A careers page for a small business: what to put on it, and how to get one without a developer

Why a careers page pays for itself

Three reasons, in order of how much money they involve.

It cuts what you pay per hire. A consultancy typically charges around a month of the candidate's salary. A job board charges per post. A referral bonus is usually a few thousand rupees. An application that arrives through your own page costs nothing beyond having the page. Even if the page brings you only a quarter of your hires, that is a quarter of your hiring that stopped carrying a fee. If you want to see this per channel, work through our guide to calculating cost per hire.

It makes referrals usable. "We're hiring, ask them to send a CV to my number" produces CVs in five different inboxes with no record of who referred whom. "We're hiring, send them this link" produces applications in one place, each tagged with where it came from. Your best channel, people your staff vouch for, finally becomes something you can run rather than something that happens to you.

It reassures candidates who check you out. Before an interview or a walk-in, most candidates search your company name. A clinic, store or firm with a page that names real roles and real people looks like a place with its act together. No page, or a page last touched years ago, reads as a risk, and good candidates have options.

The six things to put on it

You do not need a big page. You need a complete one.

What to leave off: stock photos of smiling models, "we are like a family", and a list of values nobody acts on. Candidates discount all of it. A real photo of the real team beats every borrowed one.

The salary-range question

Publishing a range feels risky the first time: competitors will see it, and current staff might compare. In practice, candidates who were going to reject your offer anyway stop applying, which saves you interview rounds, and candidates in range apply more readily because you have answered their first question. Write it as a range with the basis stated, for example "₹18,000–₹22,000 per month in-hand, depending on experience". If pay genuinely varies too much to publish, state it in the first phone call, before anyone travels. A candidate's afternoon is worth something, and they remember the employers who wasted one.

Three ways to get the page

A page on the website you already have. If you have a website and someone who can edit it, add /careers with the six sections above and a form or an email address. Cost: your web person's time. The weakness is what happens after someone applies: applications arrive as emails, and emails get missed. This works while you hire a few times a year.

A site-builder page. If you have no website, a single page on any site builder can be live in an evening, and the monthly fee is small. Same strength, same weakness: the page exists, the follow-up is manual.

A careers page built into hiring software. HR systems that include recruitment give you a careers page where each application lands in a pipeline as a card, moves through stages, and can be answered from the same screen. In HR-VEND, every workspace gets its own address, like yourcompany.hrvend.com, with a careers page you can link to directly or embed in your existing website. It is included from the Starter plan at ₹49 per employee per month, not sold as a separate recruiter licence, and each application carries the channel it came from so you can later see which source actually produces hires.

The page is half the job; the pipeline is the other half

A careers page that feeds an unwatched inbox makes you look worse than no page at all, because now you are the company that never replied. Decide, before the page goes live, three things:

• Where applications land. One place that one named person checks. A pipeline board if you have one; a labelled folder if you do not. The moment two people "both sort of" watch it, nobody does.
• How fast you respond. Pick a number of days and write it on the page. For roles where candidates get multiple offers, like nurses and delivery staff, the first employer to call usually wins.
• How roles close. When a position fills, take the post down the same day and send every open applicant a short, polite close-out. Our rejection email templates give you seven you can copy. In HR-VEND, closing a role lets you close out every remaining application at once, each with an email, so nobody is left waiting on a job that quietly disappeared.

If you are currently tracking all this on a spreadsheet, our guide on Excel trackers versus an ATS covers when the spreadsheet stops being enough.

Getting people to the page

Nobody finds a new careers page on their own. You point them at it, everywhere a candidate might meet you:

• Every job post on every board or group ends with the link, so even candidates who saw the role elsewhere apply through one door.
• Every referral message. Give staff one line to forward: what is open, the pay range, the link.
• WhatsApp status and groups, which in most Indian towns out-perform job boards for frontline roles.
• A QR code at the reception desk, shop counter or site gate. Walk-in candidates become recorded applications instead of a pile of CVs.
• Your Google Business Profile and website menu, labelled "Careers", so the candidates who look you up find it without asking.

Search traffic — someone googling "lab technician job in your town" and landing on your page — arrives slowly and only if the page stays alive: real titles, real locations, closed roles removed. Treat it as a bonus, not the plan.

Launch checklist

• The six sections are present: about, roles, pay, how to apply, what happens next, proof.
• Each role has a real title, location, shift and two lines of actual duties.
• One application route, and one named person who checks it.
• A response-time promise on the page, and a plan for keeping it.
• The link is in your website menu, Google Business Profile, and the next job post you publish.
• A close-out email template ready for when roles fill.
• A way to see which channel each application came from, so next quarter you know what worked.

Frequently asked questions

This article is general guidance for Indian employers, not legal advice. If you publish pay ranges or collect applicant data, check any State-specific rules that apply to you with your consultant.