The New Rules of Recruiting: Rethink Job Postings

Don’t mention money in the first round of job interviews was a longtime “best practice” for job seekers. Not anymore. Today’s job seekers expect to see a salary range and may decide not to apply if a range isn’t listed in the job posting. 

Applicant traffic is a significant issue for companies today. A great way to increase your applicant traffic is to rethink how you’ve been crafting job postings, which happens to be one of our areas of expertise.

How to Write Great Job Postings

A job posting is the first impression job seekers have of your company. Crafting your job posting can make your open roles stand out from the crowd. 

Here are our HiringThing tips for writing excellent job postings:

• Use standardized job titles: Using “Marketing Ninja” instead of “Marketing Manager” might seem cute, but it’s confusing. 
• The title should indicate the job: Account Executive III is confusing, but Account Executive isn’t.  Save the formal title and specifications for the job description.
• Your posting should mirror company culture: Make sure your language reflects the job and your company culture, and it’s targeting the kind of applicants you want to attract.
• Use inclusive language: You want as many qualified people as possible to apply for your job, so use language that includes everyone—check out this comprehensive, inclusive language guide for tips on keeping your language inclusive.

HiringThing Pro Tip: Make sure your entire website uses inclusive language—savvy candidates will comb through your website before applying.

• Keep it concise: LinkedIn found that job posts with 150 words or less got candidates to apply 17.8% more frequently than job posts containing 450-600 words. Keeping things concise is also better for the modern candidate who may be using a mobile device for their search, and 50% of job views on LinkedIn are on mobile devices. 
• Use job description keywords to stand out: Hundreds of millions of job searches are conducted each month through Google. While most reputable job boards do the work to ensure their postings are searchable in the major search engines, employers still have the most influence when it comes to ensuring your posting rises to the top of search engine results. This Monster.com article is an excellent guide to optimizing your job postings. 
• Consider adding multimedia: Infographics and videos will help your posting rise to the top of a search engine results page. It’s also a way to help your posting stand out. 
• Format your post: Use bold and bulleted lists to make your job description easy to read.
• Be direct: Candidates spend an average of 14-30 seconds on your job posting, which means you need to cover the essential aspects of the job as soon as possible. A study by The Ladders tracked job seekers’ eye movement—candidates spent the most time reading the top and skimming the information at the bottom. 
• List a salary range: Include a salary range in your job posting. A joint Glassdoor/Harris poll found 67% of job seekers look for salary when deciding whether or not to apply. 
• List company benefits: Benefits are also important. If you have them, list them! And remember that health insurance and PTO aren’t the only benefits to highlight. “High level of autonomy,” “room for growth,” and “flexible schedules” are all benefits to today’s job seekers.
• Don’t get too casual: Some companies will go super playful, utilizing language like “Kickass rockstar wanted” or hashtags like #processobsessed. While they’re attempting to differentiate themselves from overly corporate-sounding language, LinkedIn found that candidates were 2x-4x less likely to apply to excessively casual job descriptions. 
• Keep true to your brand: If your brand is overly casual, don’t listen to us! These are just suggestions, after all. You need to be true to who your organization is.
• Keep in mind what candidates are looking for: We’ve previously covered what today’s job seekers are looking for in a career. If your posting can speak to purpose, development, diversity, and flexibility, make sure it does!

Download The HiringThing Guide to Increasing Your Applicant Traffic

We created The HiringThing Guide to Increasing Your Applicant Traffic to help businesses solve 2021’s biggest business challenge. There’s a wealth of information in this guide, including:

• Additional information on creating job candidate personas. 
• Why you should rethink job qualifications. 
• Helpful checklists to ensure anyone at your company writing job postings has what they need to attract the candidates that will be your next best employees.

GET THE GUIDE

About HiringThing 

HiringThing is a modern recruiting platform as a service that creates seamless hiring experiences. Our private label applicant tracking system and open API enable technology and service providers to embed hiring capabilities from sourcing to onboarding. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere, to hire their dream team.