Our seventh Talent Matters webinar focused on the importance of optimising the content of your job ads and no-one is more qualified to weigh in on this than Daniel Fellows, founder of Get-Optimal, an on-demand job ad optimisation service.
Daniel founded Get-Optimal in order to rescue the humble job ad and propel it to greatness. With a background in both tech and marketing working for international organisations, most recently Indeed, Daniel recognised a need for software that analyses and optimises job advert copy for SEO, gender bias and diversity.
With thousands of new candidates coming to the marketplace, Daniel and Dave discussed the myriad ways in which you can increase the number of quality candidates finding and applying for your jobs, from considering the way candidates search for jobs, to understanding job board algorithms, to the vital importance of word choice in your job ad copy – and why all that matters.
Key takeaways
- Don’t spam job boards with speculative copy. Quickly pulling together a job ad and posting it out to dozens of job boards won’t gain you an influx of quality applications and is simply a waste of time and budget. Job board algorithms work on content relevancy and if you haven’t spent time getting that right the candidates coming through your pipeline are unlikely to be right for the job. The ones you really want to attract probably won’t see it.
- Job ads should act as the first stage of screening. Screening candidates that aren’t right for a job should begin ahead of online assessments/ATS/CRMs/automation tools. It should begin with your job ad. If you write it well and optimise the content it will be picked up by search engine and job board algorithms and found by the candidates you want to reach out to.
- Think of your job ad as a piece of highly rich, relevant content. The majority of jobseekers now start their search online. Just like any piece of online material, your job ad needs to be optimised for relevancy and content or the algorithms won’t prioritise it.
- Unconscious bias in job ads means excluding quality talent. Removing bias around gender, race and accessibility will broaden your talent pool and benefit your business, yet 99% of job ads are biased, particularly when it comes to gender. Removing gendered words and pronouns has been shown to increase applications from quality candidates.
- Job ads are small part art, big part science. Drawing talent from an aspirational, empathetic point of view is important but first you need to serve your job ad to the candidate through the search engine’s algorithm and that is where the science comes in. You could write the most inspiring job ad description but if it doesn’t get in front of candidates searching for that type of job, it is ultimately useless.
- The world is changing, recruitment must too. Diversity and inclusion are, quite rightly, becoming incredibly important in the workplace. Businesses are realising the huge benefits of employing a diverse workforce and most of us can agree it is the right thing to do. Programmatic is also growing massively, there is a lot more automation around what we do and job ad optimisation is likely to become a necessity.
Daniel’s top tips to improve your job ads:
- Job title choice – Don’t use internal jargon. It is about the weight of relevancy rather than creativity. Use Google Trends to discover the most searched for job titles for a particular job.
- Word length – Keep your job ad to between 700-2,000 characters and limit bullet points to 4 in a row and 8 in total.
- Order is important – List role, remuneration package, responsibilities, must-haves, and finally your company mission/vision.
- Ensure mobile optimisation – Make sure your job ad is optimised for mobile devices before you post it.
- Avoid gender bias – Pick apart your copy and remove any gendered words, e.g. ‘tenacious’ and ‘driven’.
- Don’t copy and paste competitors’ job ads – This may seem obvious but it happens a lot.
- Add a call to action – Always add a CTA at the end of your ad. What do you what the candidate to do next? Click apply? Contact you? Send in their CV? Spell it out and encourage immediate action.
Jam-packed with actionable advice on increasing the number of relevant, quality candidates seeing and clicking on your jobs, you don’t want to have missed this webinar. If you did or want to watch it back, you can do so here.
