Are your job ads boring your candidates?

The prevalence of the internet and modern marketing methods means that your candidates have changed. They are more marketing savvy and are bored by seeing the same old type of demanding recruitment ads they’ve seen for years. Ads that aren’t targeted well and don’t talk to them in the right tone. Ads that don’t grab their attention and look tediously similar with a traditional type of layout – Job Description, Requirements, bullets, more bullets …(that’s if it isn’t all in one hard to digest paragraph!)


Candidates are consumers now and are used to being marketed to, preferably in a sophisticated and intelligent way.

Highly sought after candidates can pick and choose where they work and how so you've got to start enticing them into a relationship rather than just telling them what you want.

Your aim is to get past the chat up line and make a real connection.

Seeing a job advert that looks like an internal job description copied and pasted into an advert is not going to fire them with enthusiasm or desire and could be a complete turn-off.

Ah – unless they are truly desperate and will apply to anything, but that’s not really who you’re after is it?

‘But it’s different for Contract jobs’

Don’t tell me that you don’t need good ads for Contractors as all they’re interested in is money. Money counts – of course – but working in a great team on a ground-breaking project or having flexible working patterns could also sway them and look great on their cv.

Want to write better adverts?

So, get the feeling that you need to write better adverts but are worried that the ‘perfect ad’ is going to take a bit of practice and you don’t have the time.

It will certainly take a different mindset and a bit of time (sorry). It’s better to get started down that road now rather than later (you want to stay in this career right?). I’m hoping you already know your target audience well enough to have an idea of how they like to be spoken to (hint: if not, you might want to investigate creating ‘Personas’ for your roles)

Let’s get you started on your journey

Here’s a super easy step to upgrade your advert and start appealing to your ideal candidate.

Try using some of the following heading ideas to enable your ad to stand out from the crowd. Put yourself in your candidate’s shoes and think about what type of language might appeal to them.

Instead of “Job Description” (yawn)

Try out some of the following ideas (or even better, create some new ones yourself)

• How will you spend your time?
• Why come and work here?
• What will you be doing?
• Your opportunity
• Can you help us with?
• Here’s how your day might look
• What’s it like to work here?
• What you’ll be involved in
• Your job will include
• What does job title do here?
• Where do you come in?

Your Ideal Candidate

Are you describing what your “Ideal Candidate” looks like so they can picture themselves in your role? You should! How do they know what ‘good’ looks like otherwise? Try one of these headings

• You are
• Are you?
• Who is our ideal candidate?
• The ideal candidate will
• Your experience
• Your profile
• Is this you?
• You and your role
• About you
• Who we’re looking for
• Who/what makes the perfect employee?
• Who would be successful in this role?
• What you’ll need to win

Skills or Requirements

Don’t just list Skills or Requirements and risk putting off highly suitable candidates by being unrealistically demanding. Try splitting out the ‘Must Haves’ from the ‘Nice To Haves’ and make your advert more appealing to suitable applicants

Must haves

• What we’d like
• What do we look for?
• We’re looking for someone who has
• Your ideal skills and attributes
• How we roll
• Technologies and tools we use
• In a perfect world you’ll have
• What you’ll need
• What’s our tech?
• Some tools we use
• What do we expect from you?
• What will it take?

Nice to haves

• Anything from this list will knock our socks off
• It would be great/absolutely ideal if you have
• Highly beneficial
• Ideally, you’ll have some experience with the following
• These would be great but aren’t essential
• We’d love to see
• Non essentials
• Bonus points for
• Nice to have or keen to learn

The Company

How can you describe “Your Company” (or client’s company) as a great place to work?

• About us
• How we are solving this problem
• Our environment
• Our values
• Who are we?
• A bit about us
• Why choose/join us?
• Reasons to join
• About the team
• What the team is working on/has worked on recently

Benefits

You’ve told the candidate what you’d like from them – it’s time to show them how you’ll make it worth their while. The industry has always referred to BENEFITS – but it could be called…

• The Reward
• What we’ll give
• What are our perks?
• You will benefit from
• We offer
• Plenty of perks
• What’s in it for you?

How to Apply

And finally – you want them to APPLY – make it easy and enticing

• Want to know more?
• What next?
• How can I join?
• If this sounds like you
• How to apply
• Sounds good?
• Interested?
• Come and join us

So now your advert stands out a bit more and hopefully this has started to get your creative juices going. There is obviously a lot more to writing a good ad than just changing your headings. If you want to find out more feel free to follow our Seeking the Unique blog (unikseek.wordpress.com) or mail me (Nikki Hayford) on nikki@unikseek.co.uk