What kind of content are you putting in your job postings? Nowadays, many recruiters are simply posting job ads without considering what a candidate wants to see. Generally, a typical job advertisement has removed any client specific information through a basic clean up. Although it’s important to do a general clean up of a job description so you are not overwhelming the reader with information, you need to consider what the candidate wants to see. Your job postings serve as advertisements, so you need to be able to sell the job in your writing. We all know first impressions are important, and your staffing firm’s job postings are the first impressions you’re making on candidates. It’s time to put effort into your recruitment advertisements and properly draw in your audience.

Draw in Your Audiencerecruitment advertisements
To draw in your audience with your recruitment advertisements, you need to get candidates excited about that specific job. To get people excited, you need to draw them in with the very first sentence of your job ad. The opening of your job ad should focus on candidate-centric phrasing of questions. Asking a question right off the bat draws in readers because they naturally want to know the answer. An example of this includes, “Are you looking for your next Business Intelligence opportunity where you can make a difference?” Now that you have the readers attention, keep them interested with a follow up question, “Shouldn’t your next role provide value to your long-term career as well as provide success for the company?” I can promise you that a BI candidate will be compelled to continue reading this recruitment advertisement to see if it’s a good fit for them.

As mentioned earlier, your job postings are advertisements. Like any advertisement, you need to really sell the job to candidates. Along with the examples above, consider using language like this: “Your career matters and we want to help find your next fit. Are you a Business Intelligence Analyst? Are you trying to add value to the organization you join as well as build your own profile? Our client, *insert company description*, is seeking a Business Intelligence Data Analyst for…” From here, you add the job requirements. Be sure to remove all unimportant details and redundancy in your job requirements. You don’t want it to be too long and you want the description to cover the most important aspects of the job. You’d be surprised how many recruitment advertisements still list “must be proficient in Microsoft Office”. This isn’t necessary to list in a job description and it takes up valuable space.

Important Information to Includerecruitment advertisements
After listing the job title and giving an exciting introduction, your recruitment advertisements should include everything else about the company and role. Give a brief overview of the company, telling the applicant everything they should know about it. Next, you need to list the requirements of the position. Again, you really want to sell the position, so only include requirements that are essential to the job. Provide the candidate with information including work hours, pay, education opportunities, benefits, work culture, work perks, or anything else that the client offers that would draw in applicants like their corporate culture. It’s also important to list the location of the job and to specify if remote work is an option. This is especially important in today’s environment. Lastly, be very clear about the application process so that the candidate is not left in the dark with any information. This is a candidate driven market, so your staffing firm needs to make applicants aware of the entire process. Always include a great call-to-action as a final attempt of drawing in applicants. For more tips on writing a winning call-to-action, check out this blog. Once everything is written and ready to be posted, have someone, or even multiple people, read the recruitment advertisements. It’s so important that everything is written correctly and without any mistakes.

Your job postings are advertisements, and the job needs to be sold to candidates. Taking the right approach to your recruitment advertisements assures you will get the best applicants for the role. If you have any other questions about writing your staffing firm recruitment advertisements, please reach out. Good luck out there.

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations. www.sjhemleymarketing.com