This is a guest post written for us by René Bolier of OnRecruit who was at the Enhance Media conference with me last week on a subject that comes up time and time again – but with VERY good reason. Great summary of how to write a good job advert.
In today’s time of smaller screens, more distractions, more choices and more competition there is more reason than ever to write good job ads.
When attracting candidates a good recruiter wants to increase the value of teams by:
- Attracting good candidates.
- Discouraging weak candidates.
- Getting more out of the same advertising budget.
- Promoting brand.
- Competing effectively.
‘You kid me not’, you might say. Fair enough. But can I then please ask why so many recruiters publish horrible job ads all the time? Very often their answer will have to do with the fact that they don’t know how to write a good one.
Recently I visited The Year Ahead 2015, the largest online recruitment event in Europe. Whilst most delegates were probably visiting the event because employees from Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Indeed were speaking, I think the session that was the most valuable one, was the session of Craig McGregor from ContentETC about effective online recruitment copywriting. I would like to share a few things I learned from his session with you.
The basics.
Before you publish your next job ad, first check if you are happy about the 3 basic things your job ad exists from:
- Structure
- First impression
- Layout
- Content
- Message
- Description
- Brand
- Tone of voice
- Language
- Vocabulary
The goals.
Before you publish your next job ad, first check if your job ad is likely to:
- Be noticed and found?
- Deliver your message?
- Provoke a reaction?
- Build a response?
And if you will be able to:
- Measure result?
The key 5 steps.
When writing your next job ad the most important steps to writing a good one are to:
- Identify with your target audience.
- What is your candidate’s motivation?
- What does your candidate expect?
- What does your candidate want? (Much more important than need.)
- What does your candidate need?
- Have a clear purpose.
- What are your objectives?
- Is the job ad as appealing as possible for a good candidate?
- Is the job ad filtering out unwanted candidates?
- Is it easy to find the job ad?
- Is it easy to apply for the job?
- Plan the structure
- Is it easy to navigate through the job ad?
- Create the content.
- Have you gathered as much relevant information as you can source?
- Have you analysed the information?
- Have you organised the information?
- Are you telling not what, but why?
- Is the job ad simple? (Anything that is complex has to be simplified.)
- Find and use your tone of voice.
- Are you not using words such as passion, engaged, empowering and innovative? (They have lost their meaning because everybody uses them.)
- Is the job ad telling the truth about the job, team and employer?
- Is the job ad confident, clear and precise?
- Is there nothing pretended or exaggerated in the job ad?
Your next job ad.
Please promise me the next time you publish a job ad it will be a good one? If you make sure you follow all the advice given above I’m sure you will be amazed by the results.
About the author:
René Bolier is co-founder of OnRecruit, which offers the extremely easy to use OnRecruit Ad Manager, a tool built to do the 3 things companies need to do to optimize their pay per click advertising for jobs. Besides growing OnRecruit he loves to speak and blog about (online) recruitment, technology, advertising and (social) media.
Website: www.onrecruit.eu
LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/renebolier
Twitter: twitter.com/renebolier
Adverts in newspapers (in the olden days) were restricted by the size of the space, whether it was lineage or display, and space cost money. The launch of job boards meant recruiters had unlimited space to write long adverts – and subsequently the quality went way down
Now most job ads (74%) are viewed on small mobile screens, it’s all the more vital to be concise and efficient, and very persuasive in as few words as possible.
Attention span is shorter than ever, especially when candidates are reading ads on the Tube or the bus.
Getting a candidate’s attention first of all, then their interest, and then to decide if they suit for the job is very difficult to do in a small space. To then prompt a response by way of application makes it harder again. It’s no wonder response rates, and quality levels will vary greatly between different ads, job sectors, types of candidates and job boards.
The true value of competent and compelling recruitment copywriting is now more evident than ever – as much as for dissuading unsuitable candidates as for attracting the very best ones.
Thanks Stephen.
Great post from Rene Bolier – thanks for sharing! I think one of the biggest mistakes I see most often committed is where 90% of a job advert talks about the client and what they want.
They all start with “My Client is..” and then spend the biggest portion of the advert on describing how big, small, wonderful, successful, global, benevolent their client is.
They then move into what their client wants in an ideal candidate.
Finally right at the end they plonk on a single sentence “the successful candidate will receive…” which normally is so generic “will receive a competitive salary and benefits package”.
I believe strongly that recruiters should ALWAYS reverse the formula and spend 90% of any advert addressing the potential candidate using lots of the word “YOU”.
Tell them what YOU (the candidate) will get/receive, benefit from.
Tell them what the opportunity is for them and why they should stop what they are doing and pick up the phone to discuss this opportunity with you.
Thanks once again Rene and Louise for shining a light on job advert writing!
Thanks Roy, great addition!
It makes me laugh the number of articles that are out there about writing good job ads. As someone who had written thousands of good job ads for hundreds of employers I can tell you that it’s not just about keywords and job titles, or even getting your basic grammar right – it’s about having some kind of allure, some kind of message within that interests the very best people reading it, not merely adds to the list of the average/mediocre one who has already applied to 50 dull cut and pasted job descriptions that very day. I get paid by some of the world’s leading employers to write their recruitment copy because they recognise this very important thing – not everyone can do it well. In fact not many people can do it well at all. That’s how, in part, I make a living.
If only more recruiters would realise that the job post isn’t the add on, the necessary evil, the chore they would rather avoid – for many its their lifeblood, their stream of hot leads. By simply posting a cut & pasted job description with all the allure of a dead sheep what can they expect except poor and irrelevant response. For the fees you make for a placement, getting someone like me to write your job copy would be a drop in the ocean, but how man of you have the foresight and common sense to even think about doing such a thing? I can tell you, not many. That’s why, within my list of over 250 clients I have written for, there are only a few recruiters. It’s also why the web is littered with badly composed advertisements full or spelling mistakes and basic grammatical errors. Don’t try and be something you’re not. Employ a freelance copywriter who specialises in recruitment.
It makes me laugh the number of articles that are out there about writing good job ads. As someone who has written thousands of good job ads for hundreds of employers, I can tell you that it’s not just about keywords and job titles, or even getting your basic grammar right – it’s about having some kind of allure, some kind of message within that interests the very best people reading it, not merely adds to the list of the average/mediocre candidate who has already applied to 50 dull cut and pasted job descriptions that very day. I get paid by some of the world’s leading employers to write their recruitment copy because they recognise this very important thing – not everyone can do it well. In fact not many people can do it well at all. That’s how, in part, I make a living.
If only more recruiters would realise that the job post isn’t the add on, the necessary evil, the chore they would rather avoid – for many it’s their lifeblood, their stream of hot leads. By simply posting a cut & pasted job description with all the allure of a dead sheep what can they expect except poor and irrelevant response. For the fees you make for a placement, getting someone like me to write your job copy would be a drop in the ocean, but how many of you have the foresight and common sense to even think about doing such a thing? I can tell you, not many. That’s why, within my list of hundreds of clients I have written for, there are only a few recruiters. It’s also why the web is littered with badly composed advertisements full or spelling mistakes and basic grammatical errors. Don’t try and be something you’re not. Employ a freelance copywriter who specialises in recruitment would be my advice. It frees up your time and you get a far superior end product.