Working in recruitment requires a deep understanding of the job market, the skills required for each open position, and much more. A recruiter needs to know how to advertise job openings attractively and how to promote open positions effectively to reach the right target audience.
Job advertisement is a great way to attract talent to the selection process and engage with the employer brand. However, for the advertisement to truly attract the right people, it’s essential to know how to craft a job listing.
Generic job ads can result in a high number of candidates who are not aligned with the opportunity or the company, thus wasting time and resources in the selection process.
In this article, you will learn how to advertise job openings effectively.
Who is Your Ideal Candidate?
Before starting your job advertisement, you need to understand who your ideal candidate is—that is, who is the most suitable person for the open opportunity. To do this, you’ll need to create the candidate persona.
The term “persona” is widely used in marketing when it comes to defining an ideal customer.
In marketing, professionals often create a fictitious person to represent an ideal customer, as this helps define communication and sales strategies and influences decision-making processes.
The logic is the same in recruitment.
Once you begin a selection process, it’s important to “create” the ideal professional for that role, and this needs to be done before the advertisement, as much like the customer persona influences marketing, the candidate persona will influence your job ad and search efforts.
Where Are Your Candidates?
You need to know where your candidates are in order to make your job advertisement effective.
There are various recruitment tools that allow you to post opportunities on their portals. Think about whether you want to use this type of technology and which one is the best fit for you.
In addition to recruitment platforms, you should and can leverage LinkedIn to promote your job openings and search for talent.
On LinkedIn, you can use keyword searches and participate in groups that will help expand your network, thus increasing your reach and candidate base.
How to Present the Company?
An important point to consider when creating a job ad or even talking about an open position is how you will present the company offering the opportunity.
Conducting a recruitment process is much more than just looking for someone to fill a gap.
When you approach someone and get them to consider participating in a recruitment process, you are influencing how that person sees their professional journey, and a job change could bring about significant life changes.
So, knowing how to talk about the opportunity and the company can make your job ad much more attractive, and of course, clearer and more understandable.
But… how should you talk about the company? You’ll need to apply employer branding.
Employer Branding is a set of actions, a strategy used by organizations to communicate with the general public that it’s a great place to work.
This tactic makes the organization more attractive in the market, increasing its competitiveness and the satisfaction level of its employees.
So, when discussing the open opportunity, take the time to understand the company, how work is done there, the organizational culture, goals, and values.
This information, combined with the job details, will provide you with more authority when “selling” the company and the open position.
How to Write the Job Ad?
Now it’s time to understand how to write an actual job ad.
Define Where to Advertise
The first thing you should define is the platform where the position will be advertised. Your writing style should be tailored to the platform being used.
If you are posting the job on a job portal or the “jobs” section of LinkedIn, be very detailed. Include all company information, benefits package, work model, organizational culture, mandatory and desired qualifications, etc.
If you are posting it on LinkedIn’s feed, aim for an easy-to-read, dynamic style that sparks interest. Highlight key points and direct the reader to the application page.
Prioritize Clarity in Content
Avoid writing confusing text. It’s better to write a simple and clear message than to overcomplicate the opportunity and leave the reader confused.
Be direct in your communication. Highlight attractive points like the benefits package, salary, and work model, and always double-check what you’ve written.
This way, you’ll improve the quality of your text and catch any minor grammar or spelling errors before posting.
Where to Advertise Your Job?
At Yellow.rec, we usually promote all the job openings worked on by our team of specialists on LinkedIn.
After all, it’s the world’s largest professional networking platform.
Since the space was created to connect companies and professionals, it’s clear that its use is effective.
Using LinkedIn doesn’t mean you can’t use other platforms; understand where you have the most reach and who your audience is on each network you use.
It’s no use having great reach on Instagram, for example, if that audience is not aligned with the job you’re advertising.
Once you know who your audience is and where it’s best to promote an opportunity, just follow the above steps and create your ad!
If you’d like to dive deeper into the topic, check out our Job Ad Publication Manual—just click here.
