Content is at the very heart of the talent acquisition process. Creating the perfect job advertisement highlights the value and relevance of a job vacancy to potential candidates. Recruiters need to reach their target audience, address them in the language they understand and offer them what they want.
A well-written job ad lessens the possibility of not receiving any responses at all, or being flooded with applications from people who are completely not suitable for the role.
The key to attracting the right talent is by creating the right content. The tone of your job advertisement has to give your company a personality, with humour and insight. It should initiate dialogue, inform, educate, enlighten and inspire potential candidates to engage and interact.
Here are 9 essential points to include in your recruitment ad:
1. Catchy Job Title
A creative and catchy job title can garner a lot of attention from potential hires. Perhaps instead of putting “Writer” as a job title, you can put Wordsmith or Content Creator. You can play with words for your ad to be attractive, but your job title still has to be related to the role. The job title (headline) has to be very clear and should in no way deceive or mislead the reader.
2. ‘Must-Haves’ vs. ‘Nice-to-Haves’
You need to indicate clearly what are your required skills for the position, and what are the desirable skills the candidate can offer.
Select the key skills, core competencies and most relevant performance or success measures and include them. This will allow candidates to compare what is required with their own skills and experience and discourage those not qualified from applying.
3. Location of the Position
For most people, the job location is an important factor whether they will apply for the ad or not. You need to say right away where the position will be based so you can manage the candidate’s expectations right away.
If location is not an issue and the potential hire can work anywhere, you should indicate that, too.
4. Employment Type
Identify how the person will be hired – is it full-time, part-time, or casual? It’s good to be upfront about this so you can eliminate candidates who are only interested in specific types of employment.
5. Details On How to Apply
You should list down steps on how the candidate can send their application. Indicate if they should send a cover letter, a response to the selection criteria and an updated resume. Don’t forget to include the deadline of submission and where they can send their application. You can specify an email address for receiving applications or you can lead them to your website for an online submission.
6. Include Rewards
Include a section where you describe the salary range, benefits and other company perks that the qualified candidate can get. This encourages people to apply because of the great incentives.
Just make sure you don’t overpromise on the rewards and that you can actually deliver what you are promising.
7. Contact Person for Inquiries
Provide a contact person and email address for enquiries in case a candidate wants to clarify some details of the job posting. If you prefer, you can also add a phone number they can call, but the danger of this is that you could get flooded with calls that are sometimes not really relevant to the job ad.
8. Description of Your Company
You need to give your reader a brief background about your company so they can have an idea about the organization they would be applying to.
Include details on when the company was established, what are your key areas of interest and may be even your company size.
9. Your Company’s Social Media Profiles
It’s always good to include links to your social media profiles so potential candidates can see how you engage with your online community. It can give them a feel of your “voice” as a company.
Candidates can also keep up-to-date with the latest news about your company and its activities. They can also use it to keep track of future job openings.
In the end, to create a powerful job advertisement, you must target the right audience, use the right platform, and carefully craft your message in a form that your readers will understand. By producing a great job ad, you can potentially reach hundreds of qualified candidates in the market easily and effectively.
Do you have other key points that you always include in your job ads? Share them in the comment section below.
