Launching a new job site today is no easy task. Sometimes it seems that the recruitment market online is packed with businesses covering every possible field of specialization. Faced with high levels of competition you need to take every opportunity to get your job site ahead of the rest of the pack.

As the embodiment of your brand, your logo is the face of your company that potential candidates will judge you on. This article provides job site owners with some key tips that will help you set you and your logo apart from your competition.

Focus on the right candidates

Your job site might be a generalist with broad candidate appeal, or specialist with a narrow area of interest. In either case, good custom logo design starts with identifying your target market. Once you understand who you need to appeal to, check in with those potential candidates. Do they like your company logo? The key thing here is to avoid the trap of relying on a logo that you like without testing it on your candidates.

Spell out the right job-hunting message

It's important that your target job-hunters like your logo, but that's not all you need to know from them. After you've tested for an emotional "like" or "don't like", you also need to check in with the candidates on what the logo says about your company and brand identity. People are designed to make snap assumptions in the blink of an eye. When job-hunters catch a glimpse of your logo somewhere, what will they conclude about your company? Most critically, was it clear to the candidate who your recruitment site was for? Could they immediately and correctly say whether your job site was relevant to them? Further, did your candidate get a sense from your logo about why your job site is better for them than your competition? Think about your company's unique selling proposition and ensure that your logo reflects that.

Stand apart from other job sites

Make sure your logo is distinctive, and definitely different from your competitors. You don't want to be confused for your competition. If you're a small start-up, you ought to resist the attraction of developing a custom logo design similar to a successful existing site. The potential legal repercussions and reaction from disgruntled customers will only hurt you in the long-run.

Design a custom logo that will be flexible

If you're a job site, you're surely going to be engaged in online promotion. If you're going to be present on banners, you will want to design a graphic that will scale well enough to look nice and clear on differently sized banners. The sizing and proportions of your text will matter when your logo is shrunk down. If you have a tagline or sub-text then you will need to be especially careful. Think about whether that tagline or sub-text will be necessary at all on small banners.

A less common pitfall is to choose a company logo with a background color. If you're going to be using your logo in different places around the web, you can't be sure whether they will be able to accommodate attractively a black or otherwise colored background. Stick to a white background for your logo and you can't go wrong here.

Also think about how you intend to use your logo offline. Will you want to use it to brand your office or badge some staff uniforms? Colors that work online might not work in the physical world. Logo shapes that fit your job site might be problematic when you try to print them on a pen. A logo that looks great in color might be indecipherable in black and white.

Start with the end in mind

Ultimately your logo shouldn't be a half-hour exercise to come up with some attractive font and colors. As the face of your business you will want to think about who your logo needs to attract, and what message it should carry. You also ought to give some time to think about how you will use your new logo so that you avoid designing something that will cause you problems later on.