As a recruiter, you know that there are a ton of different pieces to juggle when managing an effective recruitment advertising strategy.
From keeping up with your bids to ensure that you aren’t wasting your budget, to crafting the perfect job title, to managing relationships with all of your job board vendors (hint: there’s software that can help automate a lot of the manual work). Plus, you can’t forget about the human aspect of your job, like working with hiring managers to solidify candidate requirements, and scheduling interviews with potential new hires. In truth, a recruiter’s work is never done!
With respect to recruitment advertising, however, the most important thing for recruiters to stay on top of is increasing applicant quality.
Focusing on improving the quality of your job applicants is an integral part of an effective recruitment advertising strategy, and goes hand-in-hand with ensuring that your entire application process, from the amount of time it takes to submit an application to your actual job ads, is optimized for success. If your recruitment advertising strategy is optimized to drive quality applicants, then you’ll reach more quality applicants because your recruitment advertising strategy was optimized – it’s a win-win!
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to craft a high-performing recruitment ad that’ll attract more quality candidates to your sponsored jobs, check out the recruitment ads below.
Recruitment Ads That Attract Quality Candidates
1. Optimized Job Titles
When it comes to job titles, less is more. Our research has found that the highest performing job ads (with a 7.6% apply rate) have titles with between 1 – 3 words. In the example below, DaVita fits right in the sweet spot (and captures two key search terms!), with “Registered Nurse (RN).” Keeping it simple ensures that candidates know exactly what they’re applying for, and eliminates any risk of confusion if the job title doesn’t match the job description, and a valuable click is wasted.
Keep your titles short, to the point, and avoid being clever if it risks losing out being concise.
And don’t forget: avoid using symbols (like $, !, and &) in your job titles, as they can lower your click-through rate by over 2%.
DaVita job posting, retrieved from Monster.com
2. Ideal Job Description Length
Just like job titles, job descriptions have what we call a “Goldilocks” length – not too short, and not too long, but just right. Between 300-800 words, click-to-apply rates hover between 8-9% – and dip drastically for job descriptions that are either shorter or longer than that.
When it comes to job descriptions, focus on being brief, while still offering enough information about the position. Emphasize exciting benefits offered (more on this later) and provide honest detail about what it’s like to work at your company.
Farmers Insurance job posting, retrieved from Dice.com
In this example from Farmers Insurance, they come in at just over the 300 word count mark. That puts their job description in the sweet spot for click-to-apply rates.
As you can see, they are sure to include enough information about the position, any specific candidate requirements they want, as well as some information about the company and culture. It’s informative, without being too overwhelming for potential candidates to digest.
3. Mentioning Benefits
Earlier this year, we teamed up with Ashley Whillans, Professor at Harvard Business School, on some research to uncover how benefits influence job seekers.
As it turns out, there is a direct correlation between application conversion rate and the number of non-cash (that’s right, non-cash) benefits listed in a job description. Including 4+ benefits in your job description can actually yield up to a 22.5% apply rate. Not too shabby.
Chipotle job posting, retrieved from CareerBuilder.com
You can see that for Chipotle, benefits include tuition assistance (a non-cash benefit, monetized), as well as paid time off, career advancement opportunities, and more. These show that the company appreciates their employees, and values their happiness above their productivity.
4. Location, Location, Location
Every single job board out there had two main search queries that potential candidates can utilize: keywords, and location.
It’s important than when crafting your job ad, you consider testing out including the location of the job in the job title, especially if you’re focusing on hiring in a specific location. This can help people identify jobs that are close to them, or close to a location they’d like to move.
Sodexo job posting, retrieved from Indeed.com
In the example above, Soxedo is looking to hire a Starbucks Barista specifically for the cafe at Loyola University. By including the location in the job title, they can ensure that only people searching for barista positions, and located near Loyola University, will click on their ad.
This enables them to execute a more targeted strategy, where job seekers will know at a glance if the open position is somewhere they can easily work and, if not, will pass is by and not waste a click.
Putting These Recruitment Advertising Ideas into Practice
When it comes to altering job titles, tightening up job descriptions, and mapping out company benefits, these are all easily actionable tips that recruiters can start putting into practice today. By doing so, you can help increase the amount of quality job candidates that your recruitment advertising generates. Don’t be afraid to test, test, and test again – you’ll never know what works best for your ideal job seekers until you try!
For many candidates, your sponsored job might be the very first time they’ve heard of you – make sure you make a good impression with these best practices, and you’ll be bringing in quality candidates in no time.
Looking for more recruitment advertising data? Check out our Recruitment Media Benchmark Report, where you’ll find the research and data behind all of our tips outlined above, and much more!
