Writing Great Job Listings – 7 Best Tips to Hire Talent

Great job listings will always lead to better hires for your business! According to recent findings, 78% of organizations paused or outright stopped their hiring efforts during 2020-2021 due to the global pandemic. 57% of recruiters stated that they design their talent acquisition tactics around attracting diverse job applicants. This means attracting not only underrepresented groups but also people with various backgrounds and skillsets to fill their job listings.

Additional data proves this, as 52% of recruitment professionals made it their goal to attract more quality hires instead of a larger quantity of them in 2021. 66% of employers see globalization or the trend of moving abroad for work and hiring international professionals as a lucrative growth opportunity. Whether you want to hire employees from the UK or expand your reach to Europe and other continents, it all comes down to how you write your job ads.

As a business owner or a recruiter, your job listing needs to hook the applicant from the get-go to make them apply. But, you also don’t want people to apply for the sake of it, without being fit for the vacancy you are trying to fill. Here’s what goes into writing a great job listing and what you can do to rethink your approach to hiring new employees with Jobs OneGlobe.

Perks of Writing Great Job Listings

What goes into writing a good job listing which will attract the type of candidate you need for your company? Small Biz Genius findings indicate that more than 20% of employers and recruiters cannot meet the demands of the best-suited candidates. With 75% of the global workforce poised to be comprised of millennials by 2025, now’s the time to rethink “how” you present your job vacancies to potential hires. What are some of the most important questions you need to ask yourself before writing a job listing?

• Why are we creating this job listing?
• What type of person would be perfect for this role?
• What are the exact requirements we have from the candidate?
• Will we emphasize soft skills or hard skills in the job listing?
• What’s the best reason to work in our company?
• What employment benefits can we offer to the candidate?
  
  

Your job listing will be the first point of contact many people will have with your brand. You want to make sure that your Jobs OneGlobe company page is representative and in line with the job listings you will eventually publish. These questions will help guide you through writing a job listing that will adequately present your vacancy to prospective candidates. Beyond that, here are some great reasons to pay close attention to how you write listings:

• Gain a better understanding of the role you’re hiring for
• Maintain a good brand image for your company
• Shortlist your candidate pool early on
• Avoid potential misunderstanding with applicants
• Reach an international candidate pool with Jobs OneGlobe

“Time spent on hiring is time well spent.” – Robert Half

How to Write Great Job Listings

1. Rely on Tried-and-Tested Job Titles

When coming up with the titles of your job listings, you should stick to what works. Don’t try to be creative with the job titles you assign to each job listing because people might have a difficult time finding your listings. For example, if you need a social media manager, write it as “Social Media Manager”, instead of trying to think outside the box.

You might think that a more creative and original job title may attract more attention but it’s quite the opposite. This is especially important to understand because people often just Google the job vacancies they’re looking for. You can go through the available job listings on Jobs OneGlobe and use them to get a sense of direction to take with your job titles.

2. Keep your Tone of Voice Professional

For your job listings to gain traction, they need to be written as professionally and objectively as possible. Job candidates won’t apply for listings that are written casually and without worry about the tone of voice they communicate. Even if you’re hiring designers, copywriters, and similar professionals who can work in a casual environment, your listings need to appear proper.

This is easily done by writing each listing in a professional tone of voice. This means avoiding jokes, memes, funny inserts, anecdotes, or references. Assume that you are talking to a very strict and serious professional who is interested in your listing – what will you tell them? This approach to job listing writing will help you establish certain expectations with each job candidate. They’ll take your listings far more seriously and perceive your business as worthwhile if your tone of voice is adequate.

“Hiring the wrong people is the fastest way to undermine a sustainable business.” – Kevin J. Donaldson

3. Emphasize Skills Rather than Years of Experience

There’s no clear-cut answer as to what you should focus on in your job listings. Some employers like to annunciate the “years of experience” a candidate has had in the industry while others prefer to highlight the skills necessary to be employed. At some point, however, you need to ask yourself whether passing on a very experienced candidate is worth it just because they don’t have 5+ years of professional history.

If their skillsets exceed what you’re looking for, shouldn’t you at least arrange for an interview with such candidates? While you should look for candidates with experience, you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on this aspect of your job listings. Instead, settle for 1-2 years of professional experience at least and see who applies for the job. This will widen your talent pool to include more diverse candidates and help you find who you’re looking for much more quickly.

4. Don’t Fill your Job Listing with Abbreviations

Many job positions require certain hard skills from the people that fill them. However, finding these professionals might be difficult if you rely on too many abbreviations related to their hard skills. For example, you’re hiring a content marketer for your company and need them to poses certain skills.

While “SEO”, “PPC”, and “SERP” may be universally accepted terms in the industry, relying on them in your job listings is a bad idea. Take a more descriptive approach to how you write listings. Write “Search Engine Optimization” instead of “SEO”. Make your job listings more approachable and easier to read instead of filling them with industry lingo and abbreviations only experts will understand at a glance. This is especially true if you want to fill junior or intern positions because beginners may not be familiar with your industry as much yet.

5. Don’t Neglect your “About Us” Section

Make it as easy as possible for candidates to find out more about your company from the job listings themselves. Don’t assume that every candidate will go out of their way to look for your website, social media pages, or other online presence. Instead, write several paragraphs about your company, its mission, history, and long-term goals.

Give candidates a good idea of what your company stands for, what you’re dedicated to, and what your business culture looks like. This will give many job candidates the nudge they need to apply for your job listings. You can ask candidates questions about your “About Us” section and what they thought of what they’ve read there. This will help you identify the best job candidates based on how much they identify with your mission statements early on.

“A modern recruiter is one who targets, builds relationships, and knows how to not only find candidates but also get them to respond!” – Stacy Donovan Zapar

6. Always Proofread and Format your Job Listings

One of the most important aspects of your job listings relates to their spelling, grammar, and formatting. Whether you end up writing short essays on each job position or rely on short-form listings, proofreading is important. Listings riddled with writing errors and lacking proper formatting will give off bad vibes to potential candidates.

They’ll assume that you either don’t have a good command of your language (or English) or that you simply don’t care enough. Both of these impressions are negative for you, so pay close attention to how you write. You can use helpful tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to spellcheck your job listings quickly. This will help you eliminate most writing errors and allow you to attract more professional candidates to Jobs OneGlobe.

7. Review Your Job Listings and Ask for Internal Feedback

Before you publish a new job listing, you should sit down with your managers or HR expert and discuss what you’ve written. Make sure that everyone in your office agrees with how you’ve decided to approach hiring new talent. Ask for feedback both from existing staff members and managers who will work with the new hires directly.

Discussing your job listing before publishing it online will help you eliminate any errors in judgment or miscalculations you might have made. Your colleagues may also have valuable feedback on which requirements to add to the listing to find the right people more easily. Never create and publish listings in a vacuum and without asking for second opinions. Once you’re ready, proceed with publishing your job listing and start setting up interviews with the most promising candidates.

Getting Started on Your Job Listings

So how do you make the most out of your job listings once you’ve written them? At Jobs OneGlobe, you have several options for how to hire the best candidates. For one, you can use job listing promotion and company promotion packages to increase the visibility of your listings at any time. You can also create multiple listings and publish them simultaneously to hire more people concurrently.

You can edit and restructure your listings at any time with new information or additional points you might have missed the first time around. Keep an eye on your inbox and prepare to receive plenty of CVs and application letters from prospective job candidates when you publish your listings on Jobs OneGlobe. You’ll be amazed to realize how important it is for you to write great job listings no matter how popular your brand name or the industry you want to hire in is.