Here are some great tips from Steve Smith, author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and co-founder of ApplicantPro. Steve says that job boards are search engines, which means good SEO practices must be followed to ensure your job ad (not the job description) reaches the right candidates. Here are some things you can implement right away:
- Job board impressions are recorded every time a link to your job posting is displayed in search results. In Steve’s words, “Who are you trying to ‘impress’ with your posting?” Answer: The search algorithm. If the algorithm doesn’t think your posting is sufficiently related to the search query and *never* displays it, job seekers will never see it. Job one is to make sure the algorithm is consistently displaying your posting. (Side note: Google is the #1 site where job searches begin.)
- On most job boards, the main keyword in any job posting is the job title. The job title should also be at least one percent, but not more than two percent, of the words in the posting. If your job posting is 200 words, that means that job title should appear in the posting at least two or three times.
- Avoid all clickbait words in the job title – this includes words like bonus, immediate, remote, etc.
- Job titles should be a maximum of six words and should be the words that would appear on a business card. Do not use acronyms. According to Steve’s research, for example, 28% of job seekers do not know that “DOE” means “depending on experience.”
- Make your job postings speak to what is most important to a candidate. Right now, the most important criteria to job seekers is FLEXIBILITY (ranked higher than salary, benefits, or any other criteria). As a search term, “flexible” is used 8-9 times as frequently as “hybrid.”
- If you’re talking about benefits in your job posting, make sure the benefits you tout are important to the candidates you want to attract. For example, part-time workers may not need or be interested in healthcare benefits.
- Research shows that the most effective job postings are between 200-500 words. Fewer than 200 words is a red flag for spam or scams. Use a mix of paragraphs and bullets. Many job boards are penalizing postings that are bullet-heavy and assuming they are spam.
One final tip: job boards are becoming fussier about blocking duplicate content. Whether you are A/B testing or simply “renewing” a posting, make sure that the content in posting A is at least 75% different from what is included in posting B, and there is no word-for-word duplicated content.