One of the best ways of improving your ability to write amazing job adverts is to learn from others.
When you post a new vacancy, your company is potentially making its first interaction with a candidate.
If you paint the wrong image or don’t sell a position effectively, you may lose out on a top performer in the short and long-term.
Plus, with multiple other job adverts to compete with, a candidate can easily choose to scroll past your post without batting an eyelid.
With this in mind, allow me to show you how to improve your job adverts using the latest recruitment stats.
Who knows, it might just land you a standout candidate.
Less is more
With most candidates spending a matter of seconds whether they want to apply or not, it’s incredibly important to make your job adverts accessible and attractive.
Candidates don’t have the time to read a novel, especially when they’re applying on the go from a mobile device!
According to research, job adverts with around 1-300 words, rather than 301-600 and 601+, receive 8.4% more applications per view than average.
While it’s important to include relevant job details, benefits and company info in the job advert, it pays to make it more concise.
Remember, a job advert should be treated like the name suggests; an advertisement.
All it needs to do is entice candidates in and you can continue to sell the role in greater detail further down the line.
Focus on the important stuff
With the previous recruitment stat in mind, trying to weave in the right information into your job advert is an art in itself.
How can you find the right balance between being too vague and waffling on?
Well, statistics show that compensation (i.e. work benefits) is regarded as the most important aspect to 61% of candidates, with qualification requirements (49%) and job details (49%) just behind.
In other words, candidates just want to know what they need, what they’ll get and what’s required on a day-to-day basis.
Using this simple method will give you a blueprint of writing a concise, yet effective, job advert that resonates with top candidates.
As for including pay scales, your best bet to avoid time-wasters and under/over-qualified professionals is to include a salary bracket.
So, at least the applicant can identify whether their salary expectations align with your offering.
Limit references to company culture
Company culture is a vital element in helping candidates decide whether a company is right for them or not.
However, research revealed that only 28% of them want to learn about it in the job description.
That doesn’t mean you can’t mention company culture at all.
Just try to keep any references to it within a line or two and put more insights into this on your website or social media feeds.
The chances are, candidates will do their homework on your company before applying.
So, if you have fun posts from your team bonding days on social media and engaging team bios on the website, it’ll give the candidate a flavour of your work culture without cutting into your concise job advert.
Consider gender-coded language
If you want a diverse company and to see an equal number of applicants from females and males, be careful not to fill your job advert with masculine language.
LinkedIn research found that men apply 13% more often than women for jobs, usually because of gender-coded language in the job advert.
It turns out that ‘masculine words’ like ‘aggressive’, ‘outspoken’ and ‘rock star’ are putting women off from applying.
To stop this from happening, run your job advert text through an augmented writing tool before posting it.
This innovative technology will identify the gender balance of the content and suggest more inclusive/effective alternatives.
Address the formatting
The final recruitment statistic that can help you write more effective job adverts focuses on the formatting of the text.
Research highlighted by Coburg Banks suggests that a whopping 50% of candidates use their mobile devices to apply for jobs.
This means, if you haven’t considered how your job advert looks on a smaller screen, you could easily lose the interest of candidates or attract the wrong people.
Optimising your job advert isn’t just a case of keeping the content concise.
Think about using bullet points to summarise points and make your copy more digestible.
It’s also useful to bold key points so they are easily noticed by candidates who don’t have the patience to read a lot.
Don’t do it alone
Don’t fancy doing it yourself?
That’s alright, AdBuilder will give you four fully-optimised job adverts in less than ten minutes.
All you’ve got to do is answer a few questions.
Each advert will be grammatically correct and built to attract the best candidates.
Interested? Give AdBuilder a go.
You can grab your free trial here.
James is the founder and owner of AdBuilder and a recruitment expert from Sutton Coldfield in the UK. He regularly advises companies on how to improve and get the maximum ROI from their recruitment processes and advertising.
Read more from James
