Best Practices for Writing and Posting Job Posting Ads
Two of the most insightful people in our industry are Gerry Grispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXroads. They just came up with a top 10 list (actually eight) for how to write and post successful job posting ads:
- DO post and delete openings early in the week if you batch them. Job seeker activity rapidly peaks and then declines through Sunday.
- DO use professional “writers” to tailor your job descriptions to target groups of potential applicants. DO NOT allow generic descriptions from ATS vendors, hiring managers, recruiters, HR generalists or your compensation experts. Let them offer their input and acronyms- not their phrasing.
- DO answer the following job specific questions in the body of every job description: “Why do people want to do this job?” and “How does doing this job help the company succeed?” In addition, repeat the corporate staffing-brand mantra every chance you get.
- DO clearly differentiate ALL the requirements that qualify a candidate as being able to do the job (to be an applicant) from those preferred items that help the applicant compete more successfully for the job.
- DO embed links in the job descriptions- to the web page(s) of the profiles of people doing the job; to career maps showing how people progress in the job; to demographic data about the job (i.e. imagine you could share how many times the position comes open); to the web-seminar registration page of a hiring manager willing to talk about the job (or a podcast of the archived web seminar).
- DO offer (independent) RSS, and (company- based) agents for the job-search results page so that job seekers can stay informed.
- DO place the “Apply Now” button at the top AND bottom of the page.
- DO NOT include a “Refer A Friend” button unless the process also invites (opt-in) both the “referr-er” and the “friend” to being contacted proactively by a recruiter or sourcer (to thank them, etc.). Having a feature that is not monitored, analyzed, nor utilized is a poor practice, not a best practice.
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