Most of the recruitment websites I look at are built to try and make the company look established and credible. The copy talks about solving hiring problems, there are client logos across the homepage, and plenty of effort's gone into explaining the firm's expertise.
Then you click "Jobs".
Sometimes there isn't a jobs page at all. Sometimes it's empty. Quite often it's a paragraph explaining the sectors the agency recruits into, with no jobs anywhere near it.
On paper that sounds reasonable. In practice it doesn't tell a visitor very much.
Anyone can say they recruit finance professionals or software engineers. What people want to know is whether you're doing it right now.
That's where current jobs make the difference. They don't just tell candidates what's available, they prove the business is active. A client looking for a recruitment partner isn't only judging your copy. They're looking for signs you're placing people, speaking to candidates, working live assignments today, not six months ago.
Candidates read the page for much the same reason, just from the other side. They're working out whether you're genuinely active in their market, and whether it's worth getting in touch. A stale jobs page, or no jobs page at all, can leave the impression nothing's happening, even when that's not true.
Which is why I'd put it down as one of the more overlooked pages on a recruitment site, given how much it's doing. It's one of the few places that can prove something rather than just say it.
If you've got live roles, put them up properly, rather than leaving old listings sitting there past their date. All that effort's gone into the rest of the site: the case studies, the logos, the careful copy about your expertise. A stale jobs page can undo a lot of it without you ever knowing why.