Your firm's biggest competitor for graduate talent may be the few minutes a candidate spends on their phone before deciding whether to apply.
I know that sounds reductive. You may have built a training programme over years. Partners may care deeply about development. Retention after qualification may be strong. All of that matters once somebody knows enough to consider the firm seriously. The digital experience decides whether some candidates ever reach that point.
A referral, university event or familiar name can create interest. The candidate then tests the promise through the firm's website, job system, employee profiles, reviews and published work. If those sources are hard to use, generic or contradictory, the firm creates doubt before a recruiter has spoken to them.
The website does not replace relationships or a strong employer reputation. It validates them or raises questions about them.
The research journey you may never have designed
There is no universal sequence, and avoid claims that every graduate uses the same platform. A candidate might begin on a job board, through a lecturer, on LinkedIn, in search or at the firm's website. The useful design question is what they need to learn across that journey.
They are looking for signals. What does an entry-level person actually do? What support will be available? Which work might they encounter? Who are the people they would spend time with? Does the application process respect their time? Do the firm's stated values resemble the experience employees describe elsewhere?
The careers section is only one part of the answer. Candidates may look at team profiles, case studies, articles, social posts and independent employee reviews. They may examine how long people stay and where careers lead. The quality and visibility of the work can signal the intellectual environment they might join.
One trainee we spoke to had narrowed a training-contract search to three firms through university presentations, then removed one after reading several employee reviews describing the same cultural problem. She did not visit the firm or attend an open day. The reviews filled an information gap that the firm's own material had left. Any firm can test the importance of that behaviour with its recent applicants.
Map the journey using your evidence. Interview people who applied, declined and abandoned the process. Review search queries, page paths, device use and application drop-off without collecting more personal data than the task requires. Ask recruiters which questions recur and where candidates arrive with misconceptions. A plausible journey map is a starting hypothesis, rather than a portrait of an entire generation.
What candidates need from the experience
A current, usable digital presence
Visual design sends signals about care and modernity, although style alone proves nothing about the technology or culture inside a firm. More concrete failures matter: unreadable pages on a phone, inaccessible interactions, broken vacancy links, slow performance, outdated dates and an application portal that loses information.
Test the full route on common mobile devices and with keyboard and screen-reader use. Begin at search or a social link, find an appropriate role, understand its requirements, start an application, save progress and recover from an error. Include the external applicant-tracking system. Candidates experience that supplier as part of your firm.
Modernity should mean the experience works and communicates clearly. A fashionable animation does not compensate for an inaccessible form or an expired deadline.
Specific evidence of culture
"Our people are our greatest asset" gives a candidate nothing to evaluate. Every firm can say it.
Specific culture content describes real situations: how a trainee receives feedback; what a first client meeting involves; how teams allocate work; what happens when somebody needs flexibility; how study and qualification support work; where junior people contribute to visible client outcomes.
Let employees speak in language they recognise as their own. Give them editorial support and informed consent. Avoid turning a colleague into a permanent testimonial for a culture that later changes. Revisit the content and remove it promptly when appropriate.
Specificity also means acknowledging trade-offs. Some work is demanding. Some roles involve routine tasks before greater responsibility. Candidates do not need manufactured perfection; they need enough clarity to decide whether the opportunity suits them.
Team profiles with a reason to exist
A headshot, name and line saying that Sarah joined in 2018 is an administrative record. A useful profile helps candidates and clients understand expertise, route into the profession, interests and the person's contribution to work.
Personality can appear without forcing people to disclose private details or perform informality. Include a range of seniority and backgrounds. If only partners have substantive profiles, the site unintentionally tells candidates whose work the firm considers visible.
Keep profiles maintained. Leavers, promotions and changed responsibilities are basic data-quality issues. A large profile estate needs an owner, a source of truth and a review process.
Evidence of interesting work
Case studies and articles do double duty. A prospect assesses capability; a candidate asks what they might learn and contribute.
Show the problem, the thinking and the team involved, subject to client confidentiality and permissions. Attribute work beyond the most senior partner where that is accurate and agreed. Describe how disciplines collaborate. A stream of generic commentary or old announcements suggests little about daily intellectual life.
Do not invent case outcomes or imply junior ownership that did not exist. A modest, concrete account of real work is more credible than a polished fiction.
A careers destination treated as a product
The careers area needs an owner, audiences, content model and measures. It should help somebody move from curiosity to an informed application.
For each route, make the essentials easy to find: role and location, eligibility, work, development, process, timing, adjustments, pay where the firm publishes it, and a contact route for legitimate questions. Explain the selection stages and what preparation is useful. Remove expired campaigns and contradictory PDFs.
Measure meaningful progress: relevant vacancy views, completed applications, abandonment points, candidate questions, offer acceptance and the quality of expectation after joining. Application volume alone can reward vague campaigns that create work for everybody.
Employee reviews reveal more than a reputation problem
Many professional-services firms have profiles on employee-review platforms whether they actively manage them or not. Candidates can encounter those reviews beside search results and social content.
Do not treat the task as review suppression. Monitor for themes, compare them with exit and engagement evidence, and identify issues that require investigation. Individual reviews can be unrepresentative or factually disputed. Repeated descriptions of the same experience deserve attention even when the wording is uncomfortable.
If the firm responds publicly, protect confidentiality and avoid identifying or challenging the reviewer. Corporate boilerplate rarely restores confidence. A useful response acknowledges the concern, explains any appropriate route for discussion and states what the organisation is able to do. Employment and legal colleagues should shape a proportionate approach.
During one strategy session, a managing partner checked the firm's review profile and found that several prominent reviews described a gap between public values and junior employees' daily experience. The firm had been investing substantially in graduate-recruitment promotion without seeing that contradiction. You cannot out-market a poor employee experience.
Review data should feed service improvement. Recruitment, onboarding, management and employee experience are connected. If the underlying culture is weak, new careers copy only increases the gap candidates may discover later.
Avoid the generational caricature
This argument can slide into "young people these days" very quickly. Resist it.
Digital research is common across age groups and career stages. Early-career candidates may have less direct knowledge of employers and therefore depend more on accessible public evidence. Their expectations will also vary with background, disability, technology access, location and prior work experience.
Do not design a graduate site around an imagined 23-year-old who lives on one current social platform. Design for the information people need, the devices and assistive technologies they use, and a range of routes into the profession. Research current applicants because habits and platforms change.
The standard is not digital perfection. It is a usable, informative and credible experience. Candidates compare the application journey with other services they use, while also recognising that applying for a professional role is a consequential decision with different needs from buying trainers or booking dinner.
The commercial argument
Separating the client website and recruitment experience into unrelated projects misses how candidates research.
They look at the homepage, service pages, people, cases and thinking. Every public page can influence recruitment, whether the firm intended it to or not. The same content governance, accessibility, performance and design system support both audiences.
That does not mean combining the business cases through invented arithmetic. The claim that a website will increase candidate quality or reduce time to hire needs evidence from the firm's funnel. Establish a baseline before changes. Track source, relevant application completion, progression, offer acceptance and candidate feedback. Account for changes in role volume, labour market, pay, campus activity and selection policy.
At one top-20 accountancy firm, graduate applications reportedly rose by 35% in the first cycle after four acquired websites were consolidated. The graduate scheme, salary and campus strategy were said to be unchanged. The sequence does not prove that the website caused the increase, so treat it as an observed result with relevant context rather than a promised outcome.
The wider commercial case is less dramatic and more dependable. One maintained platform can support client and candidate research. Better content can reveal the work to both groups. A functioning application path reduces avoidable recruitment demand. Clear expectations can improve the quality of fit, even if raw application volume stays level.
The website is also one factor among many. Training, pay, location, culture, work, management and existing reputation can dominate a candidate's decision. Digital is often the qualifying round: it determines whether those strengths are discovered and believed.
What to improve first
The firms doing this well are rarely doing anything exotic. They make deliberate choices and maintain them.
Start with five checks:
- Follow the mobile application journey. Fix broken, inaccessible or confusing steps across the website and ATS.
- Replace generic claims with evidence. Show work, development and culture through specific, consented accounts.
- Review the public footprint. Examine search results, profiles, reviews, dates and social destinations as a candidate would.
- Connect insight to ownership. Give recurring candidate and employee issues to people able to change the underlying experience.
- Measure the funnel and listen. Combine behavioural data with interviews, then distinguish signal from convenient attribution.
None requires chasing every channel or manufacturing a youth brand. It requires treating a prospective employee's experience with the same seriousness as a prospective client's.
The graduates and junior hires you want may already be researching you on their phones. The question is whether they can find enough credible evidence to make a considered choice.
