Decoding Careers Page series - What you can learn from Apple

Winning the war for talent requires leveraging all the tools at your disposal. And there’s no better place to start than with your company’s careers page. With a healthy dose of thought and creativity, you can build a web page that grabs your dream talents' attention and develops a winning brand perception in the market.

Forward-looking businesses know the power inherent in striking career pages. They make a point of devoting energy and resources to making them great. So, if you want to be among the businesses in the winners’ circle, put your career page front and centre of your marketing efforts.

In this article, we’ll step you through the process of creating a career page that you can be proud of by drawing on inspiration from a tech giant – and one of the most recognized and admired brands in the world – Apple.

Its legendary founder, Steve Jobs, once famously said: “I want to put a ding in the universe.” Well, that may sound a little aspirational to many of us, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t heed these words of wisdom when contemplating how to craft your careers page.

So, let’s get started!

Spotlight on: Apple

Everyone (well, almost everyone) knows the Apple brand and story. Apart from their product wizardry, they’re renowned and envied for their dynamic company culture and cool office spaces. Their headquarters include no less than seven cafes, an auditorium known as the “Steve Jobs Theatre,” a 100,000 square foot wellness center, and more.

But despite investing in their lavish offices, Apple has seen the wisdom of crafting a career page that’s designed to inspire the best new talent to join their ranks.

So, let’s take a closer look at their career pages to find out what we can learn from them.

Simple, clear, and to the point

Log on to Apple's career page, and you’ll encounter a simple, clean, and uncluttered landing page that features a lot of black background space. Consuming the initial view is a minimalistic box showing various digital renditions of that now-famous apple, along with the words: "Join us. Be you."

Simple, yet ingenious!

Under these words are an invitation to “Watch the film.”

This turns out to be a one-minute animated video that’s designed to inspire. It plants the seed in the viewer’s mind of an environment that gives people the opportunity to explore their potential and explore the art of the possible. 

This is a bold and attention-grabbing way to welcome visitors to your career page.

Scroll down to the next frame, and you’ll see a box containing a few words that sum up the theme of that short video:

“This is where individual imaginations gather together, committing to the values that lead to great work. 

Here, you’ll do more than join something — you’ll add something.”

Practical information job seekers need – all in one place

After that engaging and powerful introduction, Apple proceeds to get down to business. In the next frame, you’ll see the words:

“Work at Apple.

Join a team and inspire the work.

Discover how you can make an impact: See our areas of work, worldwide locations, and opportunities for students.

Learn more.”

Apple demonstrates that they are aware of the notoriously short attention spans people have these days. They don’t want to be forced to click through multiple times when what they really want to do is find out about the things that matter to them most about the company.

If you click through, you’ll arrive on a page that sets out information about embarking on a career at Apple: everything from how they work and their office locations, how they collaborate, the role that innovation plays, to opportunities for students.

Showcasing people on the job

Scroll down to the next frame on the landing page, and you’ll be greeted by a visual of Ehsan, an Apple engineering manager, hard at work at his desk. Click on the ”Watch the film” link, and you’ll be shown a 30-second video clip in which Ehsan shares his experiences of working for Apple and why he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.

A peek inside life at Apple

Apple also shared its culture of inclusion, shared values, and community-centric company ethos.

Spotlight on the breadth of product range

As a technology trailblazer, it’s not surprising that Apple chooses to devote the next section of the careers page to its deep and broad range of technology products. You can browse through sections on topics ranging from Apple retail, software and services, hardware, machine learning, and AI to support and services.

Click on any of these topics, and you’ll be met by a page that takes a deeper dive into each of these areas, interspersed with inspiring case studies and testimonials from real Apple employees.

Focus on values

The final section of Apple’s career landing page is devoted to the company values they hold near and dear, along with a brief description of each:

• Accessibility

• Education

• Environment

• Inclusion and Diversity

• Privacy

• Racial Equity and Justice Initiative

• Supplier Responsibility

Website performance

We ran Apple’s careers page through HubSpot’s free Website Grader tool to get an objective assessment of what the page’s key strong points are as well as areas that could do with improvement. Here’s a summary of the findings:

What we love about Apple’s career page

Less is more

If you had to ask us what’s the one thing that struck us most about Apple’s career page, it would be the way they manage to convey so much by saying so little.

As we mentioned earlier, their career pages are unique in their simplicity. Apple is very economical yet intentional about what kinds of information they include and the volume. 

By using talented copywriters, they succeed in conveying their messages succinctly in a tone of voice that captures their fun, smart, and innovative culture. 

Impressive design 

Apple’s simple and succinct use of copy blocks and short, punchy sentences is complemented by their page design.

They make optimal use of the available space and use bold and bright colours to enhance their page’s visual impact.

We can also learn from Apple’s creative use of videos (or ‘films’ as they call them.) Apple keeps these clips short (usually under one minute long, which allows for rapid page loading) and they intersperse personal video testimonials from real employees with clever use of animation.

All this goes a long way to avoid monotony and keeps page visitors engaged.

Now it’s your turn!

We hope that this review of Apple’s career pages has given you some inspiration to help you make yours something memorable and special.

In your own time, take a leisurely browse through each of the sections of Apple’s career page and think about how you can put the ideas and insights we’ve shared to work for you. 

Also, why not check out these similar articles in which we analyze Facebook and Google’s career pages in a similar manner.