Activating JLP’s Beloved Employer Brands and Transforming the Candidate Experience with a Smart Careers Site
Web Case Study
Client and objectives
- The John Lewis Partnership operate two much loved retail brands – John Lewis and Waitrose.
- JLP recruit for both brands using the JLP Jobs careers site and a shared ATS.
- As a long-term client of Enhance Media, JLP entrusted our team with the task of building a new best-in-class careers website.
- Their key objective was to bring JLP’s EVP to life with new personalisation and accessibility features, an attractive design and a superior candidate journey.
The challenge
- Menus were cluttered on the old careers site and it was taking too long for candidates to find the information most relevant to their desired roles.
- Diversity and inclusion is a strong aspect of JLP’s employer brand but the old site was lacking in accessibility features to improve browsing for those with disabilities.
- JLP Jobs wanted to better showcase the experiences of existing Partners (employees) at their business to provide greater insight into their working culture.
- The new careers site needed to showcase multiple employer brands yet offer a unified candidate experience.
Our approach
- We carried out expansive research and consultation with the team at JLP. This ensured the blueprint for the new site was built on solid foundations and that we were taking an organic-first approach to the build.
- Our web designers and developers worked closely with JLP and colleagues in SEO, GFJ and Analytics to finetune the front-end design and back-end capabilities of the site.
- Our team oversaw the full career site build as well as reimplementation of tracking and testing on all aspects of the site both pre and post launch.
The results
- An average of 50k candidates each month use the site’s new “jobs near me” search tool.
- 2.5k visitors each month interact with the site’s chatbot feature.
- EVP content page visits now take up a +10% higher share of overall page views.
Career site features
Mobile first design and navigation
The mobile first approach to the site’s design has delivered an optimal experience for candidates who are on the move. This was achieved with friction free buttons, easy scroll carousels and sliders and a user-friendly search bar.
Smart job search
The new search functionality we implemented allows candidates to quickly search for “jobs near me”, using location sharing to find relevant opportunities. The smart search also uses synonyms and stop words to reflect the varied ways candidates could be searching for jobs.
Advanced job details pages
Our web team are highly experienced at Workday ATS integrations and bringing job details pages from the ATS into the heart of the careers site. This is an essential part of streamlining the candidate’s experience, which we recommend to all clients. For JLP, we transformed the design of these pages with attractive content-rich templates to engage readers and boost conversions.
Save jobs tool
This tool gives candidates the ability to save live job listings, so they can be quickly browsed again on their next visit to the site. The option to save is prompted with heart shaped buttons across the job details pages and previews. This not only adds a far greater level of personalisation for users but also feeds into JLP’s dynamic remarketing campaigns.
An interactive but stable experience
Our team have built an interactive, feature rich site experience with enhanced animations and personalised functionality. Despite a more sophisticated frontend, load times have been kept just as low for visitors and the new site has delivered a record high level of stability and performance.
Accessibility features
Every element of the site was designed to WCAG AA accessibility standards. We also implemented a high contrast theme and font size increase tool to make content more browsable for the visually impaired. These innovative new accessibility features are helping JLP Jobs to attract a broader and more diverse talent pool.
Social wall
The integration of a social wall has kept fresh engaging content flowing into the homepage of the site. This feature pulls in the latest posts published across JLP’s social channels. The wall encourages greater candidate engagement and is helping to grow their following on these platforms.
Partner stories and blog
The new careers site was built on the WordPress platform, allowing the wider JLP Jobs team to easily collaborate on and publish new content. This is posted in the form of engaging blog articles and Partner stories – insightful testimonials from those already enjoying a role at JLP. Previews of these posts appear on other relevant career pages to signpost them to candidates.
Chatbot
The chatbot feature we installed for JLP uses advanced query to sentence matching to provide predefined answers to candidates. It is a superior option to those that simply rely on keyword matching. Chat engagement is tracked in Google Analytics and regularly monitored with new answers easily introduced within the CMS. In 2026, we will be working on offering an extra level of sophistication for this feature with the development of an AI chatbot.
The new site coincides with our new employer brand look and feel and in my biased opinion, it’s looking awesome. It’s been a big undertaking but with the help and support of many Partners across the Partnership, it’s been a great project to be part of.
Some of my favourite features are the Partner stories, blog articles, accessibility toggle and mobile first experience. It’s just what our candidates need.
There are many people to thank for this project but a special shout out goes to Lucy Page and Claudia Stanley-Stote from Enhance Media.
A massive thank you also to Radu Stoian (Enhance Media’s Technical Director). The technical wizardry behind it all is what makes it a really great site.