A job good description should do three things:

1) Stand out
2) Provide the right information
3) Attract the right candidates

It’s surprisingly tough to get it right.

As a minimum

Your job advert should always include:
• Job title
• Brief description of company/organisation
• Candidate specification
• Qualifications and experience
• Job description
• Location and salary

Treat it as an advert

A job description is essentially an advert and you should treat it as such. Focus on the details that employees truly care about.

Play up perks; brag about your training programmes; write about holidays, benefits and staff support structures. If you’re conveniently location and have ample parking spaces, mention that, too.

Think of your audience

Write your job advert with your ideal candidate in mind.

A 22 year old graduate fresh out of university might be interested in room for fast progression, where a 40 year old mother may care more about flexibility.

Make it interesting and easy to read

Nobody wants to be bored at work.

Avoid bamboozling people with big corporate buzzwords – they can sound monotonous and most of them don’t really mean much anyway.

Use humour or personality to create a vibrant, interesting job advert that truly reflects a lively working atmosphere.

Write for an online audience

Providing your job advert is being posted online, of course.

Generally, you only have 7 seconds to grab your reader’s attention before they get bored and click off your advert. This isn’t much time!

Put your most interesting points at the top of the ad to grab attention; people may not reach them if you put them at the bottom.

You can make your article easier to read and skim with:
• Short words, sentences and paragraphs
• Bullets and lists
• Lots of headers and sub-headers

Keep your company’s function brief

Of course, you love your company, so it’s tempting to craft several paragraphs describing your business. Don’t. It’s always better to keep the company function section brief, and spend more time talking about the specific role.

Make it personal

Talk directly to the reader. One way of doing this is by giving them direct commands. Another is by using the word ‘you’; it’s very personal and a good way of making a reader feel engaged.

Here are some examples:
• “Your duties include”
• “Apply for this role now”
• “You’ll be working in a vibrant team of 10 administrators”

If you find yourself writing ‘the ideal candidate will need’, change it to say ‘you will need’.

Just as a note, you might have noticed that I’ve given you orders and used the word ‘you’ throughout this article and you’ve reached the end  - see, it works.

 

For more recruitment advice, click here and visit the Tirebuck Recruitment website