Job descriptions had better be well-written and convincing
Here's something you might want to consider whether you're hiring active, passive, or not-so active or not-so-passive candidates.At some point in time, they will all read your job descriptions to decide if it's worth considering your open position. If the audience you're targeting either can't find this job easily or don't find it compelling if they do find it, you won't see as many good people as you should.
Don't be smug and assume that the candidates you're trying to hire won't read your ads. Even referred or passive candidates read your ads. Many even request them with the common retort, "Send me the job description and I'll see if I'm interested, or see if I know someone."
Since the job description is a primary marketing tool, it had better be well-written and convincing. On the business marketing side, these would be equivalent to the advertising copy, the flyer, or the product brochure.
Now, to throw another twist into the equation, these marketing documents need to reflect the different buying patterns of your audience. The copy itself needs to reflect how different groups (age, race, gender) respond to advertising. This affects the length of the ad, the media used to deliver it, and the words used.
Young people, for example, won't respond to the same message as a mid-career person — nor will they look in the same spots. Many women have different career aspirations than men, and they don't look in the same places. Diverse candidates are looking for different things than their non-minority peers, and passive candidates don't care about compensation (unless it's equity). Salespeople do. Since advertising is the front line of sourcing, you need to customize it to meet the varied needs of your target audience.
Here are some ideas to consider and things you can do right away to get started making your advertising more effective:
- Stop using traditional job descriptions as the basis for your advertising. Not even the worst company in the country would consider using their product-specifications listing as their primary marketing copy as some HR/recruiting departments do. Online job descriptions should summarize the challenges and opportunities in the job in some type of flashy document or web page with a creative title and compelling copy. To get started, ask the hiring manager why a top person would want this job. Finish with, "What does a top person need to do to be considered successful?" Then start off your ads with the most compelling stuff.
- Stop using a classified-ad mentality. In the olden days, newspaper classified ads didn't attract top people, except in the career journal sections. So why do we still use this old-style approach online and expect better results? The career journal section worked because it highlighted big jobs with creative ads and big titles and was read by up-and-comers on Sundays or on their rapid transit commute to work. The same concept can be applied today. The key is to target the up-and-comers, not the down-and-outers.
- Make the job compelling. The best people take jobs based on this criteria and order: 1) the job stretch, 2) the quality of the hiring manager, 3) the quality of the team, 4) the importance of the job to the company, and 5) the compensation. Your advertising should clearly demonstrate the job stretch and importance to the company in the title and first paragraph. The up-and-comers in each group (age, race, gender, area of specialization) will decide whether to continue reading based mostly on what they read in the first 10 to 20 seconds.
- Don't start with the part number. If your requisition number is the first thing people read after a boring title, the up-and-comers will have opted out long before they get to the really boring list of skills and requirements.
- The first two lines are critical. Compare these two ads for a creative marketing person. Which one would be easiest to find, which one might you read, and which one would you apply to? Does one appeal more to different age groups or gender? How could you target it to a specific diversity group?
