How to Post the Perfect Job Ad and Recruit Valuable Talent

The pressure is on: It gets harder and harder to find and recruit new talent for your business. That’s why it’s more important than ever to make your company stand out as an employer. In fact, you need to sell your jobs the same way you’d sell your product. Or rather, acquiring talent should be as crucial to you as acquiring customers.

• Be yourself. Be unique.

As a company, you surely already have a branding strategy. Wonderful - use it in all your Recruiting-related communication as well, so that your corporate brand and your employer brand align.

What does that mean? If you have a visual design (and you should!), use it for your career page as well. Write your job ads in your brand voice. Include your mission and/or vision in your employer descriptions… you get the picture.

Above all, make sure your job ads are unique, compelling and inspiring (and if your branding allows it, perhaps even witty) - and candidates will remember them!

• Be real.

Are you familiar with “Ariane, the Overexposed Stock Image Model”? Or “Hide the Pain Harold”? They’re both stock photo models whose faces are everywhere. Literally everywhere. And it’s just a tiny bit annoying. So what does that mean?

Exactly: By using stock photos on your career page or with your job ads, you always risk appearing fake and unapproachable. You are just one of many businesses, and they are all the same. Luckily, it’s easy to be different:

Use pictures from your last team event. Ditch the empty phrases and let your employees be advocates for your company instead. Interview recent recruits. Create a video showing the workplace. Anything works that gives new candidates a glimpse behind the scenes and shows that you really are just a bunch of fun people.

• Be credible and approachable.

We all hate those empty promises: “The best you will ever…”, “Prepare to be amazed…”, etc. Avoid this in your job ads - and more than anything, don’t make promises you cannot keep.

If there won’t be a promotion or a raise within a year, don’t say so. You’re not expanding abroad? Don’t promise “being part of an international corporation”. Not hiring in the future? Forget about the “ever-growing team”. Your new employees will notice soon after starting, and lose all trust in you as their new employer.

Instead, be honest and approachable. Don’t hide behind interfaces and forms, but give candidates the opportunity to reach out and chat to you. This way they can ask all questions upfront and figure out if your open position really works for them. In the long run, this makes you seem much more trustworthy.

• Be smart, advertise smartly.

Choose your touchpoints wisely. Where are you hoping to find new talent? If you’re hiring for a C-Level position, chances are you won’t meet any suitable candidates at a college job fair. So make sure you advertise your job vacancies in the right places.

Regarding those places, ensure they shed a positive light on your company. Many candidates check platforms like Glassdoor and Kununu prior to applying for a job to get a first impression of their potential new employer. Ask current employees to leave positive reviews and provide an insightful profile.

• Talk, track and trace.

It’s all about teamwork: Bring your Recruiting and your Marketing teams together regularly (e.g. in a monthly or quarterly meeting). This gives them the opportunity to brainstorm new ideas and content for your job ads, update each other on new developments, and check the relevance of current strategies.

Just like with any other kind of marketing and advertising, it’s important to keep an eye on the performance of your job ads. If you try a new approach, track how many clicks, views and ultimately, applications it generated. Then keep readjusting and improving your ads.

Basically, recruiting is a bit like dating: just be yourself and be likeable. Learn from your mistakes. And don’t lie on your profile. The rest will happen automatically.

Happy hiring!

The Smunch Team