How to Advertise Your Job Openings

Great article in today’s ER Daily by Lou Adler regarding how employers can best advertise their job openings. Lou had a number of great tips. Below are summaries of them along with some of my own comments:
1. Stop using traditional job descriptions as the basis for your advertising. If you only focus on your needs and wants, the only candidates who will apply will be those who are the most desperate to be hired. Not exactly your star candidates. Write your job descriptions to attract the stars and repel the most desperate.
2. Stop using a classified-ad mentality. Target the up-and-comers by using media that they use and stay away from the media primarily used by the down-and-outers.
3. Make the job compelling. In the first paragraph, sell the candidate on why this is the best job for them. That is very different from describing their job duties and requirements.
4. Don’t start with the part number. Yawn! The first two lines are critical to capturing their interest. Make them compelling.
5. Track your results.
6. Use new media. Use instant messaging, podcasts and alternative communication channels. Teens, college students, and recent grads use text messaging as their primary means of communication. Email is, like, so yesterday. It seems that almost every college student now has an iPod or other MP3 player. Are you still struggling to get your postings on-line? Hire an intern to help you bridge the technology and mental barrier between on-line electronic media such as the web and email and off-line electronic media such as text messaging to cell phones and podcasting.
7. Use creative titles targeted to your audience. And if you just can’t bring yourself to be that different, then at least use job titles which are meaningful to the candidate rather than just those who already work for your organization.
8. Use search engine optimization techniques.
9. Make it viral. If you do all of this stuff, people will be willing to refer other people to your jobs. So ask them to do so and make it easy for them to do so by adding “Tell a Friend” and other such features to your postings.