Comment
By Simone Lockhart
With the rise in job vacancies hitting record levels, it is now a real challenge to stand out from the crowd, and yet so many companies are still sticking with the old-style job description advert telling candidates what they need to get the job rather than telling – or should I say selling – the reasons someone would want to join your organisation.
It’s time to move away from "what you must have" to "why you must join", and turn the traditional advert on its head by leading with the benefits rather than the skills and experience required.
You need to imagine the person you’re trying to attract, your "ideal" candidate – why not model it on one of your current employees – and ask yourself what they would want to know about your organisation to trigger their interest. You could even go a step further and actually ask your people what would make them apply.
READ MORE: How to hire smart in the new world of work
Lead with what makes yours a great place to work. Talk about culture, opportunity, autonomy, team, ambition, flexibility and the working environment.
Tell them about your great products and/or clients, what you do differently, and tell them how their role will have a positive impact on the organisation.
Most job boards will show three to five lines of text as a preview, so the initial impact needs to be there to get potential candidates to click and find out more. The important thing here is to use your space wisely, and once they’ve clicked, capture their interest with all of the key elements of the company and role that will entice them to apply.
LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your opportunities but you need to invest time in getting the right strapline and images. If you can, steer away from boring job titles and the stereotypical stock images we all see 100 times a day. Why not use real photographs and talk about what prospective candidates will be doing, rather than just listing the title of the role.
READ MORE: Myths and legends of automated tracking
Even better, why not create a video and really show people what it’s like to work for your company, and all the reasons they should want to join?
Of course, it’s also important you get the right people to apply. There’s no point in having lots of applications with none of the skills you actually need to get the job done. Let the advert do the talking and once you’ve got people hooked with your opener, then they can rule themselves in or out based on what they’ll need to be successful in the role.
Other key essentials include location, hours of work and any flexibility, and of course the big one, remuneration. Salary and benefits will always be a huge factor in someone applying for a new job so please do include it, even if it is a range and dependant on experience.
Simone Lockhart is the group commercial director of the Taranata Group.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel