Important note – If you are not going to go to the market with this role, and want to use an agency, I would suggest skip this bit, and jump to “How to use a recruitment agency” in this series which will be coming next week!
If you are going to use an advertisement, before using recruitment agencies – then you are in the right place. But I will outline in this, and using a recruitment agency, things to consider before you do either.
Pre-Advertisement – what you need to consider.
SO, you are loaded with the job specification, and what you ideally want.
But hold on a second, heading to your local job advertisement board, and posting the job spec, isn’t a job advert.
These are 2 different things!
Job specification, is the outline of the role, that you use internally, and for the expectations of both you and the candidate, needs to meet, or get close to meeting. Obviously, I got you to think about this in the last episode of this series. The 5,3,1 rule.
A job advert is your marketing piece. And in order for your role to hit the right person, you need this to be able to do that. And believe it or not, you need to resonate with the future candidate what you have.
WHY? there is a lot of jobs out there, some of which might be in your space, all climbing over each other on the websites you will probably use. To capture the right person for the role, you need this advert to stand out. Doing 1 thing differently can make a job advert stand out, but I will get to that below.
Even if it’s a low level, low paid role. You want to be able to tell the world the type of company you are. Future customers, maybe checking this out on your website. How you advertise your business and company to future employees, may reflect on the type of company you are, and with effort and drive – they will see you’re looking for quality people = quality service.
So how do you identify, what to take from a job specification to a job advert, to work out if the right candidate will apply?
A job advert is a net. You chuck it into the ocean of candidates, in the hope to receive applications relevant to your role. But sometimes, the next has too big holes in it. Meaning the job advert has too much information.
When you break down any job, in the most, it’s pretty logical what the role is. But something mentioned, don’t need to be mentioned in the advert, and just the key information does.
How to find out the key information?
We can use the 5,3,1 rule for this. I did a video on this a while back you can find here…
What 5 things are important to the role?
What 3 things, out of those 5, can you not train, but you can coach and develop?
What is the 1 crucial thing, out of those 3, you really need the most, in order for the candidate to be successful in this role?
And that crucial thing is the start of your job advert.
Things that you need to think about whilst writing your job advert.
- What is the defining feature of this job? what is in it for the candidate?
- I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the standard benefits job adverts list – like Pension, 21 days off a year.
- “An Exciting opportunity” why is it exciting? what is that thing? explain it.
- What is the job?
- Yep, we know what the role is, but can you explain what the job does. without a 30 point bullet point of duties and “other duties included” at the end. Give the reader something to pull them in.
- Who are you? Why should the best candidate apply for this role? If there is something beyond the norm, tell them.
- What is it paying?
- How can they apply? What to do next.
- My advice here is to get away from the norm of online forms, or generic email addresses, put a human on the end of this, people buy from people – they also – apply to people. But maybe as well, think about the candidates, in an office right now, or on the train home, seeing your advert, fancy hearing more – do they need to send a CV now? or would a Linkedin profile do – for an initial conversation? Maybe mention that?
There are loads of variations of this over the internet, where I have had the most success is writing job adverts that I would want to read – that tells me the job as an overview. Ye, the role comes with duties, and people know this. You can send that specification after or discuss it later on. What you’re doing with a job advert is capturing the people – that wouldn’t normally apply, but also, are relevant for your role.
Where to advertise your job?
I’ll mention this as a footnote – it’s a bigger conversation to have. But the main gist of the advertisement for your job needs to be happening in the areas, in which you can glean the right people.
- Social media, I have a whole episode on Social media – you can find here LINK.
- Job Boards. There are a wide variety of job boards, all charging you from £70 an advert to £500 an advert. Once that money is spent there is no guarantee the right candidate comes along. my method above – writing a better advert will increase that chance. The advantage of using a recruitment agency when it comes to job boards, most if not all agencies have access to a wider variety of boards, to cast that net even further than you can.
- Your own website – The best place to be, a list of live roles before you hit up anywhere else. A lot of good candidates are checking out their competition, and seeing what is going on. If you don’t have a live role on there, and they will look – you may miss out on the chances of someone checking. Again, make it easy to enquire about a job. Each click to the candidate is a penalty to you. I read a fact that every click and field they have to fill out or do, you lose 10% of candidates. Hence why job boards have 1 click applications!
Lastly, and importantly – if it is daunting – and you really are not a writer of job adverts, but understand that a good advert will cut to the right people. Then consider getting in touch – and I will write it for you (adverts all cost £100 each). Or reach out to your local copywriter.
Thanks for following this series!