Staff are expensive. Hiring staff is even more costly. Recruitment and training costs can quickly add up to 50% of the salary, and with no guarantee that the person will stay.
Who writes most job adverts? Recruitment consultants who have had no copywriting training and who say in their ads that every opportunity is “exciting” and that every company is “dynamic” or “disruptive”.
Is this how you want your company described?
Let’s imagine you’re hiring. You need a .net developer – so you hire a recruiter who posts on Indeed.
Immediately, you’re competing with 6,550 other ads. Not great odds.
Perhaps you’re in London? If so, those odds drop to 1 in 1861. Still not great.
That’s an example of just one website. There are thousands of sites out there that candidates might be looking at. Of course the best candidates might not be looking at all.
LinkedIn Jobs, on average, has 3,167 live .net roles in London alone.
So how do you get noticed?
Many companies opt to pay more to appear higher in the search results or get their job ad on the first page of results. Great for the recruitment sites – they can create a bidding war for searches. Less great for you, the employer or recruiter.
Having spent all that money to get your job ad listed at the top, what do you do next?
Create something that will stand out, grab my attention, pull me in and make me read your advert?
90%+ of job ads have no redeeming features. Nothing that stands out. Nothing memorable. Nothing to separate one role from the rest.
You’ve spent more to get people to see and hopefully read the advert, but what are you offering them?
In most cases, a brief and very dull summary of the company and a list of skills. Is this going to get people excited? Make them update their CV, take time off for an interview, risk leaving a safe job to come and work in an unknown environment? Of course not.
The only people you’ll attract with job ads like these are those who are actively looking for work already – those that are unemployed, under-employed or about to be made redundant. That might be enough to simply fill the vacancy, but you’re missing out on a lot of potential candidates.
Now imagine a different scenario.
You post something different.
A job ad that stands out by telling the real story about your company and the role. One that makes people want to read it, possibly even to share it. When was the last time you saw a job ad that was worth sharing?
An ad that people will bookmark and refer to thier friends? What kind of people will this advert attract? All the candidates that would have seen your original advert for sure, but also those who aren’t actively visiting job sites; those that aren’t looking: Passive candidates.
There’s a reason they’re not looking.
They’re happy in their jobs and generally good at what they do.
These are the candidates that will help your company to outperform your competitors – and you’re missing out on them.
A well-crafted advert has other benefits too.
Each time your company advertise a job it contributes towards your company’s branding.
It’s not just about print ads, the PPC campaigns or your website. For a lot of businesses, the careers page and job ads are the most contact they have with the public, and yet many fail to take advantage of the opportunity to make the right impact
What are your job ads saying about you?