Finding the perfect candidate for your business can take time and effort, but if you’re looking to take on new staff it’s important to write up a clear, concise job description that will attract the crème de la crème. While recruitment with The SmartList is one way to manage your advertising campaigns, you may decide to stay in control of the process by writing your own ads – or to simply utilise your own HR team – so here’s how to attract the right individuals.
1. Get straight to the point
Busy job hunters do not want to spend endless amounts of time reading unnecessary jargon, so when writing a job description, always get straight to the point. Remember, you are almost trying to sell your businesses to top employees, so with this in mind it’s a good idea to use the classical AIDA selling format: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
So, to start with you need to attract the attention of appropriate job seekers by including a catchy job description and making sure your advertisement is well branded (particularly if your company is world-famous or well-known in the local area). You should then pique their interest by writing what the job entails and make them desire the position by noting down any reward packages, incentives, work bonuses, great rates of pay and such like. You can then end with a snippet of information on how to apply, which is essentially your call to action.
2. Include what you’re looking for
As well as detailing what the job is about and what candidates should expect from the role, it’s also a good idea to write down what you’re looking for in an employee – be it a lively, passionate individual, or someone with a masters in computing. The recruitment process can be hard work, but stating exactly what you’re looking for from the off should save time and prevent people contacting you who don’t have the right qualifications.
3. Make the ad easy to read
As mentioned above, the job description you write must contain no overly complicated jargon, meaning all words used should be simple and straightforward – even if you are looking to recruit a top scientist who will be working with almost unpronounceable chemicals on a daily basis. The reason for this is that clear text stands out in a newspaper or magazine alongside other near-illegible fonts and also, you never know who might come across the ad. The person reading it initially might not want to apply, but could perhaps have a friend who would be perfect for the position, so they have to know what the job advert is about.
On a similar note, avoid using hard-to-read colours such as yellow or lime green as these can appear almost invisible, particularly on a white background. If you do want to run with a particular colour scheme, ensure the background is appropriate and you won’t be printing red words on red paper or something similar. This might be obvious, but many companies have unveiled surprisingly bad adverts, so try not to be one of them.
Writing a job description is an important part of the recruitment process, so take your time to get it right.
