To attract the right candidate for your role, you need to have a brilliant job advertisement to give off a great first impression. Your job ad should be clear about what you’re looking for, and precisely reflect the position’s responsibilities.
We will therefore be discussing what a job advert is, how you can write one, and share our own example as inspiration for you to write your own.
Shorter job posts receive 8.4% more applications per view than average, showing you shouldn’t make it too long! As well as this, you need to make sure the job advert is formatted professionally, as 50% of candidates use their mobile phones to apply for jobs. If the job advert is not mobile compatible, then you may miss out on a great applicant.
While these are some of the things which you need to be aware of before writing a job ad, let’s dive further into what a job advertisement is…
What is a job advertisement?
It is a description of a vacant role which invites relevant candidates to apply. There are numerous ways to post job vacancies, whether that is on internal recruitment platforms, external job boards, shop windows, forums or social media pages. Read here for more information on social media recruitment.
Hiring managers or HR professionals write persuasive adverts to attract talented individuals to apply and potentially interview, if they seem like a good fit.
It’s important to give an honest and detailed description when advertising a job. This will attract the right talent with relevant skills and experience to carry out the duties of the role. The level of detail in the advertisement can vary, depending on the role. Generally speaking, you would need the following information in your advert:
- Company information
- Salary & Working Hours
- Location
- Job Type
- Job Description (including responsibilities)
- Who they will be reporting to
- Qualifications and Experience required
- Perks & Benefits of the role
- Information about the application process
- Contact information
- Application deadline
How to write the job advertisement
Here are the following steps to use as a guide for when you write your job ad:
1. Study your target candidate
Learn everything you can about the candidate you want to attract for this role. This will enable you to find a way to tap into their emotions – as people tend to buy on emotions before logic. What makes this person happy? What are their goals? What do they want from a job? Once you know all the information about the person you’re wanting to attract, then you can tailor your ad in a way which finds their attention.
2. Accurate Job Title
Try and use key words which your target candidate will be using. This helps a lot with the SEO of your job ad, which is effectively putting your advert to the top of the list when the candidate does a job search. Try and not have a unique, creative name which isn’t blatantly obvious. Have a job title which is universally known to candidates. Keep the job title relevant to the role and specifically reflects the position itself.
3. Description of the organisation
A general description of your company/representative company should be towards the top of the job ad. This provides context for the viewing candidate, and allows for them to understand your company culture and history more before deciding whether or not to apply. Give some information regarding the team the candidate will be joining.
4. Duties & Responsibilities listed
Bullet point clear duties of the role using strong verbs, where the candidate can easily review whether the responsibilities are aligned with their previous experience and skills. This will give them an accurate representation of what they will expect to be doing on a day-to-day basis. Not only this, but if a candidate knows what they’ll be doing when going into a role, then it can boost their satisfaction. It also helps guarantee that you are sourcing relevant candidates – something which helps avoid wasted time.
5. Required skills and qualifications
You must be clear when explaining the role’s requirements in terms of skills and qualifications. This makes it much easier when shortlisting candidates based on whether they meet the qualification criteria, and speeds up the vetting process of having candidates meet specific requirements. Try and have this section in the middle of the advert, while also keeping it concise. Have the list as long as it needs to be – you don’t want to scare candidates away!
6. Job Location & Working Hours
It’s important to have a basic summary of the location and working hours. This means that the candidate can realistically evaluate whether the job will fit in with their schedule. It also avoids any dissatisfaction if the successive candidate with the location and working hours. This will be sure to save time during the application process.
7. Salary & Benefits
Many job adverts state that the salary is competitive when they aren’t wanting to display the actual amount. While exact salaries aren’t a requirement when writing a job ad, it can certainly be a beneficial thing to include. This is because it will avoid wasting time if the candidate is well aware of how much they’ll be earning.
Support the salary by including any perks and benefits which come with the role. Write a list of the benefits package, just to add a little nudge to attract the candidate to the role.
8. Provide contact information
Make sure you provide contact information at the end, in case the potential candidate wants to contact you directly to discuss the role for more information. Provide a contact email, job title, and hiring manager’s name.
Check out our example job advertisement!
Click here to see our job ad example, where we show what can make a powerful advertisement.
Let us know if you have anything else to include by emailing us at [email protected], or message us on LinkedIn and Facebook!
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