Increasing the effectiveness of your talent advertising

If you are still using your internal HR job descriptions when you post openings on an external job board or your company website for that matter, then please write a check and hand it to a stranger on the corner for the price of that posting.  Either way, you are wasting the company’s money.  That’s a pretty strong assertion for so early in the year, huh?

Here’s my point:  Posting job openings is a form of marketing.  You spent a boatload of money on your website and your brand to make sure that you are engaging your target audience; in this case, customers.  Your marketing department carefully monitors all outgoing documents, campaigns, website changes and brochures.  However when you have an open position in your company you post a boring, sterile description that completely alienates potential employees (and potential customers).  So, how do you fix it?

1. Get your Marketing folks involved:  Your company brand is very important in the market.  Job advertising is a part of the market.  Walk over to your marketing group and ask them to help you develop some interesting ad copy for your open positions.  It will be easy for them to refactor your content into a voice that is consistent with the brand.  If this is a difficult exercise, then you have bigger problems.

2. Compose an amazing company introduction.   Every job posting should have a short paragraph that describes your company.  This introduction will set the tone for the rest of your job ad.  Consider a short quote from a new employee – or the CEO in this introduction.  Include information that will get the attention of the kind of candidates you are looking for.

3. Speak to your audience.  Spend the time to rework your sterile task list and put it into conversational English.  Instead of: “the candidate will have 5+ years of experience ….”  Try a more intimate approach: “you’ll leverage your 5 years of experience as an integral member of your team…..”  Which statement do you identify with?

4. Talk about interesting work.  Get your candidate interested in the work they will be doing.  Tell them about projects, technology and talk about how they will spend their day.  Remember, this is an advertisement, not the formal job description you have internally.  Don’t worry about turning off some candidates – you really only want to interview people who connect with your words – right?  It’s ok to let some candidates self-select out.

5. Post as a real person.  The ultimate personal touch is to post as a real person.  Include your name and contact information.  Yes, this will elicit phone calls and emails.  That’s ok! After all, you are trying to hire great people – and great people will be aggressive about connecting with you.

This approach takes time and energy.  However, the outcome will be a much better candidate pool, a more consistent branding for your company – and ultimately a shorter hiring cycle – quality vs. quantity.  To your success!

For more information on hiring great talent – and getting hired – visit us here.