it’s not new to you, that everybody’s heard it because your applicants are probably visiting your website for the very first time.
07:15
Matt Alder
Absolutely.
07:16
Bas van de Haterd
Yeah.
07:16
Matt Alder
No, I agree. I agree 100%. I think that’s, you know, one of the things about recruitment marketing content is it some of it doesn’t go out of date and should still be used, but there is a tendency to think of things in campaigns or years or those kind of things.
07:30
Bas van de Haterd
So the other thing which was really interesting to see is the amount of D and I content has dropped significantly from over 60% of the companies having a DNI page to less than 50%. However, the number of websites that had no photos of anybody with a migration background, so basically the all white websites has also dropped significantly. What we see is that the number of people explicitly saying oh we’re doing diversity and inclusion are dropping. However implicitly showing that there are diverse organization is increasing very rapidly.
08:13
Matt Alder
That is interesting. That’s obviously very good to see as well.
08:16
Bas van de Haterd
Yeah, I expected this to be, for example, the American led, you know, American head office kind of websites. So I actually did analysis on was this the all in English websites which is usually an indication of an international company with a Dutch subsidiary or is it the only Dutch or the combination language websites. And to my surprise, it wasn’t as much. The American trying to. To appease their new great leader who is against this. It turns out that most of the sites where they DNI content got lost, got disappeared was actually the pure Dutch Companies with only a Dutch language website. So I totally did not expect that. I haven’t found a reason for it, to be honest.
09:03
Matt Alder
Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s something to probably something to explore further. Definitely.
09:07
Matt Alder
What about AI?
09:08
Matt Alder
What’s the kind of the impact there?
09:10
Bas van de Haterd
Well, when it comes to using AI in the website, we see pretty much nothing yet. I mean, there’s still almost no chatbots on the Dutch websites. Very few. I expect to see an increase. I haven’t seen anything. The most surprising thing is we actually, because I hear from so many TA leaders like we’re getting swamped by AI applications. Only 1.5% of all the major corporate websites has a statement for applicants if they can or cannot use AI.
09:41
Matt Alder
Interesting. That’s quite surprising considering what a big sort of debate is in the industry, isn’t it?
09:47
Bas van de Haterd
Apparently we’re afraid everybody’s complaining about it, everybody has an opinion about it. But to actually formalize the opinion and tell your applicants like you are allowed to use it, you’re not allowed to use it, you’re allowed to use it for this or for that. We don’t do that. I actually found one company, by the way, which actually in their application form had a question. Are we allowed to use AI for processing your application?
10:10
Matt Alder
Interesting. They were asking the candidates that.
10:12
Bas van de Haterd
They were asking the candidate and they said this will have no impact on your chances of getting the job. But we believe that we should be asking you if we’re allowed to use AI to process your application and see about the thing.
10:27
Matt Alder
That’s something interesting to watch. Definitely. One of the things that we spoke about last time was career sites used to have sort of fairly unsophisticated chatbots on them. And last year you were telling us that those chatbots were disappearing and we felt that could because people were moving towards more sort of conversational AI solutions to help people interact with the website. But that’s not. We’re not saying that.
10:53
Bas van de Haterd
Not yet. We see pretty much the same amount of chatbots. We did see a little degration on quality, but that’s probably because the assumption of what a quality chatbot is improves so because the question is, you know, and literally have students doing this who are potential workers. Of course, like how did you find the quality of the chatbot? You know, did it answer your questions and. And you saw the perceived quality mildly, but decrease.
11:26
Matt Alder
Yeah, I think is our expectations of got higher because of all the companies who actually implement conversational AI really well? I guess so. It’s something else for us to be thinking about as a sector.
11:37
Matt Alder
Definitely one of the things that you.
11:38
Matt Alder
Always measure as well is ghosting. In a year where there were big increases in applications, you know, huge amounts of concern about the candidate experience. Where have we got to on ghosting?
11:49
Bas van de Haterd
To my surprise, we have the lowest amount of ghosting ever measured in the 20 year, almost 20 years that we’ve been doing this. Wow. So apparently, because we also, we saw a lot of new websites, but we clearly saw in the way that other things were measured, you know, the register to apply and stuff like that decreased a lot. So we saw a lot of changes of ATSS as well. And I think that we’re actually seeing decent ATS implementations because last year we had one of the highest, or actually the highest number of ghosting ever, and this year we had the lowest ever.
12:26
Matt Alder
That’s interesting, particularly in the context of increasing applications and all those kind of things.
12:30
Matt Alder
Just so people are aware, how do.
12:33
Matt Alder
You measure ghosting, as it were, in this bit of research?
12:37
Bas van de Haterd
We simply apply with a completely bogus resume on a job. Basically we, we have a person applying as a, I don’t know, senior financial manager with only working the cash registers at local supermarket. Right, okay. And to give you an idea that the other things which are really interesting for the first. So we literally also apply to be rejected as little time as possible spent by the recruiter. And for the first time in over a decade, we did not get a single invitation. So the market isn’t that desperate anymore. But also for the first time in many years, not a single of our first names got misspelled or completely different name in there.
13:24
Matt Alder
Wow, interesting. So it does point to better implementation of technology, doesn’t it?
13:30
Bas van de Haterd
Absolutely.
13:30
Matt Alder
Absolutely. Interesting. That’s, that’s really interesting. Finally, the problems that we had 10 years ago are sorting themselves, sorting themselves out.
13:44
Bas van de Haterd
It might be another interesting point because. Matt, sorry to interrupt you, but mobile applications also something we’ve been struggling with for ages. Of course, in 57% of the websites they still request a resume also on the mobile phone. But the number of organizations that at least on mobile does not request a single document because we still like to simply have the applicant doubled to now 16%. 10% of the mobile websites actually changes the options they have. But the great thing, 7% actually literally has a statement saying if you’re on mobile, you can still apply. Because we’re so used to not being able to apply these days that they actually, before the apply button, they have a statement like, we See, you’re on mobile, you can still apply on your mobile.
14:36
Matt Alder
And I think it’s interesting. These have been big issues for years and we don’t really talk about them very much anymore because there’s AI to talk about and the next big thing to talk about. But you know, our expectations are we can do everything on our mobile. It’s something that the employers really need to take into account that do or you at least tell them, you know what the expectations are. And it’s good to hear that again that problem is finally being properly addressed.
15:05
Bas van de Haterd
The one thing which still isn’t properly addressed, by the way, is that if you make a statement on how quickly are you going to be getting a response from us, the people actually keeping their promise, like if it’s. If you within two weeks or something like that has dropped from 75% to 60% interesting.
15:24
Matt Alder
But that could be where the volume increases is kind of hitting hard perhaps.
15:31
Bas van de Haterd
Yeah. And we do the applications in summertime but were nice that if you say like, oh, we’re very sorry, we’re not going to make our normal time, we extend it. But that’s the one thing we might still need to improve a little on keeping people in the loop. Some companies do that really well, others not.
15:52
Matt Alder
So obviously there’ll be people listening who are planning on, you know, upgrading or looking at their career site this year. What would your advice be to people? What do they need to be thinking about? How can they make sure they are working on something that’s going to be fit for purpose? Solve all these problems. Solve, solve the problems from 10 years ago, but also solve this year’s problems as well.
16:15
Bas van de Haterd
Well, I think actually we’re now in the stage, Matt, where we should be starting to dream because I’ve seen some new features from AI enabled platforms. I’ve always been, and I know you have as well, surprised at that. We give a returning visitor the exact same website as a new one. While if you go back to Amazon you get products that you looked at before and it changes based on your previous behavior, I think that’s the one thing we need to really start thinking about. How are we going to treat different people in different parts of the process differently on our website? So there’s a really great piece I think we could dream about.
17:02
Bas van de Haterd
For example, I’m always annoyed by the fact that if you do a search on a job, you see all these small summaries and usually it’s just the first few lines of the job description. Right. AI can Summarize that very easily for you. So I think we are going to be looking at an insanely great increase of quality if we allow it.
17:27
Matt Alder
Absolutely. And just targeting the right content are different to right people obviously important as well. And we’ve talked about conversational AI and the fact that it’s not happening. But what could that do on a career site? What should people be aspiring to in terms of how AI can make that kind of initial engagements with people who are looking for a job at that particular employer I think.
17:52
Bas van de Haterd
We’Re going to see and I expected that this year but for next year I really expect more chatbots, more conversational AI might be context aware conversational AI. So if you’re looking at a certain job you can ask it what’s the salary of this job? Or can I do this job remotely, et cetera. It might actually be that you want to feed your conversational AI extra information that’s not on the website. I also think that we’re going to do a sort of reverse recruiting. Here’s my resume. Which jobs would fit me? Or I’m looking for a job where I can do X, Y and Z. What do you have anything that would fit my desires? I think we’re going to a really different level of careers websites in the future.
18:40
Bas van de Haterd
The one thing I now advise every employer, branding or TA leader to think about is your website open for LLMs to scrape? Because I’ve seen several block it because they’re trying to block AI applications which usually have a workaround. However, if I do my research and you can actually see this in the Google numbers right now and in the searches on Gemini and ChatGPT. Tell me which retail stores in Edinburgh have these products because I love to sell them and what’s the benefit? I actually recently did analysis for one of my customers asking them tell me about all the hospitals in Rotterdam and what’s the benefit of each and every one for if I want to work there as a nurse and it literally gives me why I as a nurse should if I looking for more career possibilities it’s the biggest one.
19:41
Bas van de Haterd
If you’re looking for education and training there’s a second one which really is better on that a third one is known for its good work life balance and you get to choose makes a.
19:53
Matt Alder
Lot of sense and it’s technically possible it can be done. Let’s hope that we see some real innovation with career sites in 2026.
20:03
Matt Alder
Bas, thank you very much for talking to me.
20:05
Bas van de Haterd
Great to be here again.
20:07
Matt Alder
My thanks to Bas. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on what’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/
