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Want your Job Ads to get more quality candidates? – What you’re doing wrong
When you want someone to apply for a vacant position, how exactly can you convince them that it’s a good idea? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not referring to someone who’ll just work anywhere with a stable paycheck. I’m talking about those high-performing employees who are already working at a decent place. What do you think, why would they want to switch?
Would it be because the company you’re hiring for offers a great opportunity for career growth with a culture that inspires employee motivation? If that sounds like something you’ve been using to get more applications, your job ad is not exactly attracting the right candidates.
I recently did a search on LinkedIn for Jobs in India with “exciting” “growth” and “motivated” in the Ad, and you can see the results. What I found was that “exciting” returned more than 11.5k results, “motivated” delivered more than 19.5k ads, and “growth” showed more than 31k results.
I also did the same search on Naukri.com and found similar results. “Exciting” showed more than 4.5k results, “motivated” returned close to 20k results, and “growth” delivered more than 31k job ads.
Job Ads that use these terms appear as an insincere attempt to sound just like every other vacancy ad. And maybe this particular company does offer professional growth, a culture that inspires motivation, and exciting opportunities, but how can we expect any candidate to understand this when literally thousands of job ads on every platform use the same language.
You simply can’t use the exact same techniques & verbiage,
and expect to get different results!
There are thousands of successful companies out there, and the attitudinal characteristics that define their employees differ widely. Identify these additional characteristics that define your employees and then, use those characteristics in your vacancy ads and messages.
Do you want to create genuine job ads that attract the right candidates?
There are thousands of successful companies, and the attitudinal characteristics that define their employees differ widely. You need to use those characteristics in your vacancy ads and messages.
Your recruiting process should represent your corporate brand.
But how can you sound different when you have the exact same motivation – to attract good candidates?
How not to sound the same?
Luckily, this is something you can do with just a little extra effort.
First, go through your recent ads and remove these words “exciting” “growth” and “motivated”. You’ll most probably come across phrases like “this is for an exciting project”, “we are looking for highly motivated individuals”, or “this is an opportunity with great growth potential”.
Second, go on all the job sites you use and search for your competitors’ ads. Now copy these to a document and look for common phrases used in them. These phrases are another bunch of terms that you should eliminate for your recent ads and remember for the future.
So what you’re doing is figuring out what terms and phrases not to use to attract better candidates.
The purpose of this is to attract people to the unique aspects of your company and for that, you have to stop being a carbon copy of every job ad on the internet.
These great candidates that we’re looking for may already have a job. And they are most certainly not going to be attracted by such generic terms. An employed high performer would be attracted only to a unique offer that fulfills needs that their previous company didn’t.
It’s the task of your job ads to convey how your vacant job can be that opportunity for them. The fastest way you can do this is by avoiding terms like “exciting” “growth” and “motivated” in your job ads.
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Ishani works as Manager – Social Media & Strategy Big Ideas HR Consulting Pvt. Ltd. and also as a Freelance Digital Marketer. She has a knack for problem-solving and also enjoys writing. She loves to share her views and knowledge with the readers by the medium of her blogs.
