A dislike of recruiters, an industry tarnished with a reputation for delivering a poor service, is driving companies towards DIY recruitment, in particular recruitment advertising. Here I’ll try to give you some tips on recruitment advertising and how to get the best return from your own efforts.
With platforms like LinkedIn, twitter and facebook, as well as your own company website and the numerous online jobs boards, it’s easy to recruit right. Put your job spec on line and watch the candidates roll in. Simple!
If that’s all your recruitment agency is doing for you, then you may as well do it yourself. A good recruitment agency will offer you so much more, but that’s for another article.
Recruitment Advertising
Recruitment Advertising is hit and miss at the best of times. The response rate can vary massively, subject to the seasons, school holidays even down to the specific day and time of posting. In traditional offline media you have even less control. For now I’ll focus in on digital, online recruitment advertising, because it’s free, isnt it?
Passive Candidates
Good people are busy people. Busy people tend not to be looking through job adverts. In recruitment jargon we call these “Passive Candidates”. These are the ones that we reach via Head Hunting or through years of nurturing our industry network and “Talent Pool”. It’s harder to get your recruitment advert seen by passive candidates, and much more likely your advert will be targeting what we call “Active Candidates”.
Active Candidates
There is nothing necessarily wrong with active candidates, but they do have some drawbacks that you should consider. E.g. Be mindful that if they’re actively looking for jobs via multiple channels, the chances are they’re being interviewed by others. If they’re any good, which I assume you want good people, then it’s possible you could go through the whole recruitment process only to lose out on your chosen candidate at the end.
Sure you can advertise for free, but your Job Ad will be buried deep into the pages of an online jobs board. Perhaps never to be seen by anyone who doesn’t look at the first few pages of a jobs board. Like I said already, good people are busy people. So you might want to “sponsor” your social media post, paying to get it seen by more people or pay for your recruitment ad to be classed as a “featured job”. But then it’s no longer free, and that’s not to mention the time invested in reviewing CV’s and contacting the shortlist.
Nothing is really free, so here’s a few hints to improve the return on your investment, be that time, money or both.
Your Job Spec
If you’ve read my other post on how to write a Job Description and Person Specification you’ll know that this should be your first step in the recruitment process. Your job spec will help focus you on exactly what your’re looking for and how to bench mark applicants. However your job spec is not a job advert! If you’re currently posting your job spec as an advert the chances are its not getting you the best results.
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a formal account of an employee’s responsibilities.
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a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicising a job vacancy.
Adverts are designed to sell, a job description is designed to inform. The two shouldn’t be confused.
Plan the structure of your Ad:
When you advertise your vacancy you’re also advertising your company. Getting it wrong could harm the quality of your applicants and damage your employer brand. First get a basic structure of the job ad.
- Start with a good summary of the key points of the rest of the advert,
- Give an overview of your organization, your company culture etc.
- Provide the top line info on the role and function.
- Finish with the skills and experience required to be considered.
Remember this is an advert, it should be designed to attract. Don’t bore the reader to death or make your business look overly formal if it’s not. Keep it punchy, informative and make sure it sells your company and the position.
Optimise your recruitment advertising:
Once you’ve got the structure drafted and an idea of your content, think about your SEO. Just like anything online using key words and phrases will help your job ad be found. If you need help with the SEO research check out the free “Key Word Suggestion Tool” on http://tools.seobook.com/
- Make sure you use your key phrases and list the job title in the header and the first paragraph of your initial overview.
- I recommend listing the salary and package too. According to research Many job seekers won’t respond to ads that don’t include salary information. SMART Recruit Online, a recruitment software company, conducted a study that found companies see an increase in candidate applications of 30 percent when salary information is included in their job ads. UK based jobs board Jobsite claim that companies might experience a 25 percent to 35 percent drop in applicants when job ads don’t include salary information.
- Make the application process as simple as possible. I repeat – good people are busy people, don’t miss out on their application because your forcing them to go through a long winded application form. Attract them, shortlist them, engage with them and then ask them to complete the necessary forms.
- Once your job ad is finished and published on your website, share it on social media.