Attracting great talent is the first step to hiring great talent. And one way to attract great talent is by jobs postings. Job postings are also called job advertisement, job description, job announcement, job ad, or needed ad. A best job description is a blend of position’s skill set and competencies, little about work culture and of course benefits and perks. Most recruiters fail to understand the main motto of job postings; it is to list out things that attract top candidates, instead of just listing requirements and qualifications. In this blog we are going to discuss few tips to design an engaging and inclusive job advertisement to attract and build a pool of right fit candidates.

Use a Killer Job Title

This is foremost the important part of a job description. Fun or uncommon job titles like Rockstar Developer or Marketing Guru don’t do a lot of to draw job seeker attention. Using such job titles will turn off candidates from applying to your job ads. Such job titles can confuse job seekers and often considered as symbolic of insouciant work culture.

The title should be as simple and unambiguous as possible. Main motto of a job title is to show a glimpse of the purpose and scope of the job. Use phrases that accurately describe the job and try sticking to standard experience levels like Senior instead of III or IV.

Describing the Position

A good job description usually contains 2 components: summary of the role and job responsibilities. A concise summary on existence of the job?  You must solely highlight the important points in these sections in order that the job description is compact and straight forward to digest.

This part of job description introduces your company and your employer brand to the job seekers hence don’t forget to include all the details about your company culture to outline why a candidate would desire to work for your company. Though content is important during a job posting, but stuffing excessive amount of information into one paragraph can easily bore the job seekers.

Focus on Growth and Development

Listing a bunch of daily tasks and avoiding a bulleted list of responsibilities or qualifications is old style is often boring to read through. Lists like these are often difficult to absorb until one’s actually doing the job. Instead you can group pointers things under smaller sub headings like “technical skills”, “management skills” and “Interpersonal skills” or may be hard or soft skills. Make the job ad exciting by explaining how candidate’s growth and achievements will contribute towards business excellence. Also stress enough on the new skills and technologies one can attain with this role. This will definitely attract carrier and action oriented candidates.

Mention Experience, Compensation and Benefits Info

Most job descriptions leave the candidates wondering if they are fit for the position as they miss out on clearly specifying the minimum qualification standards. This results in getting enormous responses from unqualified candidates. To avoid this establish clear trails of minimum education, any specific certifications and also the years the expertise or hands on experience on a particular skill required to succeed in the role.

And don’t miss out on listing compensation and benefits. Most candidates today are looking to work with employers that fulfill their compensation needs and often turned off if there is no mention of it in the job ad. You need to show that money is component of the opportunity. Give a salary range rather than a specific dollar amount to allow room for flexibility. Also provide a summary of the advantages like medical, dental, and vision coverage etc.

Express Urgency for the Position

Create the sense of urgency among candidates so that candidates are compelled to apply. This can be done by mentioning last date to apply or may be by mentioning start dates. Mention contact details of a specific person instead of a generic email id. This definitely results in increase in the number of applicants drastically.

Avoid Mention of Behavioral Traits

Most job ads list out personality traits like Proactive, dynamic etc.  This encourages candidates to impersonate these behaviors during interview even if they do not to have them. Also, mention of words like “hardworking,” essentially mean nothing in a job ad as you can never figure out these traits until put to test for certain number of days.  It only implies that a hiring manager wants to consider people who have a strong work ethics which is often misunderstood by candidates.

Knock Out Biases

If you want to widen your pool of applicants and speed up your recruitment and hiring process then you should not be limiting your reach to a particular gender or demography. Ultimate goal of a job ad is to encourage right people to apply for the job but usage of gender skewing terms within job descriptions turns away many potential candidates.  You might be promoting a gender diverse work culture but your ad speaks on the contrary. This will paint a totally different picture and all your branding efforts will go in vain.

Add Creative Touches

Active job seekers spend a lot of time going through job descriptions and reading through lengthy content can be boring and tedious. To attract those eyeballs add innovative touch to your job ad like a video attachment explaining the position’s daily responsibilities and employees explaining why it is a fun place to work at. This would create a major difference and your ad will stand out.

Finishing Touches

Consider this a fun task and don’t hesitate to express your creativity. Imagine yourself into the shoes of superstar candidate you want to hire changes and sail you boat in that direction. Job Ads reflects a company’s corporate style, but candidates respond well to job ad that showcases human touch. Boring ads don’t attract strong and vibrant candidates. Don’t forget to proofread your ad before posting it out. Several grammatical errors and misspelled words will not set the best image of yours.

Keep the content of your job posting transient and to the point to communicate your point in a streamlined manner. Steer away from fancy and fuzzy terms. Usages of in distinctive terms make it difficult for potential applicants to imagine themselves in a position.

Follow the hit and trial method. If you don’t succeed in first attempt, change, tweak, and check out again. Each business contains a totally different direction for succeeding; therefore don’t get discouraged if one technique doesn’t prove as effective. Keep fixing and modifying till you discover what works the best for you.

Follow the above tips to craft an effective job ad, and you are assured to stand out among the strongest candidates.