If your job posting efforts haven’t changed substantially over the past few years, there’s no way around it: It’s time for a change. The same applies if you think it’s little more than a notification and invitation to apply.
Great job postings are technically ads, but also a bit different. They’re not just ads for a job. The best ones are company ads. Employer brand ads. Marketing efforts that capture attention with information and lure in great talent with the same amount of effort and creativity that you’d spend to attract customers or clients. And that doesn’t even touch on the importance of placement and overall strategy. If it’s news to you, then welcome to the last job posting guide you’ll ever need (for now).
RELATED: How Subpar Job Postings are Sabotaging Your Recruiting
Use Job Postings to Tell a Story
You’ve got one tidy box to work with and it contains about 500 words. Ready, set, go! Is that surprising? Job postings that get attention aren’t written in abbreviations and riddled with choppy language. The best ones tell an engaging story.
In that space, you should paint the picture of your company, its people, the culture and what makes it the most enticing place to work. Make each posting that you create a bit different. In Dice and Jessica Miller-Merrell’s presentation on the topic, she says, “No two job postings from two companies should be alike.”
Lead in Strong
The beginning of your posting should dive directly into company culture. Devote a couple of sentences to it, and make sure they’re well written.
Don’t tell candidates that you’re a great place to work. Show them how important benefits, work-life balance and a challenging work environment are to the company. If you’re drawing a blank, talk with current employees. There’s a reason why applied with the company. Find out what it is.
Craft an Attention-Grabbing Title
Titles aren’t a formality; they take up valuable digital real estate. The title is your first and best shot to grab notoriously fleeting attention. Describe the job and required skills, and omit acronyms or company lingo.
Titles are searchable, and you want yours to have every benefit. So while you could squeeze in abbreviated words separated by hyphens or slashes, a readable title will be read. Better, it will show up in more searches. While you’re at it, forget about generating false enthusiasm, says Dice. “IMMEDIATE HIRE” doesn’t impress job seekers anymore. It looks like spam.
Rock the SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO is a tricky subject nowadays. At its inception, it was magic. By adding a few specific words or phrases to the text, anyone who searched those terms stood a better chance of finding your ad.
If a little SEO is good, surely a lot must be terrific? That’s what the masses thought. But the masses were wrong. Keyword stuffing is a surefire way to lose credibility and search rankings. Use keywords sparingly and make them count. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Add a Call to Action
Job seekers are there because they’re interested. So why should you ask them to apply? It’s simple. The call to action or CTA works mental magic and nudges people to take a step.
The human mind wants to be nudged, and Kissmetrics says that it’s curious about what will happen next. If the link to apply merely read, “link to apply,” how motivated might a prospective applicant be? But what if the link said, “Join our awesome company” instead?
Decide Where to Post it
Writing a great posting isn’t the end of the job. Now you need to decide where to post it. Or maybe you don’t.
Some employers use a certain job board. RealMatch programmatic job posting distribution does that for you. Better than that, it’s so smart that it places your postings at sites it already knows will give you the best results and best applicants. That’s a major time saver.
Get Friendly with Social Media
Miller-Merrell and Dice strongly urge employers to get and stay involved with social media. But don’t make the mistake of only using it as a magnifying glass. Sure, you can learn a lot about candidates through Facebook and Twitter. But that only gives you a fraction of the benefits.
Share your postings, network and find great talent, even if not for that specific job, and build out a thriving social community. That is how brands and reputations are built. And guess what happens when a community member sees a job that he’s qualified for in the future? If he knows you through social media, he’ll be more likely to apply.
Finally, you should always strive to make your brand different in a good way. And that means research. It’s not goofing off on Twitter or Facebook if your goal is learning what your competition does wrong to avoid it and finding what they do right so you can do it better.
Job candidates respond to social media. And in this difficult era where the top talent is probably employed in a great job, you need every advantage that you can get.
If you’re ready to make job postings that count and put them where they’ll be found, then you’re ready for RealMatch.