You have an urgent need for 12 new employees, so you post your job description on the Internet’s top job sites and your own corporate website, and hope you will attract a large pool of potential candidates.
You know that most people look for work by searching the Internet.
What you may not know is that many of them will never find you if you don’t phrase your job description to attract attention from job search engines.
To attract candidates, you have to think like how a potential candidate would think rather than how a corporate manager might describe the position. For example, if your job title does not coincide with the term that would normally be used to describe your job, good applicants may never find you.
Keep in mind that the job search engines all work by scanning job titles and descriptions, and they assemble the jobs that most closely reflect the words the job seeker uses in their search.
The average job seeker uses two or three words maximum, and those words reflect their skill. They describe themselves as a programmer, web designer, or content writer, not as a coding genius, builder of dreams, and word wizard.
To ensure your job reaches the people who need to see it, use these five techniques.
1) Keep your titles short and general – As a rule of thumb, keep your titles to a maximum of 75 to 80 characters, and avoid capital letters and hyphens or other special characters. You can make a person’s title as long, complicated or fanciful as you like once they are hired, but keep it simple in your title. If you want that web designer, title your job web designer instead of using a heading like: “can you create show-stopping websites?”
2) Avoid corporate jargon in your titles – You may refer to the different levels of proficiency in your corporation as “ladders” or “numbers” or levels. But the candidates will not be searching for those terms.
3) Don’t be cute with the first line of your job descriptions – Nobody puts it in their job search that they are a guru, an expert, or a savant. Save that for the speech when they win you awards; right now keep it real simple and state plainly what you want.
4) Be as specific as possible about the job – While brevity is a good tactic in your job titles, don’t sacrifice clarity for its sake. If your job involves both marketing and sales, don’t just say marketing.
5) Keep your descriptions long enough to make it clear what the job is, the skills and qualifications needed to do it, but also short enough that they don’t need 15 minutes to read it. – As a guide, you should be able to describe any job in 700-1200 words, regardless of its complexity. Be straightforward and honest about what the successful candidate will do and to whom they will report, and list specific credentials they must have as well as experience expected. Also, briefly describe your company and its product or service. Break the description into a series of paragraphs rather than the traditional long block of type.
Finding the right fit for your company can be a challenge, but using these five techniques might help you make the search a little easier.