With growing competition among employers for capable and qualified candidates, more and more employers are turning to the Internet as a means of announcing their job openings. Placing job postings online can reduce your advertising costs to a great extent. However, while posting your jobs online, the big question you may face is how to make your postings stand out from the crowd and attract the attention of the best candidates? Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your job postings and gain advantage over your competitors.
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1. Select a good job title
A job title is the first thing a job seeker sees in your job posting. A good title indicates not only the type of position you are trying to fill, but also the type of position your ideal candidate is looking for.
2. Use appropriate keywords
Keywords are the most important way of your job being viewed online. Job seekers use keywords to search for job postings on the Internet. Keywords may include the industry, position, or skills relating to the position. While writing your job posting, make sure important keywords appear more often.
3. State all job requirements
Ensure that all the job requirements have been mentioned in the job posting to avoid unnecessary applications. The more information you include, the easier it will be for you, as only candidates with necessary qualifications and experience will reply to your ad.
4. Use graphics
You can use a picture or a logo with your ad to make your ad more appealing. If you company has a website, feel free to include this in the ad to give applicants an opportunity to learn more about your company.
5. Make the posting readable
Do not use large blocks of text as they can make your posting difficult to read. Split up any paragraph with more than five lines. Keep the sentences short and simple and use proper punctuation.
6. Be friendly
Give your ads some personality and "human" features so it does not just seem like an automatically generated posting, but an appeal for someone to join your company.
7. Speak to the candidate
When writing a job description, think what you are looking for in the candidate. Why should a candidate apply for the job? Be sure to include items like the working environment and possibilities for growth within the company.
8. Write about your company
Give a little information about your company so that candidates might know how they would fit in to your organization.
9. Give facility to apply through the posting
Always offer the ability for a candidate to apply online by using "Apply" button below your posting. Mention other additional methods to send in applications (e.g. fax or e‑mail) near the end of your posting.
10. Revisit jobs you have uploaded
To maximize your investment, be practical in the management of positions you have uploaded. Revisiting and re-editing any vacancies that could not attract a huge response is always a nice practice to attract more candidates for the position.
As any recruiter or HR professional will tell you, one of the primary considerations you should make with any new recruitment technology is the experience of the candidate. Process automation is great, but first you have to get good, qualified candidates to apply for your positions. And it all starts with having a robust, smooth and easy-to-use online application process.
We've worked with hundreds of companies to set up their online career site, job board and online application. We also talk with candidates who are applying on these sites, so we hear first-hand the ways that they can get frustrated and tripped up. The following are some of our suggestions for a great online application process.
Brand your employment site to match your website
The first thing a candidate will notice when they hit your employment portal is the overall look and feel of the site. Having your company name and logo is an excellent start, but even better is having a site that matches your main website's design and navigation, to give a consistent, professional impression to the candidate.
For example, here are a few live examples of customer employment sites that we think provide a consistent, clean brand image to the candidate:
Keep in mind that having an employment site that matches your website doesn't require that your existing website administrator create the site. Many third-party systems for employment sites are able to create a "skin" which matches the website, so it will appear consistent to the candidate even though it's running on a different system.
Make sure your job information is up-to-date and complete
You want to make sure the list of jobs and job descriptions on your site are complete and up-to-date. One of the primary benefits of an employment site is to enable candidate self-service so they are not calling up your company to inquire about your jobs. But if you have out-of-date jobs on your site or don't provide all the details of your jobs, you will be missing one of the primary benefits of an employment site.
Having a good applicant tracking system is an excellent way to make sure the information on your employment site stays up-to-date and complete. When you post a new job you can push it automatically to your employment site. Similarly, if you modify the details of a job or close a job, the change can be made automatically in real-time. This sure beats having to submit a request to your website administrator to update your site each time your jobs change.
Decide how much you want to ask of candidates when they apply
When designing your online application you should consider how many fields you will ask the candidate to fill out in order to apply. Many organizations just ask for basic contact information (Name, Address, Phone, Email) and a Resume, while others may ask the candidate to fill out a complete Employment Application with separate sections for Personal Information, Education, Employment History, References, etc. Still others will ask for basic contact information and then ask some job-specific screening questions.
There is no right or wrong size for an online application, but you should weigh the trade-offs. In general, the more fields you ask in an online form, the less people you will have complete the form. However, it is often advantageous to collect all the information you need in your hiring process up-front, rather than having to request it later in the process. Also, many companies, such as those under OFCCP regulation, are required to review each application and document the review, so it may be advantageous to restrict applications to only those most serious candidates.
Keep the application simple
Many forms on the web these days, especially those designed by us web developers, tend to be a bit "too clever". Developers have this nasty habit of trying to take advantage of every technology at their disposal, even if it doesn't improve the user's experience. You want to project a modern image to your candidates, but if you try to make your application too fancy it can make it hard for the candidate to fill out.
For example, scripts and animations during the application can look cool but can also get in the way of the basic task of filling out the fields. This is especially true of longer applications such as a complete employment application. Web technology was built with a very simple, but robust way to capture data through forms, and often just sticking to these web standards will result in the most usable forms.
Any web site should keep in mind that users will be coming from multiple environments and browsers, which is even more reason to keep the application simple and stick with standards. The animation where the screen scrolls up and prompts the user to fill out a missing field may look great on your browser, but someone on another (older?) browser may find it prevents them from completing the application. Better to just do the validation when the user clicks Submit and come back with a prompt for any missing data.
Don't make the candidate re-enter data
There's nothing more frustrating than being asked to fill out questions in an application process that you've already answered somewhere else. For example, you provide your Contact Information when you register with the system, but then when you go to apply to a job the system asks you to fill it out again. Or even worse is when you apply for one job, then go and apply for a second job and the system asks you to fill out the complete application again.
A good application system should be able to save an applicant's information and re-use it later in the process to prevent duplicate (or triplicate!) data entry.
Be careful of data loss resulting from timeouts and lost sessions
Actually, there is something more frustrating than having to enter data you've already entered somewhere else, and that is having the data you've spent so much time entering suddenly lost. We've all had the experience of filling out a form, entering a comment or composing an email, and then clicking Submit only to lose the data entirely. Sometimes a person will take the time to enter the information again, but application for employment more often they will just leave in frustration.
The usual culprit in these situations is system timeouts and lost sessions in your application system. For example, if a candidate has the Apply page up and partially filled out, then is called away from her computer suddenly, when she comes back to Submit the application she may find that her session with the system has timed out and the data she entered on previous pages is lost.
Most good application systems will be engineered to prevent this type of data loss, but you should definitely test it out. For a simple test, just start an application and go half-way through, then leave the screen up over night and in the morning try to submit. If the page comes back with a "Your session has ended" message and you can't get back to your data, there is session timeout problem and there's a good chance it will affect your candidates.
Single page or multiple page?
When designing your online application you will need to decide whether you want to have all fields on a single page, with the Submit button at the bottom, or broken up into multiple pages with Next and Back buttons. There are advantages to either method, but you need to consider the trade-offs:
Single Page Application:
Multiple Page Application:
For most cases we prefer single-page applications because of the simplicity and ease-of-use. But either method can be implemented successfully.
Provide confirmation and information on next steps
Finally, after the candidate has submitted his or her application you should provide a confirmation message that the application was received. Along with a general confirmation message, you may also want to consider providing some additional information to help the candidate understand the next steps in the process. For example:
Moving from a manual application process to an online process has the potential to drastically improve your recruiting workflow and provide a great first impression to your candidates. But you need to make sure that the process you set up isn't going to result in frustration on the part of your internal users OR candidates.