This is a guest post written for us by Gloria Kopp author of educational blog Studydemic.
If you wish to recruit the best employees, it’s vital that you first of all approach the employment process correctly. Professional freelancers producing work of a high-quality will be on the lookout for advertisements that match their level of service and which promise suitable rewards. With this in mind, there are various factors to consider when putting together your job advertisement. Here are a few initial pointers to help get you on your way to attracting the best freelancers for your job.
- Advertise, do not describe, the job
Remember that the title of your job ad is only to get applicants interested in the role and should not go into lots of detail about the job itself. Not only might freelancers be put off long and clumsy advertisements, they may feel uncomfortable with references to specific terms or duties and wrongly conclude that they are over or under qualified for the role.
- Be sure to include relevant keywords in your title
Make sure that you stick to only relevant keywords which provide a summary of the service that is needed and the level of skill or experience required. The use of correct keywords will also boost your ad’s exposure to the right forums and individuals due to SEO. If you’re stuck with this element, why not try Hubspot which is an online tool that enables you to come up with gripping titles based on the information provided. Along the same lines, CoSchedule is a tool that analyzes your title, providing a score based on its probability to be shared on social media and its SEO value among other things.
- Use a solid process of elimination
So, you’ve written a great job ad and the applications are flooding in – how do you narrow the list down? Work out and prioritize your main employment conditions whether that is years of experience, qualifications, response time, etc… Once you have this clear in your own mind, apply the results to your list of potential employees. However, don’t expect the process to be easy as you could be faced with a dilemma that requires you to go with your gut instinct rather than your head.
- Be sure to include an instruction for freelancers to follow
The best way to check that your applicant has read your ad thoroughly and is taking the application seriously is to slip in a small test. Keep it simple by asking them to state a word or phrase in their response rather than testing their ability, as this may be off-putting to them at this early stage.
- Do a final editing before posting
Finally, there is no harm in carrying out another proofread to ensure that your text is perfect and putting the right message out to prospective employees. If you want to be sure that your ad or job offer are readable, run them through the Readability Score tool online which will help you to get a measure of how readable your writing is and if improvements could be made to make it more fluid. Hemingway App is also really useful at picking out sentences which are too long or short, incorrect grammar usage and much more. However, if you’d feel happier passing writing tasks onto a professional, you could try contacting UK Writings, Pro Writing Aid or Boomessays, all of which offer professional editing services across a range of fields.
- Ensure that your advert/offer is proofread by a colleague
Ask a colleague to read over the ad and any offers to ensure there are no embarrassing slip ups (like adding an extra 0 to your payment offer, which could be hard to take back!). Not only does it give you peace of mind that you have provided accurate information about the position and your organization, it allows others to input valuable suggestions that you may never have come up with yourself.
- Be sure to respond to all applicants
It may have taken lots of time preparing your ad and reading through application letters but you can be sure that each candidate has spent as much (if not more) time trying to impress you. This is why you should always follow up with a courteous message to unsuccessful applicants. If you’re short on time, you can use sites like Boomerang or BatchedInbox which are both able to schedule emails to be sent at certain times (bulk or individual messages). These handy tools could be really helpful if you want to prepare response emails to be sent after the application window has closed.
Ultimately, you will only attract staff as good as the advert you put out there. This is why it is worth spending that bit of extra time making sure that your ad is perfect. In doing so, I guarantee that you will reap the rewards and find a freelancer who is of an equally first-rate professional standard. The above list is not exhaustive however it will put you on the right track towards writing appealing job advertisements and attracting suitable professional freelancers for your role.
