Today’s job seekers can access as many as eight million job postings from the Internet alone. To attract the top job candidates in your industry, irresistible and informative job postings are a must. A well-crafted job posting not only gets you the best applicants, but also ensures those applicants have a good understanding of what it’s like to work for your company. Here are five simple tips to writing a winning job posting.
Step one: Make it enticing
If you want to turn the heads of quality candidates, you must think of a job posting as an advertisement. Emphasise the most enticing aspects of working for your company to get more attention from top talent. In order to give your posting that advertising edge, make sure that you:
- Highlight great perks
- Show them why they’ll love your company
- Describe cool job traits
- Check out what others are doing, and do it better
Step two: Make it informative
Before you do any real writing, take time to consider exactly what information you want to include in the posting. Your job posting should outline the job’s key elements so that applicants clearly understand what the position entails after reading it. To accomplish this, provide as much of the following information as possible:
- Job type (part-time, full-time, contract-based, temporary)
- Job location and work hours
- Approximate salary and benefits
- Required education and work experience
- Work status (note if a permanent citizenship or a work visa is required)
- Any necessary information about the job’s physical environment
Step three: Make it clear
Keep the posting short, concise and organised using simple wording in your company’s voice. A long or complicated-looking job posting deters people from reading it. Organise your posting in a way that makes it simple to read, and easy for job seekers to refer to when fine-tuning their CVs and covering letters.
A great job posting needs to include the following information:
- Position Overview – goals, responsibilities and daily tasks
- Required Qualifications – skills or traits necessary to do the job; minimum education and work experience; work status
- Preferred Qualifications – skills or traits that would help the employee do the job; any attributes (higher education, years of experience) that would be nice to have but not mandatory
- Other Information – job type (part-time/full-time), type of pay (salary, hourly, stipend, volunteer), work hours, department, specific job location and contact information (HR department email or phone)
- Employer Information – brief description of your company or organisation, with a link to your website
Step four: Make it actionable
Good postings make it easy for job seekers to take further action, whether it’s visiting your company website, viewing your other job openings or better yet, submitting an application.
Give clear application instructions:
- CV
- Covering letter
- References
- Writing samples
- Provide a deadline and a place to submit (email, link to your career site or a third-party application site, maybe even a fax number).
Candidates may need to contact you with questions regarding their application so make sure to include an email address, phone number, external website or other contact details.
Provide relevant links: Every job posting should include a short description of your organisation with a link to a web page. This gives applicants an opportunity to learn about you quickly. If possible, include links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social networking sites. Every link is a way for job seekers to become engaged with your company and get excited about the possibility of working for you.
Mention other job openings: If you have other related job openings, link to them in the job posting. Some job seekers may be more interested in a similar but different job than the posting they initially read. This will help all your job postings get more coverage. Kill one bird with two stones and make a single job posting do more work for you!
Step five: Get your posting online
The final thing that you should do with your job posting to make it successful is to get it online. There are a tonnes of places you can post your perfect job posting, including job search engines, job boards and social networks. Don’t feel limited to just one site or type of site. If you do post on a job board, however, make sure to anonymise your email address to avoid spam or third-party staffing agencies.
Sachin Shah, Director of International at SimplyHired.co.uk
