Hiring is an incredibly exciting time. So why simply write a cut-and-paste job posting that insinuates that you’re suffering from a real shortage of creativity?
These days, the focus on providing an enjoyable candidate experience means a dry, uninspiring job posting just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Here are 3 steps for attracting the best candidates through a distinctive job posting.
Step #1: #EndTheBuzzwords
When searching through resumes or applications, how many times do you read ‘Passionate and Enthusiastic’ or ‘Works well both within a team or independently’?
You’d rather see facts, evidence and a spark. This is exactly how job seekers feel when reviewing a job posting. With millions of live jobs currently available, how are you going to make sure you stand out?
Leave the age-old buzzwords from your job posting, and replace these with evidence and facts.
Where you’d usually say ‘Great Employee Perks’ and ‘Great Company Culture’, you can replace with something along the lines of:
Last Friday, all 25 of us got together, went to the local pub, and caught up after a long, productive week.
Alan told us about his recent engagement, we learned that Kelly had plans to compete in the upcoming marathon, and we all had a great catch up.
Drinks were on us, of course.
Telling a story is the key to increasing candidate engagement and building your employer brand from the moment a job seeker reads your posting.
Telling a story allows the jobseeker to step into the shoes of someone in your organization, and allows them to already feel like a part of the culture.
For example: “Last year, our high performers were offered a free trip to Barcelona, all inclusive. It’s important to us that we reward our staff, because we simply wouldn’t be who we are, without them.”
Providing insights, facts, scenarios and evidence of your company culture holds so much weight against just saying there’s a great one.
Selling your company as an amazing employer isn’t about the selling. It’s simply an explanation of what goes on at HQ, and letting that sell itself to the prospective job seeker.
Step #2: Be clear and concise
If you have set requirements that are business critical for the prospective applicant, you’ll need to place these right at the top of your job description.
It’s important that your job posting acts as a funnel as you go further down. Each stage of your job description should be designed to filter out candidates that simply wouldn’t work.
With this in mind, be realistic. Don’t expect to find a recent Economics graduate with 10 years of financial analytics experience.
Once you’ve set the absolute required expectations, you’re now able to list the essential skills required and then the nice-to-haves.
Being completely clear of the minimum requirements at the forefront of your job description will not only allow you to increase the relevancy of your applications, but it’ll provide the relevant job seekers with a positive signal that they could be perfect for the role.
This is where your points from step 1 come in. The company culture sells itself, and you, through the power of a simple few lines, have already provided that candidate with an idea on what it’s really like to be within your company culture.
Step #3: Be personal, colloquial, snappy, or sweet
People don’t usually love something that screams of corporate structure, micromanagement and hierarchy.
Although many of these things will exist, by providing your job posting with a highly professional, polished feel, will more often than not, make the job seeker feel like they’re going to just be a number. How do you combat this?
Be short. Be snappy. Be on a level with your target audience of job seekers.
For example:
We’re looking for someone to come in and conquer the digital marketing space with us.
You’ll do this be using your pre-existing knowledge of online marketing, on-the-job mentoring and our insanely good (if we do say so ourselves) product.
You’ll be there to reach out to everyone that for some reason, hasn’t heard of us yet!
Providing a laid back, conversational tone to your job posting allows the job seeker to engage with the role, your organization and your employer brand on a personal level, as well as a professional level.
This personal level of engagement hits the decision-making process of the job seeker. It hits the desire emotion, and is the key trigger for the job seeker to click ‘Apply’ on your posting.
Of course, providing professional elements provides a nice contrast, and don’t forget the basics of what you want.
See an example modern job posting here.
Cameron Briggs is the Founder & Managing Director of Select Jobs, a job advertising platform listing over 350,000 live UK jobs. Select Jobs is a UK Job Board listing over 350,000 live vacancies, with the exclusive option that allows Recruiters to advertise an unlimited amount of vacancies, paying only for what’s delivered to each advert. It’s a re-invented form of job advertising that removes surplus spend from online candidate attraction.