A successful job ad ties in writing, marketing, and competitive intelligence into one targeted recruitment strategy. With the 38% increase in employer branding budgets many companies across the board have begun to adopt, you can dedicate the time and resources you need to perfect your job advertisements. So, to ease the oft-tricky of writing a good job advertisement, here are some hard and fast rules:

Understanding the Job

While this seems like a no-brainer, many recruiters and hiring managers skip this step, assuming the new job will be identical to a vacancy that just opened up. Instead, take this opportunity to figure out the kind of person you really need in that role and fill in with appropriate skills around cultural fit, what you can afford regarding compensation.

How to Write a Job Ad

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when writing a job advertisement is to fully understand the employer brand and company culture. A clear picture of the organization will help to create an honest job advertisement (which is a must!). Unfortunately, several companies aren’t as clear as they should be when they create job ads. 6 out of 10 employees say they’ve noticed differences in their new jobs that don’t align with the expectations they accrued during the interview process.

Organizations have a tendency to market their job ads to an audience that’s entirely too broad. Susan LaMotte (@SusanLaMotte), head of EB firm Exaqueo, said:

“CEB interviewed and surveyed over 1,000 recruiting leaders to take a hard look at why companies struggle with attracting workers who will ultimately be engaged, productive and loyal. The answer? Appealing to the masses has little, if any, influence on attracting quality applicants.” 

How to Post a Job Ad

To attract the right candidates for the job, it’s imperative to understand job seeker habits. To best reach these job seekers, however, adverts have to be SEO-optimized. Use relevant keywords throughout the posting, including in the job title, and minimize the use of internal verbiage. Don’t forget to add a call to action at the end of the job posting to encourage them to apply!

After you’ve successfully posted the ad to the job board (or niche board) of your choosing, it’s important to measure the posting to see how well it’s doing and look for possible areas of improvement for the next job ad. It will help to ascertain if you picked the right job board in the first place. Currently, only 12% of organizations use niche boards to find candidates, so it’s a rather untapped source. Consider the number of views and applications per posting to accurately assess the effectiveness of the job ad.

How to Socialize a Job Ad

Recruiters search for potential candidates via social media sites like LinkedIn or even Twitter. But why search for them when you can share the job posting on the company’s social media outlets? Marketing the job advertisement can be time-consuming, so take the opportunity to implement features that can work for you. Mary Hiers, writing at Recruiting Advisory, said:

“Allow users to email jobs to friends that might be qualified. Integrate social media share buttons so that users can promote specific positions on social networks. Many casual job browsers will share with other people they know that are looking, or will share promising leads on industry group blogs, discussion groups, or email lists.” 

At the very least, job postings should have social sharing buttons. Job seekers may see an enticing post on a job board or your career site and realize they don’t quite fit the bill. With social sharing buttons, the job seeker can send the job advertisement to a friend or acquaintance who is more qualified to apply for the position.

When you begin the job ad process, use marketing and HR knowledge to make the posting both honest and relevant to the targeted candidate pool. Job seekers are suspicious of vague language, and can often see through the companies who try to appeal to the masses. Use social media and SEO keywords to single out a specific talent pool to be more successful in finding the right candidate, rather than appealing to job seekers en masse.

Broadbean is a market-leading job board aggregator software, with the tools you need to successfully create, post, and distribute job adverts in a flash.