Job Ads Don’t Sell? Here’s Why!

The transition of recruiting into the cyberspace has been a global affair. On one hand, you are tempted to remain where you are and stick with newspaper and snail mail recruiting. On the other hand, the endless possibility of online recruitment seems very exciting.

Those that jumped onto the bandwagon will soon realize that cyber recruiting space is pretty crowded. Not only million of resumes zapped through thousands of job boards everyday, every recruiter who has the smallest budget can claim a space online. Selling your jobs to prospective, qualified candidates has been, and always be, a sales job.

Are you frustrated that, despite paying through your nose for premium spots on famous job boards, few qualified candidates actually responded to your job ad? That your e-recruiting effort is nothing but a cyber black hole? There are many factors attributed to this, but like all other sales job, it all begins with your sales message – your job ad. Here’s why your job ad never seems to work!

ONE – Your job ad tagline is less than informative

Visit the most famous job boards. Do a search, say, “Process Engineer”. How many results the search generated? And out of these hundreds, how many unimaginative job ad headlines can you see? Chances are, you will see many job ads headed with uninformative taglines, such as “Process Engineer” or simply “Process Engineer, Singapore”. Not only the job ad will fail to attract the right candidates, it also will not differ from many other ads with similar tagline.

Be precise and direct to the point with your tagline. Imagine it is something that attracts the attention of your target audience, and compels them to click. Include a little information specific to your job, like location of job, employment type, level of positions etc. Example: “Junior Process Engineer, contract, min. 3 yrs. exp., Singapore”. Write in such a way that makes your prospect think, “Hey, that’s me!” and click on your job ad.

TWO – Your job ad does not contain the right sales message

Remember your job ad is always a sales message. Imagine you are selling a product. How do you compel your customers to “purchase” from you? A good sales person knows that accurate and complete information is the key to convince the customers that, yes, your product is the solution to their problems.

So, write your job ad to solve your targeted candidates’ problems. There is always three main sections of a job ad:

#1 – Job Description What are the roles for this position? Does the candidate need to manage a team? Is he going to work on a technical project? How about business development? Be precise on your job description – an accurate “sales copy” here will attract the right candidates (“Hey, that job describe ME!”) and positively deter unsuitable ones.

#2 – Position Requirements Who are you looking for? Who will be best equipped to optimally perform in this role? Your job requirements are checklist details for the candidate to assess what he has to offer you. Educational qualifications, language capability, years of working experiences and work authorizations are but some of the details that you should put in.

#3 – Employment Details If the candidate you are looking for is most likely to be working for, perhaps, your competitors, your job description and position requirements will not be enough to arouse his interest to send you his resume. When you know this is the selling point for your job, include the employment details. Salary package, company welfare, compensation scheme, career path and employment types (contract, permanent etc.) are essential data any serious careerist will consider before click the “Apply” button

THREE – Your job ad is not visually attractive

As strange as it sounds, increasingly, how you present your job ad is going to be important. In the world of online job postings where hundreds, if not thousands of jobs ads struggle to capture job seekers’ attention, you have to stand out from the crowd. How can you do that? Use the basic – HTML and pictures.

Nothing is more boring than a job ad presented the old way – text, and more text. Just like the way you format your Words document, you would want it to be presentable. Use HTML. Here are some basic formatting that you can use:

Bold – YOUR TEXT
Italic – YOUR TEXT
Underline – YOUR TEXT
Indent –

YOUR TEXT

Bullet –