4 Tips to Job Descriptions That Attract the Right Talent

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As we sip our morning coffee, scouring our multiple newsfeeds, we see things like "5 tips for landing a job" or maybe "3 ways to set apart your resume," all aiding the jobseeker. However, we don’t see as many tips aiding us employers in areas such as successful job listings, maybe. Why is that? We're people too! So, as we skim through the typical jobseeker-focused tweets and posts, here's a post shouting out to us employers!

4 Simple Job Description No-No's

As you read the tips below, you may think to yourself how simple these are, and sit there idly, waiting for that "ah-ha" moment. Truth is, you may not feel that moment with this post. The reason being, these tips sound so simple and things you've heard before, but we're hoping that posing them from a jobseeker's aspect, you may feel more inclined to turn thought into action with these. Today's tips relate to your job descriptions. This is the first thing a jobseeker is going to see: the portrait of a company they cannot see. Therefore, you need to lure them in given a limited amount of time the potential applicant will give the first few lines of your description.

  1. Avoid confusing job titles: As a jobseeker, they most likely know nothing about you, the company, the products, or anything. So, having a non-universal job title does nothing more than read: "This job title is as confusing and complicated as the work you’ll be doing if hired." Not only does it cause applicants to turn away, but things like SEO suffer, because let's face it, Google is as clueless as we are when it sees job titles such as: "Remedy Engineers," (yes, these are real job titles, people).
  2. Eliminate grammatical errors: This ranking high up there on our list of hates, along with spiders and snakes. As a jobseeker, this job description looks completely unprofessional and sloppy, leading to the applicant believing that's the type of environment to be expected in said organization. Remember, both the employer and applicant are being evaluated.
  3. Please nix jargon or industry buzzwords: Please, please don’t eliminate your chances of a great hire because they read the word "thought-leader, go-getter, robust," and the list goes on in the job description. What do these words even mean? To tell you the truth, they have multiple meanings to different people, and probably not the ones you're intending. So, if you can't clearly define a word without background context, it has no business being in front of an applicant's eyes.
  4. No gimmicks: We mean, give them specifics. We can all relate to being let down by a clever marketing ploy using generics. For example, "Big sale" signs that don’t hint at the staggering fine-print or the want ads that say "Hair apprentice," when really you come to find out that you're signing up to apprentice with everything but hair. We've all fallen victim, so to increase application and retention, be very upfront and specific about the duties your new hire is to perform. Plus, this helps strain the worthwhile applicants from the broad, maybe candidates.

While these items almost seem too simple, they are all-too common mistakes that we see in job descriptions daily. While this won't solve all of your recruiting conundrums, the right job description can get the right people, at least, in the door. Stay tuned as we uncover more tips to increase applications and to retain the right employees for your business.