If your job openings fail to attract the kind of talent that your business needs, you might have a job advert and not a job description problem.
A big mistake that many HR recruiters make is to put a dull, lengthy job description on the Internet to fill a new position instead of developing it into a job advert. While people often use these two terms interchangeably, there’s a big difference between them.
A job description is a list of technical specifications of what an employee has to achieve on a day-to-day basis and how success will be measured. While a recruitment advert draws on a few core duties and skills from the job description, it picks out the key features and benefits of the job that would inspire qualified candidates to apply.
Just think about how you would market a product. Instead of listing all the features you’d tell customers about the benefits and outcomes.
Your competitive edge, called the Employer Value Proposition (EVP), is vital to attracting scarce skilled talent. It’s especially important to the new generation of workers who want an opportunity to grow, travel and be part of something meaningful. Instead, they’re mostly presented with unattractive job descriptions that simply don’t surface what they’re looking for.
Most job offers are still missing clearly-articulated EVPs, particularly the details about the workplace culture, the people and further development opportunities. This absence is a huge gap in selling the opportunity’s context within the wider business.
Candidates reading job descriptions don’t understand the business, where it’s going, or what opportunity there is. Often these offers don’t describe the challenge, the value they can bring to the role, or the benefits that they can get out of the job.
At a strategic level, HR directors need to get a clear view of the EVPs and where the business is going. They need to know what the resourcing plan looks like and where the hardest-to-fill jobs are. A specific sourcing strategy should be developed for each audience that will include elements of the EVP suited to each and the best channel to use to get the message out.
HR management also needs to put in place processes that will give recruiters the capabilities to write more marketable adverts.
Practically, writing an attractive advert requires the following:
Most HR recruiters are still doing text based adverts on job boards or their ATSs. Increasingly EVP messaging is added to websites through video, pitches and testimonials. A line manager talking about the business area, its culture, the opportunity in this particular function, and a bit of scope of what the job is about in a video could make all the difference.
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