August 4, 2015

Job advertisements are a basic, yet, highly important component to every recruiting effort. If done well, it will compel the best candidates to act. If done badly, it can not only fail to attract the right people but harm a company’s image. With high levels of competition for the most qualified candidates, company’s cannot afford to perform poorly at this level of recruiting or spend too much time in the writing process. Here are 10 tips to create effective online job advertisements with less resources:

Perform A Job Analysis

An advertisement will suffer without a solid understanding of the job and who you are searching for. It can be highly difficult to quickly write an advertisement that gets results without this information. Therefore, perform a thorough job analysis before creating the advertisement.

Research Similar Job Posts

Searching and reviewing similar positions at the local, regional and/or national level can benefit your job advertisements greatly. Whether you are new to writing job posts or not, it can help refine your writing style. This research will also show you who is competing for similar candidates, what their approach is and how you can improve your own advertisement.

Go Beyond The Job Description

Although an important component, the job description should not complete a job advertisement. The material should both inform a candidate and convey an exciting opportunity. Remember, the end goal is to generate a response to your CTA, which a simple job description is ineffective at accomplishing.

Be Detailed And Honest

Being upfront always pay off. By including all relevant details and marketing the job honestly, candidates will be more capable of self-assessing themselves for the position. This results in a more qualified pool of candidates. It will also save unqualified candidates time thereby earning their respect and potentially enhancing your company’s image.

Organize and Add Sub-Headers

Job advertisements are generally going to contain multiple main components: an intro header; an introduction to the company and job; a list of job duties; a list of the minimum job requirements, and; a call to action. Organizing these components in a logical order and adding sub-headers will improve the appearance of the advertisement. Also, since information online is usually scanned, the addition of sub-headers for each block of related material will allow candidates to more easily review your advertisement.

Include A CTA (Call To Action)

Every advertisement should contain a CTA. This is designed to initiate an immediate response and convert a qualified candidate into an applicant. Optimally, your CTA should embody aspects of the marketing strategy but at the most basic level, it informs the candidate on how to proceed if he or she is interested in the position.

Use Keywords

Online job advertisements should consider SEO (search engine optimization) by using keywords within the headers and body. You can find effective keywords by either searching similar job posts or imagining what your target candidate would likely use in their searches.

Include Pay

A jobs’s total pay and benefits should always be included. It is one of the most important factors for almost every candidate and can singularly decide whether an action is taken on a job advertisement. If pay is not included, qualified candidates may not be sufficiently incentivized to apply for the job. By providing it earlier, your advertisement will be more attractive to the right candidates while eliminating the ones who would likely never find the pay or benefits satisfactory.

Make It Error Free

Any type of mistake will decrease the effectiveness of your ad. On one hand, more substantive errors (e.g. rate of pay, hours, requirements) can result in the wrong candidates applying. On the other hand, errors in sentence structure, spelling or grammar can disrupt the flow and lessen confidence. Before posting your ad, carefully reread it and consider asking a coworker to review it as well.

Create a Template

A template dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to produce advertisements. Once you have an excellent understanding of the structure, organization and flow of your job advertisements, begin creating your first template. This can start out as a general patterning but develop into something very detailed. The more you can add now, the less you will have to write later. In addition, every completed job advertisement should be saved and organized. These can be used as templates for similar jobs as well.

The job advertisement is usually the first point of contact a candidate has with an open position. This makes it a fundamental part of any recruiting campaign and highly important for consistently generating quality leads.

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