You have a fantastic open position and you are ready to hire your next great employee. Woo hoo! But wait, you need to write a brilliant job ad to attract brilliant applicants. Ugh. Where to start? Where to post? What to include (or not include)? And now you feel overwhelmed.
Fear not! As a human resources professional with over 20 years experience and hundreds of written job ads under my belt, I’ll give you the secret sauce to writing a brilliant job ad. Let’s dive in!
1. A Title That Means Something
The first thing you need when writing your job ad is a title. It will be the first thing the applicant sees, so remember to make it clear and relevant for the audience of applicants you are targeting. Remember that in most cases an applicant is using keywords to search for opportunities, so its important that your job ad is showing up in those searches.
This may mean that you need to market your open position under a more general job title instead of using the position’s internal title. For example, you may have a position in your company called a Catalogue Service Representative where the person’s primary role is to answer a customer service line. You may consider changing this title to Customer Service Representative to attract a larger pool of applicants who will be searching on this title.
2. Capture The Good Stuff
Have you ever read a job advertisement and sat back and thought, yep, I still have no clue what a person in this job would do or what it would be like to work there? Put yourself in the applicant’s shoes. Your goal when writing a job advertisement should always be to get as many qualified and interested applicants as you can. And notice here that I say qualified applicants. No business owner has hours to review and sort through a sea of resumes, only to find that you found one that looks okay to contact.
In order to write a job ad that attracts the RIGHT applicants, you will first need to know what you want a new hire to bring to the position. Does your open position require a degree or certification? Do you want the person to be an Excel expert? Will they be required to lift over 50 lbs. to perform the job? How about be compassionate?
It is important that you really understand exactly what you want your new hire to bring to your company.
3. But, Don’t Be Too Restrictive
Fully understanding the job you want to advertise is the first step in creating a brilliant job ad. But, putting too many restrictions on an open position could deter an applicant from applying.
If a job skill is not a requirement, but you would prefer they have the skill, be sure to list it as such in your job ad. A good example of this is a college degree. If you list in your job ad that a college degree is required, you may miss out on fabulous, qualified candidates who lack the college degree, but otherwise have the experience and skills needed to do the job. Ask yourself if the college degree is a requirement or a preference and then advertise accordingly.
My advise, take a hard look at the skills/abilities/knowledge that you include in your job ad that you currently have listed as required and consider whether or not they are truly required.
4. Pat Yourself On The Back
You have built a great company! And the world should know about its greatness. I truly mean this. If there were ever a time to toot the horn of your company’s awesomeness, your job ad would be the time. People are looking for a great, no, an amazing place to work. Yes, they want to love the work they do, but they also want to love the company they work for. Loving the job and equally loving the company, is the magic that reduces turnover to zero.
Do you offer great benefits? Shout it out. Offering to pay 100% of health care premiums, a 10% company 401(k) match or allowing new hires to enroll in benefits immediately upon hire are certainly things that will capture people’s attention. Applicants want to have this information. Spotlighting it in your job ad might be the difference between them hitting apply or not.
Can’t offer great benefits? Let’s talk culture. Do you encourage ping pong breaks, provide free coffee, free fruit, free parking? How about providing super company swag? Or do you have a fantastic leadership team? A fabulous recognition program? Were you recently recognized with an industry award? Don’t forget that there are some applicants who already have great benefits through a spouse or parent, so seeing your culture showcased is what will draw them in.
5. Including Salary
Okay, so I want to start off by saying that the choice between including the salary range of the position in the job or not really comes down to your own company culture. Some companies choose not to publicize salary information in the job ad and that is okay. However, it has honestly been my experience that including the salary range will help you get better qualified applicants. And remember, that is the whole reason that we are advertising the job, to get the most qualified applicants we can.
We already know that you don’t have time to waste reviewing resumes, pre-screening applicants, scheduling interviews and interviewing. Imagine going through all of this, loving the applicant, only to find out that his/her salary range is way out of your ballpark. While money isn’t everything, it is A thing that applicants consider when applying for jobs. Why not be upfront and transparent with applicants. It will save you both heartache in the end.
6. Get It Out Into The World
No sense in writing a smashing job ad, only to have it live on your desktop, hang inside a breakroom or be sent out via internal email. We need to get this brilliant job ad into the world! Using word of mouth and encouraging employee referrals are both great, but I caution you on using these methods as your only means of recruiting. There are a whole slew of reasons why you should proceed with caution when only hiring employee referrals, but that is a topic for another day.
There are a lot of free sites where you can post your job to attract applicants. A few companies that allow this include Indeed, Glassdoor, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Craigslist. You can also post to your local unemployment office, local colleges or to associations/groups that you are a member of.
7. Make It Easy To Apply.
Remember your goal, excite as many qualified applicants as you can to hit that “Apply Now” button. But, what if they hit that button and they now need to spend an hour filling out a very detailed application? They may navigate away from your job and never finish. And this is certainly NOT what you want.
I am a huge fan of an employment application, that of course includes a disclaimer, but do you need this from all applicants or only your final candidates? Can you instead ask a few key screener questions and ask applicants just enough information to help you decide if you want to move them forward in your hiring process? Don’t forget that you are the one that has to read all of the information that applicants are submitting. Save yourself, and the applicant, time by collecting information that acts more or less as a “deal breaker” in taking the next step with them.
Great Tips, But Still Not Ready To Jump In?
Yep, no shame here. Maybe you are not a great writer. Maybe you don’t fully understand the job you need to advertise. Maybe you just simply don’t have the time. As a small business owner, these are very real possibilities.
So let’s look at some options you have.
You could ask someone inside your company to help with writing the job ad. This works best if the person you recruit to help you write the ad supervises the open role you wish to fill, like a manager. But I caution you to be respectful of your manager’s time also. Chances are, if you don’t have time to spend crafting a brilliant job ad, then your manager probably doesn’t either. And if the manager is looking to hire, they already have a lot on his/her plate. And we all know that time is money.
Help outside of your organization might be an option. Most small businesses don’t have the money to support using a traditional staffing agency, but they are an option, as they will write, post and source applicants for you. Traditional staffing agencies will run you on average between 15-20% of a new hire’s salary. So, let’s say they charge a fee of 20% of a $30,000 new hire salary, you are looking at paying a staffing agency $6,000 to fill one position.
You could outsource just some of the administration tasks associated with hiring, including understanding and capturing accurate job details, writing the job ad, posting the job ad, reviewing resumes, pre-screening applicants and identifying solid qualified candidates. Yes, this is a thing. It is our thing, actually. To quickly toot our own horn, we can do all of this (and more) for $795 per job order.
Hiring the right team is truly important to small business owners. I hope that you have found these 7 tips to writing a brilliant job ad helpful and will put them to good use!
Have a great tip to share? Comment and let us know what your favorite tips are when writing job ads.