attract applicants like a magnet

8/20/2019 Attract Applicants Like a Magnet

1/19

Anne St. Hilaire

Tips for Job Posting

www.recruiter.com

AttractApplicants

Like aMagnet

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2/19

Job seekers create anonymous profiles

Recruiter attracts top candidates who tell us what it would take for them

to change jobs and join a great company like yours. We engage our

candidates on a daily basis.

Recruiter sends curated jobs to candidates

We leverage our proprietary technology to find the right talent for your

company from our pool of passive job seekers. Our algorithm learns over

time to provide more targeted matching.

Recruiting professionals step in and engage

Our team of professional recruiters hand pick potential targets and workclosely with your hiring team to set up a job interview. Recruiter’s platform

is efficient and saves you time and money.

You’ll love working with this Recruiter.

“Recruiter makes finding greatemployees easy. It cuts through

the clutter and gets back to

the basics of finding and

hiring great people.”

- Robert RyffDevelopment Datalytics Technologies LLC

LEARN MORE NOW

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What’s Inside

Intro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

First, Check Your Job Ads. . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Timing is Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Use Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Be Realistic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The Ideal Job Posting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

https://www.recruiter.com/


4/19

4 ©2015 Recruiter.com | Attract Applicants Like a Magnet

Job posting can be a hassle. You know the kindof person you want at your company and what you

want them to do. You have a picture in your mind’s

eye, and it’s perfect. But when you sit down to

write out the responsibilities, requirements, and

qualifications for the job, something happens:

suddenly, the job ad you’ve written doesn’t feel like

a proper representation of the job you’re hiring for.

In today’s competitive job market, all employers and

recruiters are clamoring for the best talent for

their organizations - but are finding trouble

communicating to these candidates. They need to

show talented individuals that they are the company

of their dreams, but are limited to do so through job

postings. How can companies express themselves

and draw top talent in through job descriptions?

It’s plain and simple - they must get creative, get

to the point and use these tips.


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On average, 118 people apply for any given job.Having trouble getting that many candidates to apply

for open roles at your company? The job itself may

not be the problem; rather, the requirements and job

description may be driving candidates away. Framing

the job in a way that is relatable, realistic, and true to

your company can turn a vacant position into a

position worth clamoring for.

You Have a Brand Responsibility

A job description is a reflection of your company’s

employer brand. If a job advertisement is bland,

uniform, and uses the same buzzwords over and

over, then candidates won’t think much of the role it

advertises or the company advertising the role. If the

posting is creative, personal, and honest, candidates

will see your employer brand in a more positive light

and be more drawn to apply for the role.

First, Check Your Job Adsbased on “Need More Applications? Check Your Job Advertisements” by Kerry Pivovar

Choose Your Words Carefully

Don’t add fluff where it is not needed. Be personal.

Don’t write like a computer. Give real examples of

the specific things a person would do in the role

on a daily basis.

Careful on the Job Reqs

There is no such thing as a perfect candidate. If you

are having trouble getting people to apply for an open

job, try changing the requirements into preferences

instead. Both women and men admit to not

applying to jobs when they feel they don’t meet the

requirements. Women apply for jobs only when they

feel 100 percent qualified, while men are willing to

apply when they feel they meet 60 percent of the

qualifications. The lesson is that everyone seems to

be taking job requirements too seriously.


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Perhaps we can learn from Facebook. According to

Facebook executive Serkan Piantino, the tech giant

takes a fairly lax approach to job requirements.

Piantino told a writer at Quartz that, even though

many ads for jobs at Facebook say they

require a B.A. or M.A., the company aims to be

“pretty agnostic to the

things that don’t matter.

Things like somebody’s

prior background,

whether they went to a

top [computer science]

program or never

graduated high school,

if they’re a good fit for

Facebook, we just try to

focus on that.”

If a requirement isn’t truly required — just preferred —

then let people know that in the job description.

Otherwise, you may turn away the candidate who

would have fit perfectly in the role.

Craft the Content

Candidates only spend about 50 seconds looking at

job ads they will ultimately pass over; they spend

another 22 seconds reading

the ones they actually plan

to apply for. You have

got to jam-pack as much

oomph as possible into

your job descriptions in

order to make an impact

on candidates.

If the average U.S. adult

reads at the ninth grade

level, then why are job descriptions often written

like mechanics manuals? Ditch the jargon and get

to the meat of the message.


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Dare to Be Different

Ultimately, job descriptions should tell candidates

what they need to know in a language they can

understand. You have to show your audience who

you are as a company in the shortest amount of

time possible. Attract more candidates to each job

ad by appealing to the personal and human

sides of applicants. Don’t write for the perfect

candidate: write for someone who can learn

and grow into who you need for that role. Be

real, honest, and open to achieve the best

conversion rates on each job posting.


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Timing is Everythingbased on “ And the Best Time to Post a Job Is...” ” by Kazim Ladimeji

Recruiters spend a lot of time and money on the preparation of job advertisements and the subsequent proactive marketing of their

vacancies by posting on job boards and by sharing on

social networks. Most of the time—it’s a leap of

faith—in that we check the site has a big enough

audience, then we post, we share, we tweet, we like

and we hope, yes we hope that the applicants come

rolling in. And many times they do, and at other

times the response falls below our expectations.

Of course there can be many reasons for a poor job

advert response rate, e.g unattractive position, poorly

constructed job advert, high demand/low supply, etc.

It will, of course, take trial and error to find out which

particular factor is limiting the effectiveness of your job

advert.One area that can often be overlooked during job marketing campaign is

the fact that certain job sites yield better response rates on certain days of the


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week or year, or certain hours of the day. One way

that recruiters may be able to maximize response rate

is by posting/sharing their advert at the most optimal

time of day when candidates are most likely to bepresent and responsive.

To help any recruiters or employers who wish to

experiment with posting ads at optimal posting times

to see if it will increase their response rates, I have

compiled data from various credible sources, whichshows when job sites appear to be most responsive.

Early in the Week (Avoid Friday at All Costs)

According to research from eQuest, a global jobs

distributor that manages jobs postings for

employers,Wednesday is the day of the week when job hunters are most active and responsive to job

advertisements.

I admit that it’s an older survey, but it was quite

a thorough study that looked at 1 million jobs

posted through its system over an approximate

3-month period. They counted the number of

candidates who viewed ads and the number

who actually applied and found that 17.5percent of candidate activity took place on

Monday; 17.8 percent on Tuesday; 18.1 percent

on Wednesday; with only 16.8 percent of

candidate activity occurring on Thursday; and

just 12.3 percent of candidate activity occurring

on Friday.

The peak job searching time was between 11

am-1 pm and 4-5pm, and the advice from

eQuest, (which I am inclined to agree with

based on their data), is to post job adverts

early in the week for maximum effect.

Facebook

Ad Posting: A survey by Yesmail looked at ad

effectiveness on Facebook and found that

campaigns deployed on Tuesdays, Fridays


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and Saturdays had most audience engagement.

I have to be a little wary of the relevance of this

study because it is not looking at job adverts

only, but any advertising campaign. Still, it

reinforces the findings of equest in terms of

Tuesday being a potentially very responsive day

for posting job adverts.

Link Sharing

Once again, this research reported by Mashable,

and prepared by Link tracking service bit.ly, is

general and not specific to job postings but still

shows the relative responsiveness of Facebook

users to shared links based on day and time of

day. In their study, the Mashable folks foundthat links posted between 1pm and 4pm EST

get the most responses with Wednesday at 3pm

ET being the best time to post on Facebook all

week. So, there’s another vote for Wednesday

reinforcing the eQuest findings that Wednesday

may be the hottest day of the week for job ad

responsiveness.

Twitter

The bit.ly research has found that links that are

posted early in the week between 1pm and 3pm

EST will get the most clicks and users should

avoid tweeting links after 8pm or 3pm on a

Friday. Once again, this reinforces the eQuest

findings that Friday is a bad day to post job ad-

verts and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are

prime time for job advert responsiveness.


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Blogging

For those of you who like to engage with your

potential candidate market through blog postings,

it seems there is an optimal time for posting blogs,

according to 2010 research by Dan Zarella. He

found that re-tweet activity tended to peak around

4pm EST, which implies this might be the best time

to tweet a recruiter blog post for maximum reach.

He also found that retweet activity peaked on a

Friday. He analyzed nearly 100 million tweets, and

in aggregate concluded that Friday at 4pm is the

most retweetable time on the week, and which I

infer, as the best time for you to place your

recruiter blog posts.

He also looked at Facebook and found that articles

that are published on Facebook on weekends are

shared much more than those published in the week.

This means that, sadly for you recruiters, you need to

drop the surfboard and start posting your recruiter

blog articles to Facebook on the weekend, that is if

you are to get maximum responsiveness.


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Use Videobased on “How to Sell Your Job Ad with Video” by Suriel Vasquez

Fifty-three percent of respondents to a recent

survey from OfficeTeam and the International

Association of Administrative Professionals say

having an accurate job description is important,

and 55 percent say they do something outside

the confines of the description for the job for

which they were hired.

It may not be that what you, as an employer, are

putting in your job ad is inaccurate, per se — it’s

more that the description just doesn’t feel right.

The ad tells readers about all of the basic tasks

of the job, but it doesn’t capture what the job

is like on a day-to-day basis, and it doesn’t

capture the company culture. If you want to

punch up your job ad, consider making your job

description a better reflection of what you want

by adding video.

Video Job Ads Capture Your Company Better

Accuracy is one of the most important aspects of

a job description, and it’s also one of the most

common challenges companies run into when

recruiting talent. Twenty-four percent of marketing

and advertising executives say that describing the

actual duties of a job is one of the biggest problems

in creating a job description. Another 24 percent

say they have issues identifying which skills are

absolutely required to perform the job and which

skills are simply nice to have. Twenty-eight percent

say that it’s also difficult to properly convey the

necessary interpersonal skills one would need to

perform the job well.

A well-crafted video description fixes many of these

problems. You want to capture someone’s attention


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with your description: applicants spend an

average of 50 seconds on a job ad, and 72

seconds if they’re actually interested in applying.

Most job descriptions are bland and nothing to

write home about, but they don’t have to be.

Just take a look at this job ad for a hiring manager

at NPR. It certainly got people talking.

Instead of writing up a list of what you want from

a worker, use a video interview to get more eyes

on the job. Interview your employees about what

they do at their jobs, what a day is like at your

company, and the kinds of projects they’ve

worked on in the past. Chances are that all these

descriptions straight from your real workers — on

top of a lively rundown of the job’s duties — will

give potential candidates a better idea of what

they’ll be doing at your company. Moreover,

making your workers a part of the description

will give candidates a better idea of what the

culture of your company is like.

Your Job Is a Product — Sell It!

Video job ads are the future, no doubt about it: people

are 78 percent more likely to check out a job if there’s

a video description for it. In getting more people to

look at the job, you have to think of your job as a

product you’re selling. The more people see it, the

more likely they are to buy it. Not only will more eyes

see your job, people will also think better of your brand


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if there’s a video to see: 52 percent of surveyrespondents say they’re more confident in a

product after watching a video on it; 65 percent

of them will visit a website for a product they’ve

seen in a video; and 43 percent are more likely

to pick the product with the higher video quality.

If you think of your job ad as a product you’retrying to sell, these stats should tell you something:

video is fundamental to building your brand, and

if your jobs are your brand, that means it’s vital

that you get a video description for your job

up pronto.


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Why are organizations and candidates having such a difficult time trying to find the right fit during the

hiring process? Does it have to do with how candidates are interviewed? Or does it begin the moment

organizations publish their job postings? Perhaps organizations and candidates are just not seeing

eye-to-eye when it comes to credentials.

Apparently, only 17 percent of job seekers have the skills and traits that hiring managers seek. And 58percent of job seekers believe they should rely on their own job experience during their job search. This

disparity presents a difficult challenge when it comes to finding talent. If job descriptions are

written with the intentions of hiring qualified talent then why are there such high employee

turnover rates? The goal is to build highly creative and collaborative

cultures, not phantom workforces. The idea is to attract

and bring in qualified candidates into anorganization. Job descriptions should match

organizational needs, not create a disparity with

employees of what their expectations were.

Let’s take a look at these three techniques for

rejuvenating job descriptions.

Be Realisticbased on “How Unrealistic Job Description Build a Phantom Workforce” by Fernando Ramirez


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To Keep Job Descriptions Realistic: Be Specific

Kate Matsudaira, former CTO and founder of

Popforms, believes that for every one job

description candidates read, they read and

encounter 10 awful ones. Communicating

organizational needs instead of desires in job

descriptions can be difficult. According to

research, 40 percent of employees believe job

expectations are unrealistic. Perhaps because

job descriptions do not accurately specify the

expectations and responsibilities that will be

placed on new hires. Ultimately, 43 percent of

employees leave because of heavy workloads

and 20 percent leave because of not being

the right fit for the job. Keep job descriptions

specific and accurate to give candidates the

best possible understanding of what their

daily responsibilities will be.

To Keep Job Descriptions Realistic: Be Honest

There needs to be written truth in what you’re

saying throughout your entire job description.

Remember, disengaged employees and

employee turnover are very real. Candidates

shouldn’t be reading job descriptions that make

them instantly cringe because of the contextinvolved. According to a study by Robert Half,

36 percent of 1,400 executives surveyed claimed

that the leading factor behind a failed hire is

because of poor skills matching. The second

leading factor behind failed hires is because of

unclear performance objectives at 30 percent.

Writing transparent job descriptions may not

eliminate failed hiring, but it can help set the

tone for realistic job expectations that

employers are failing to communicate.

To Keep Job Descriptions Realistic: Be Fun

According to Kate Matsudaira, “Sharing details lets

candidates begin to know your company, which

makes them care about working for you.”

There is great, but simple logic behind Kate’s

statement. The more candidates know about

an organization, the more intrigue they will


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develop, and the more invested they will start

to become. Job descriptions give employers

a chance to display effective employer

branding. As Kate mentioned in her article,

“Every time you write a posting, imagine you

are the candidate reading it.” Don’t forget to

mention to candidates how fun your workplace

culture is, if it is at all. Be creative during this

process and don’t be afraid to use a little humor

as shown in some of these great job description

examples. Remember to create a sense of what

your organization entails.


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The ideal job description should be written by

someone or a group of people that understand

what they truly need versus want from a new

employee. Some would probably argue that job

descriptions shouldn’t welcome every applicant

in the door, but Walt Disney once said, “All ourdreams can come true, if we have the courage to

The Ideal Job Posting

pursue them.” When job descriptions are not

specific, honest, and fun, then they start to

narrow down the possibility of finding candidates

that excel at displaying passion, creativity, and

excitement for learning.

Job descriptions have to give candidates a brief

and quick glimpse of what your organization is

and what it’s about, so be transparent with

candidates. Show them who you truly are as a

team and be realistic about your expectations.

These job seekers have gone through a ton ofapplications and postings in their lives, and they

know when what they’re seeing is genuine. It’s

time to get creative with our job postings so we

can build awesome places to work while attracting

the best additions to our workforces like a magnet!


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attract applicants like a magnet

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