Candidate attraction isn’t as simple as writing an ad, posting it out to all the big job boards and hoping for the best. And if those are your tactics, you may want to take a slightly different approach as it is highly likely you’re missing out on some brilliant candidates.
Here we’ll look at what we view as the three pillars of candidate attraction – Where, When and What:
Where to find candidates
When to post your jobs
What to include in the job advert.
They’re the pillars that hold up the rest of the recruitment process and can mean the difference between making consistently great placements and consistently missing out on that great candidate, often to the competition.
Pillar 1: Where to find candidates
This is one of the biggest challenges faced by recruiters and is what spawned the ‘spray and pray’ approach. With no real methodology to accurately understand where candidates searching for jobs like yours would be looking or a way to measure job board performance, recruiters would post their jobs to all the big generalist job boards and hope for the best. That is no longer necessary thanks to easier access to reliable data. So here’s where you should be looking and posting…
CRM
Do you check your database before you post your jobs out? We’d advise that you make it a habit, a step ingrained in your recruitment process, to always search your CRM before you post your jobs to job boards. You could have several candidates in your database that match the job requirements, saving you job board credits, effort and time. In fact, how often do you receive applications to jobs you’ve posted on job boards only to find that you have those candidates in your CRM already? It’s a source of constant frustration for many recruiters but one which could be avoided.
One of the biggest reasons recruiters give us for not checking their CRMs for relevant candidates is time – they need to find someone ASAP and searching their database first is just another step, another thing to do that slows them down. This is where tech such as WaveTrackR that automatically brings up matching CVs to your job specifications from your CRM is incredibly helpful, hugely speeding up the process and ensuring no candidate in your database falls through the cracks.
Website
Posting to your website has several advantages over job boards. Here are the two biggest:
- A customised candidate journey – candidates applying for a job on your website will immediately enter into your space and you have control of the entire candidate journey.
- An exclusive talent pool – candidates can choose to register for job alerts and upload their CV to your website if they decide not to apply for a job, meaning you get candidate details into your talent pool even if you don’t get an application – something that you won’t get from a job board. The opportunity to build an exclusive talent pool is hugely valuable.
We’re not saying that you should stop posting on job boards (they remain a valuable way to get your jobs in front of a wide range of candidates) but posting jobs to your website is something you should be doing irrespective of where else you are advertising or looking for candidates.
Job boards
How do you know what job boards are likely to provide you with the highest percentage of quality applications and placements? One word: data. The 3 most important metrics you need to look at are:
- Number of applications
- Application quality
- Number of hires
In general, a mix of niche and generalist job boards is a good strategy. If you recruit in an industry with a lot of hard to fill vacancies and specialist roles, niche job boards can be especially effective. Wave data consistently finds that niche job boards in sectors such as Hospitality and IT outperform generalist job boards when it comes to average application per job numbers.
Social media
Social media can be a harder nut to crack but can get your jobs in front of the right people. Recruiters that post their jobs and other content using their own profiles on channels such as LinkedIn can benefit from more than just applications for specific jobs. They can build an audience of people in the sector that they recruit in, establishing both relationships and their industry knowledge, and reaching passive as well as active candidates. Paid advertising is also gathering huge momentum, based on the huge reach social media sites have.
Pillar 2: When to post jobs
Timing is everything when it comes to posting your job adverts. But that doesn’t necessarily mean speed, which I know will go against every instinct in a recruiter’s body! Sometimes in recruitment, it isn’t all about speed but about timing – finding the right time for the best results. In its Q3 2023 Recruitment Trends Report: The importance of time and job scheduling when posting job adverts, Wave revealed that scheduling your job to be posted at the right time increases the number of applications you receive by a massive 80%.
It is so tempting in such a fast-paced industry to post your job out as soon as it is ready but that might not give it the exposure it needs for decent applications. The best time is not always the quickest time. So what is? We can work out the best times to post based on 2 elements:
- The days and times of day that candidates are most actively searching and looking for jobs. That’s when you need to aim to get your jobs onto the job boards or your job will be harder to find as the algorithms prioritise fresh content.
- The time it takes most applications to be received after posting a job. The majority of applications are received within 48 hours (with applications dropping off significantly in the days following), which means you need to get your jobs out at those key times or you’ll likely receive fewer applications.
The best day
Wave data shows that the beginning of the week is the best time to post, specifically on a Monday or Tuesday, as that is when candidates are most actively searching and applying for jobs. Applications drop off slightly on Thursday, falling further on Friday and then further again over the weekend. That means that if you post a job on a Thursday, you will reach far fewer candidates over the following days and by the time the majority of candidates are actively searching again your ad will be harder to find.
The best time
9-10am is the optimum time to post your jobs as the majority of applications are received between 10am and 3pm, with a spike at 12pm – lots of people searching and applying in their lunch breaks! Get your jobs out there just before they’re looking and they’ll be easy to find by the candidates you want to reach.
*There is a caveat to the optimum times to post and that is that these are averages across every industry. We have found that there is far more variation in industries that recruit for a lot of shift-based roles as candidates are available to search at different times. For example, Health & Nursing bucks the general trend by receiving a relatively high percentage of applications on a Sunday. For these roles, posting at the weekend could be advisable.*
Pillar 2: What to include in your job ad
Getting the content and structure of your job adverts right is crucial in order for them to be found by the right candidates, attract a diverse pool, engage those candidates, and compel them to apply. A tall order for a relatively small piece of content. So what are the essentials?
- Location – a requirement for most of the big job boards and it will help search engines to match that data to keyword searches, leading to more relevant candidates finding it.
- Salary – salary transparency is so important, leading to uplifts in applications (including from diverse candidates) and greater candidate trust.
- Standardised job title – don’t mess with the job title or your job is far less likely to ever be found by relevant candidates. The job title is not the place for creativity.
- A maximum of 5 bullet points per list – bullet points are great for skimmability but too many and they become overwhelming.
- Limit skills and experience to the essentials – limiting the list of requirements helps to keep your job open to as wide a pool of relevant candidates as possible.
- Keep your ad to 300-350 words – this is the average ideal word length for job ads, based on application numbers. Shorter than this and not enough detail is covered, much longer and it won’t grab reader attention for its entirety. 300-350 words is the sweet spot that will net you the highest number of applications.
- Incorporate keywords but don’t overstuff them – naturally weaving keywords into the copy of your job advert helps it to be found by the right candidates but if you overstuff them not only will it sound unnatural, search engines will penalise it.
- Use gender neutral and non-discriminatory keywords – words are powerful so watch the wording you use in your job ads.
- And finally, SELL THE JOB – remember it’s a job ad and not a job description. Its purpose, just like B2C adverts, is to persuade the intended reader to convert. Use your job ads to entice relevant candidates to apply for your jobs – the exhaustive detail in your job description can wait until further into the process.
Ensure those 3 pillars are stable and not only will the foundations for your entire recruitment process will be stronger, you’ll make better placements faster. The trick is to combine data and tech with best practice and then you can let your relationship-building, human skills do the rest.
This article was originally published on ukrecruiter.co.uk on the 29th of March 2024
