Articles

Even though job interviews garner a lot of attention, the postings which lead to them are even more important. Think of job postings as your side of the interview process: your ideal posting must hook a candidate from your target demographic, incentivize them to put a fair amount of time into crafting a worthy application, and—in most cases—motivate them to show up to your office. While not all job postings will fit the same criteria 100 percent of the time, here are a few general tips to improve yours.

1. What makes your firm special?

Far from being a hokey question, this is one of the first things your post should make apparent: how does your company make the position for which you’re hiring different than competing firms? This is your chance to address everything you love about your company—culture, mission, geographical advantages, and so on—without having to disguise your admiration as anything other than genuine pride for your establishment.

It’s easy to overdo it, though; that’s why when you’re talking up your company, it’s important to avoid sensationalist language, exaggerations, or downright falsehoods. Candidates can easily sniff out desperation from anything from the number of adverbs you use in your post to the tone you take, so keep it simple by listing your company’s perks in a bulleted format or a similarly non-stylized manner. This will serve to highlight your company’s benefits while assuring potential employees that you’re still a realist.

2. Which accommodations does your firm make?

This is an intentionally ambiguous question for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the “accommodations” afforded by your firm might encompass anything from a communal coffee pot to extensive paid time off or remote working availability, leaving the extent to which you can mention these features at your discretion. To that end, make sure you have an idea of the in-office resources you have at your disposal.

More importantly, however, it’s important that any potential employees have a firm grasp on how you’ll handle the juxtaposition between home life and work life. For example, how many hours per week can your employees expect to work? Is there a certain amount of take-home responsibility your employees should anticipate? If so, how will you support them? Making these “accommodations” clear in your posting will ensure that you don’t go through the early stages of the hiring process only to lose a candidate in the end game.

3. What makes the position interesting?

Answering the “what’s in it for me?” question head-on is always a good idea, but detailing adequately the position’s intrigue is more nuanced than that. While some positions are inherently interesting to begin with, many entry-level positions—particularly those which entail looking at a screen for 40 hours per week—may seem daunting to someone looking to join your company. Listing any potentially unknown benefits of the position while still acknowledging its weaker aspects is a plus.

The goal of answering this question should be to establish that your firm is both honest and optimistic. Only an insider such as yourself knows just how much fun your job posting’s target can be, and why; however, any position has low points as well, so it would be foolish not to mention them in some capacity.

4. What responsibilities accompany the position?

This is more of a technicality than anything else. Any potential employees should have a general idea of what you expect from them (e.g., punctuality, dedication, focus, and so on), so you shouldn’t have to highlight things like that in your posting. However—as with the previous question—this is a good time to mention location-specific responsibilities, expectations, and regulations which may not be standard in other competing positions.

For example, your position may check all of the boxes for employees’ expectations, but the building in which you work might have specific stipulations for probationary employees; similarly, you might need to inform any potential hires of job responsibilities which require them to liaise with departments outside of their general expertise. Again, doing this will prevent you from wasting time and energy interviewing the wrong candidates.

5. Why you?

You’ve already established that your firm has appealing features not found at other competing businesses, but the most important fundamental question still remains: why should people work for you—not just instead of somewhere else, but as a whole? Your company’s ethos, the common goal toward which your employees all work, and your promise to employees in turn will all come into play here.

You might even want to provide a small anecdote about a real-world impact your company has made in an effort to uphold the mission. Other things you could mention include fun facts about your company, testimonials from clients—though sparingly—or another form of tone-oriented blurb that demonstrates adequately the heart of your company.

Crafting a winning job posting is an incredibly difficult and stressful process that may as well be on par with interviewing for the position itself. Don’t risk missing out on your best new hires—for more information on putting together your best job postings, call Abacus Payroll at (856) 667-6225 today!