As the world transitions from print to digital platforms, everyone has to start altering the way they do things in order to get the right results. Before the Internet, recruiters could put out general job descriptions because there were a lot more general practitioners than specialists. But things have changed, and recruiters now need to start altering the way they write job postings if they want to really attract the kind of talent they need for each position.
How Your Bad Job Posting Is Hurting Your Efforts
If there is one thing recruiters hate doing, it is going through a mountain of resumes to find good candidates. The vast majority of those resumes are not from qualified candidates, and the qualified candidates are usually missing one or more major qualifications. Is there a problem with the candidates that is causing you to get these terrible resumes? No, the problem is your job descriptions.
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When you do not focus on creating good job descriptions, you will always get piles of unqualified resumes to sift through that take up hours of your time. Bad job postings prevent good candidates from applying to your company because your company looks disorganized and disinterested in quality when it posts bad job ads. If you do not spend some time developing better job ads, then you will never maximize your recruiting efforts.
Use Specific Job Titles
Derek Zeller of RecruitingDaily.com talks at length about how something as simple as using generic job titles can kill your job postings immediately. If you want someone who will work directly on Linux-based Internet servers, then put that in your job description. If you post a job description for a “Internet Server Technician,” then you will get a ton of resumes from unqualified candidates, and a significant lack of resumes from the right people.
Focus On The Candidate’s Experience
Ben Hindman of RecruitingDaily.com lays out good advice for creating a successful recruiting event. In his advice, he talks about focusing on the experience you give the candidate, as opposed to generating generic job copy. The best way to create successful job postings is to look at the process from the perspective of the candidate. What type of information would you need to be interested in a job? Do you care more about opportunity, or pay? When you look at things from the candidate’s perspective, you will make better job postings.
Creating effective job postings takes research and time. But if you do not make the effort to improve your postings, then you are sabotaging your recruiting efforts. When you create job postings, you need to be specific about the job and the opportunity. The point of a good job posting is to appeal to the specific candidate that you are looking for. When you put yourself in that candidate’s shoes, it becomes easier to figure out what that candidate wants to see in a job posting.
What is preventing recruiters from improving job descriptions so that they are receiving more qualified applicants?
George N Root III is a professional freelance writer who has expertise in topics such as Internet marketing, business, advertising, and personal finance.