Write an attractive advert

The key to writing a good advert is to make it stand out from the crowd. In a candidate driven market, you need to ensure that your advert will; firstly, appear in appropriate searches, and secondly attract the right candidates to apply. Although it is tempting to write a generic and very broad job advert, you are guaranteed more success if you not only advertise your job – but remember to advertise your company. Be sure to mention business successes, perhaps a global reach, recent growth or even turnover – these things are important to candidates and it gives an insight into the type of business they are applying for. If you are comfortable to do so, use your company name and branding on the advert and utilise your company’s reputation.

Make sure it is seen

Remember to focus on your Job Title as well as the description of your advert. You need to utilise Search Engine Optimisation so make sure that you are using specific key words that candidates will be searching on. If for example you have bespoke job titles within your business that do not perhaps reflect other businesses in the area, this job title will not appear in the same searches. Use a more generalised job title and highlight the change to the candidates when you are discussing the role in more detail. Also, try to refrain from using symbols in your job titles – so no brackets or hyphens as this sometimes affects the search results.

When it comes to location, it is highly recommended that you use a partial or full postcode rather than a generic location such as ‘Tyne and Wear’. Again, this comes down to how the job boards use the data provided and will use the postcode to match potential candidates.

Ask your employees

Even if it is not an essential requirement to advertise internally, it is always worth making your employees aware of a new vacancy just in case they are already aware of someone who may be interested. Don’t forget that this may even be the case with your employees in a different department so spread the word company wide!

Social Media

Utilise your existing following – most businesses now have active social media platforms and this is probably the easiest (and cheapest!) way to advertise your new vacancy. Have a quick search for relevant tags to expand your reach. #nefollowers is a great platform in the North East that will ensure a wide range of candidates notice your advert even when they weren’t looking for it! One thing to remember when posting on social media is that pictures perform better than text and videos better still. If you have the budget and ability to create an advertising campaign that you can use for your adverts you are guaranteed a higher success rate. If you do not currently have this capability, there are platforms available that turn your text and pictures into videos and this is a very quick and easy solution to try and use social media to your advantage. There are lots of platforms out there but we have personally used Quick, Slidely and Filmora.

Job Boards

Job boards can be a very a large expense so you need to make sure you are using the right one for your industry and it may even differ for the specific job role you are recruiting for. Do some research into the reach of each job board, use a google search for your job title and see which board has the most similar job adverts currently on the site. Candidates tend to use multiple sites now however you still need to check which may give you the best results.

Indeed is a great platform that allows you to advertise your job role for free. Be aware though, that it does have its faults – one major issue being that the CV provided when a candidate applies is not always their own personal document but is a summary of their skills and experience that has been put together by the site. Always bear this in mind when reviewing applications and it is sometimes worth asking the candidates to supply their own document if they look of interest.

 

For more information please call 0191 493 7030.