What Makes a Good Job Advertisement for 2021

An educational piece to inform those searching for a good way to advertise jobs. We want to let you know what makes a good job ad and how to advertise them well. 

Job Ads today....

Let's be honest, Job Advertising has had its mixed reviews on how effective they are over the years. The nature for job advertising and job seeking has grown to become crowded, making the task of successful job advertising more challenging.

To mark our 3 years of working with all sorts of Job ads, we've decided to put together all our insights during that time to help picture what good job ads look like.

Keep in mind that a good job ad to us is one that brings in quality candidates rather than as many candidates as possible.

Just About Enough

An important concept to remember is the differences between Job Descriptions versus Job Ads.

“Job Descriptions are legal docs. Brain dump from the hiring manager. Very technical. Very specific on activities and successes.” - Katrina Kibben @ Three Ears Media

Job Descriptions are long formal documents intended to outline every detail about the job. Meanwhile, Job Ads are the short-form version of that - just with a bit more catchiness and glitter to stand-out.

The length of a Job description should sit somewhere between 600 and 1700 words. Anything more than that is too time-consuming for the current pace our generation operates in. Ideally, you want your job ad to be a quick and easy thing for readers to decide on. You want to get them in to find more information first before trying to share every single detail about the job.

Keep it simple!

Too Creative

Advertising can be exciting and flashy. The same can be done with Job Ads, however, just keep an eye out for cliché filler words and phrases. At first glance, they do a good job at sounding friendly and upbeat. When in reality it adds more fluff and doesn't tell much to a reader.

Here are common ones:

• Self-Starter : I mean, doesn't everyone have to?
• Employer of Choice : says who?
• Ninja, Rockstar
• Fast-paced company
• Top Talent
• Winning team
• Start-up feel
• Hungry, Play Hard

These words are more subjective than descriptive, which doesn't help our audience at all.

Job Titles are Key

It's the first thing people read; bolded, front and center. Job titles drive how the search process online works, from both the channels you use and the candidates searching.

What's written in the job title tells platforms online how to categorize your job to be displayed for specific keywords being looked up. An important thing to note is your job ad will be then grouped up with similar titles, making standing out the next challenge.

Best case scenario: the less competition the better.

Our favorite example is the case between 'Admin Assistant' versus 'Office Assistant'. Responsibilities are the same as a job, but search volume is always different.

Try to look up the job title of your ad to get a glimpse of the crowd you're going to be set in. Observe what appears first, similar titles and the volume of other jobs out there.

Capture with the Content

A potential candidate sees your job title and clicks to read more. The real deal that decides whether a candidate applies or not.

The job post content.

For writing job ad content that converts, think of it as an Elevator pitch. You've got to tell the story about the job in a simple and easy way.

You want your ad content to favor clarity over creativity. This goes back to the fluff concept earlier, you don't want to get too creative with words.

"As a [Job role] you will help who do what by doing this." Plain & simple.

Follow up the elevator pitch of the job with a short intro description about the company hiring. Maybe add more flavor to it by sharing some company perks as well.

Then, wrap things up with a brief list of what's expected from a good fit candidate. Typically, this is done by listing some skills required, which can be vague. A way to counter this is to list experiences instead. This can highlight what sort of interactions could take place in the role and is more descriptive for the reader.

Finally, the cherry on top which is the legal boilerplate about equal opportunity.

The entire job ad content should only be about 250 words and has less than 10 bullet points total. The flow of job ad should go as follows:

1. Elevator pitch about the role
2. Intro about Company
3. List of Experiences
4. Legal boilerplate

Getting it out there

Once you've done all the prep work to get your job ad together, it's now time to showcase it. Post your job ad on channels most relevant to the ideal job seeker you are looking for. Keep notes on the performance on a regular basis and adjust along the way for what's giving you results.

There are many methods and tools out there to help you manage multichannel posting (us included). These technologies can bring in more visibility of how each job ad & campaign is doing.

Insights from these tools can range anywhere from seeing how many people view your job ads to how many have applied. Be sure to find the right one that suits your objectives and budget.

Shameless plug: here at JobAdX we do exactly that. You can post your jobs to multiple channels all in one place, even through our self-serve platform. Feel free to check out more info on us here.

These are the keys to Job Advertising in 2021, we'll be sure to share more of our insights along the way. Happy hiring!