In today’s job market, there is fierce competition for attracting top talent to your company. The demand for talent is often greater than the amount of active job seekers for many industries, creating a large number of roles and noise for candidates to sort through.
Here are four key areas to focus on while crafting your job descriptions to cut through the noise and attract the best talent to your company.
1 | Choose Your Words Wisely
Glassdoor research has found there is “a clear ROI hot spot for titles containing 50-60 characters, outperforming other titles by 30-40 percent.” Select a job title that is clear, concise and commonly searched. Titles such as Human Resources Director, SEO Analyst, and Food Production Worker are searched far more often by candidates than internal titles such as Happiness Director, SEO Superstar, or Flavor Guru. Adding keyword specializations to your title indicating the level of experience needed, department or industry of the position is one way to add flair while maintaining searchability.
In addition, utilize descriptive adverbs and adjectives to give employees the best mental image of the position’s responsibilities and day-to-day tasks. Integrating powerful vocabulary choices will grab a candidate’s attention and generate excitement around the role. Remain gender neutral with your word selection to appeal to all potential candidates.
2 | Determine Your Priorities
An extensive “laundry list” of responsibilities or qualifications can overwhelm job seekers and affect the readability of your job description. Select the top 5-7 responsibilities and requirements for the role; monitor your character count while doing so. According to research by Indeed, job descriptions between 700 and 2,000 characters receive up to 30 percent more applications.
3 | Tell Us About Yourself
Company culture and values are an influencing factor for applicants in today’s competitive job market. Give candidates a sense of who you are as a company by tying the role to your mission statement or company values. Extra points go to those that shed light on the work culture and detail how the role ties into larger company projects and/or goals.
4 | Format, Format, Format
As more and more job seekers continue to apply via mobile devices, it is imperative that your job description and application are mobile-friendly and formatted for smaller screens. Make the process as simple as possible for candidates by formatting your job description and application for easy consumption on-the-go.
Avoid lengthy paragraphs and large fonts. Instead, format your content to create a skimmable, easy-to-read description by opting for bold headlines with clear bullet points in standard font sizes. It is also essential to verify that the effort you’ve put into formatting the text correctly transfers when live on its respective platforms.
Today’s fiercely competitive job market requires strategic planning for crafting your company’s job descriptions. Choosing your words wisely, determining your priorities, tying the role to your company mission or culture, and proper formatting with mobile in mind will help your job stand out above the rest and attract the best talent to your company.