Are you receiving the right quality of candidates? Maybe you’re inundated with irrelevant responses? This can often be an issue with job ads, especially with applicants who go through job boards and apply for anything and everything that’s slightly relevant. But you can help prevent this by targeting your ads effectively.
Ask yourself this; are your adverts targeting the right audience?
The overall tone of an advert is one of the most overlooked aspects in talent attraction. The writing style you employ, and the tone you convey as a result, can completely change the candidate response you receive. The way your language is perceived can have quite a large subconscious effect on how the business and the role are perceived.
Readers may not even realise it’s happening, but they form opinions on the business based solely on how the advert is written.
Basically, your style of writing and the impression you give off needs to match the business and the role you’re offering. If it doesn’t the ad may seem disjointed and it might not give an accurate impression of the business.
This leads to an influx of candidates who aren’t right for the opportunity.
To reach the right audience, you need to be posting in the right places.
You’ve got to know who your target audience is, and where they’re looking.
Not all job boards are the same, it’s as simple as that. The fact is that many job seekers only browse a select few job boards, and won’t notice opportunities posted elsewhere. Often these are the top job boards, the most expensive ones.
This is why it’s so important to make sure your job ads are posted in the right places. And this doesn’t mean just posting the ads in a lot of low-cost boards. There’s a reason such boards are low-cost, and it’s because they don’t receive the same quantity or quality of candidates as the top job boards.
By ensuring your ad is posted to the UK’s top job boards, you can expect an increased influx of higher quality candidates than you’d expect to receive from low-cost boards.
Post in the right places, get the right candidates. It’s as simple as that.
One of the main things you should focus on when you’re writing your job ad is priority.
Have a think; what are you going to prioritise in your advert? What are you going to frame is important or vital, and what are you going to put to the side?
Applicants don’t read adverts equally. They don’t always start at the beginning and read everything through. Most applicants will pick out the information that they deem to be most vital, and ignore the rest if they don’t find what they’re looking for.
That’s why you need to prioritise your most important information based on what your target audience will be looking for. Think about what’s most important to them in your ad and how you can make sure this information is clear to them. Don’t waste your applicants’ time, and they won’t waste yours.
It’s surprising just how many job posters don’t know themselves who their target audience is. Sure, everyone has an idea, but an idea isn’t enough. You can’t just throw out a job ad aimed at a general target audience and hope for the best.
You need to know your audience to be able to target them effectively!
Do a bit of research. Think long and hard about exactly who you want to read your advert. You might be surprised how much you need to adjust your ad.
If you want to improve the quality of candidates you receive from your job ads, give us a call at Hiring Wizard on 0161 696 8899. We provide premium job advertisement services, posting your role on all the major job boards.