If your company needs to establish an online presence, one of the best things to do is set up a company page on the best platforms available to you. While many sites vary in the information they let you display, most of them have a fair amount of overlap. However, when it comes to a retail company like a cannabis dispensary, a site like LinkedIn is a great place to host a profile and a career page.
Why your business needs a company career page
Recruiting for a new job role isn’t easy, especially in a field as specialized as cannabis. While it’s easier to find more general positions like administrators, store clerks, and salespeople, more specialized roles benefit from dedicated listings on your company career page.
A cannabis career page should allow you to advertise the following for potential hires:
- Job title
- Job description
- Candidate requirements
- Any relevant additional information
A dedicated career page is an asset when it comes to the application process too. LinkedIn’s Easy Apply feature lets candidates apply for jobs and upload documents on the site. This would mean you don’t have to set up an independent process to filter applications – you can review them on the same site the career page is hosted on.
So how do you set up a career page on sites like LinkedIn, and what do you need beforehand?
Requirements
Before creating a career page for your cannabis business, you should take a moment to understand LinkedIn and other site’s relationships to cannabis. While most sites encourage users to follow protocols according to what is allowed in their states, LinkedIn takes a different view. Their ad guidelines state:
“Even if legal in the applicable jurisdiction, LinkedIn does not allow ads related to prescription pharmaceuticals, drugs or any related products or services. Ads that promote illegal drugs, highs, herbal medicines and treatments, psychoactive effects of substances, or aids to pass drug tests are all prohibited.”
Now, a career page isn’t inherently an advertisement. More importantly, career pages aren’t where you advertise products – and products are what the guidelines are meant to deter. Still, you should keep the guidelines in mind when writing up job descriptions and any other detail about your company.
Setting up your cannabis career page
So how does one create a career page on LinkedIn?
Firstly, you’ll need to make sure that you’re logged on with your business account, not your personal one. Once you’re logged on, there are two ways you can access the careers page option on your profile. You can either click on your company name on the left side of the home page or just click on your profile picture.
If you click on your profile picture, a drop-down menu should appear with a host of options. Scroll down and click on your company’s name under “Manage.”
Both options will take you to your admin page, where you can run everything around your account.
On your company’s admin page, look for the “Career Pages” tab along the main navigation bar and click on it. Another drop-down menu should appear with two more options: Jobs and Life. Click on “Jobs” to take you to the career page
Populating your profile
LinkedIn career pages are more personalized than general job listing sites, and give you a list of customizable options to make your career prospects as attractive as possible. “Jobs” is where your open listings will be posted, so it helps to take a moment and look around.
Think from the perspective of potential hires and how they’ll view the page. What information would you want to see first? What type of branding would be attractive to you? Once you know what you want to communicate, it’s time to create your listings.
Go back to the top navigation bar and click on the “Career Pages” tab again. This time, scroll down the drop-down menu and click on the “Life” tab. This will take you to the backend section of your career pages, where you can start creating listings as an administrator.
Creating new listings
Your career page hosts everything about your company in a brochure style format. This makes it easier for visitors to view the most important information around your company, including company leaders, blog posts, and brand story.
Before you create your job listings, be sure to populate the rest of your career page. The sections you’ll need to fill out include:
- Page name
- A header image (recommended size: 1128(w) x 191(h) pixels)
- Company leaders section
- Company description
- Testimonials
On this page, you’ll notice a section titled “Spotlight” that has two or three blank modules that you can populate. If you want to host job listings directly on your company career page, this is one of the best places to do it. While you can create listings through the “Post a Job’ tab, those listings will be hosted on LinkedIn’s job section, not your career page.
These custom models are easy to fill in and a powerful recruitment tool. So what do you need?
Image
Half of each module is dedicated to an image. The image you upload should either signal something about the job being described or be built around your brand identity. LinkedIn recommends image files of 502(w) x 282(h) pixels. You can even embed a YouTube video here, or upload a slide presentation for potential applicants.
Add a subtitle
This is where you’ll fill in the job title. This section will be the first bit off text applicants see, so be clear and to the point.
Job description
Underneath the “add a subtitle” bar is a large text field that you can populate with all the relevant information around your job listing. If you have a job description, applicant requirements or company outline, it goes here.
Add URL link
This is the most powerful section of any job listing. The “Add URL Link” option lets you link an offsite website that applicants can follow after reading your job listing. On a career page looking for applicants, it’s recommended you either link to your company’s website and personalized career page, or link directly to an application page.
And that’s all it takes to create job listings directly on your company career page.
