It will never cease to amaze me how many otherwise excellent recruiters invest so little time in crafting a job advertisement. Here Zoho, who offer beautifully smart recruitment software to help you grow your business, share their five steps to writing the best job adverts to ensure the best possible response. We’ll have more great content from them over the coming months.
1. Use an appealing job title
Don’t use some generic dull job title (Consultant) but don’t go crazy either (Chief Egg Flipper & Happiness Guru). Also avoid the acronyms and jargon. As with most of these things put yourself in the shoes of your ideal applicant; what job title would they most respond to? If you aren’t sure do a LinkedIn or CV database search to see what seems to work for them.
2. Less BS more benefits
Don’t trot out the lazy clichés and overused phrases – instead gear your language towards selling YOUR job to the candidate. Your job advert will need to stand out from similar roles and “excellent interpersonal skills” and “ passionate and enthusiastic” do not cut it. If you want an enthusiastic candidate (and who doesn’t) spell out why that enthusiasm is needed and what you’ll do to help encourage it.
3. Non discriminatory language
Even if you think you are all up to speed on this you might find unintentional bias creeping into your job advert. This is a great article on the topic.
4. Salary
There are no two ways about it – you’ll get a better response if you include the salary. I don’t mean more applications; I mean more relevant applications.
5. Only the pertinent information
If a criteria is “desirable” don’t include it. If it’s jargon don’t include it. If it’s a load of information a candidate could easily find on your website don’t include it. If you want candidates to keep their CVs down to 3 pages then the least you can do is keep your job advert down to a few paragraphs. Make sure the emphasis is on the person more than the job
You may also like to read an article from king of copywriting Mitch Sullivan on why it’s important to connecting to the needs/wants of the candidate straight away
More from Zoho next month!
