Key strategies to ensure your job descriptions are effective every time

Recruitment teams up and down the country rely on the quality of their job descriptions to fill open positions. Because job descriptions are used across so many candidate sourcing channels, ensuring they are well-written and follow best practices can help you attract an even larger pool of high-quality candidates and fully maximise the time and money invested in creating and posting them.

According to the Candidate Attraction Report 2024, careers sites are the most used sourcing channel among in-house recruiters, with 95% of survey respondents sharing that they use careers websites for talent acquisition. Job boards and professional social platforms like LinkedIn are also widely used, attracting a strong mix of both quantity and quality candidates.

While writing a job description may seem straightforward, understanding the nuances and best practices can make the difference between missing out on top talent and successfully attracting the right candidates. In this insight, we review some key strategies to ensure your job descriptions are effective every time.

Accurate Title

A clear and accurate job title sets the tone for the rest of your listing and helps attract candidates with the right skills and experience. Avoid using internal jargon or terminology that only current employees would understand. Stick to widely accepted job titles and include key information, such as the nature of the role. For example, “Part-Time Customer Advisor” or “Hybrid Graphic Designer” immediately gives candidates the critical details and encourages them to read further. Avoid titles like ‘’Marketing Rockstar’’ or ‘’Design Jedi’’, which may be understood within your internal teams, but not by potential candidates, who require more clarity from the titles to invest their time into reading the full job description.

Job Description Length

The length of your job descriptions also affects their quality and readability, but what is the ideal length for a job description?

It can be difficult to know exactly how long or short your job description should be, especially for more complex roles that require more detail. To help Talent Acquisition teams ensure their job descriptions are the right length, we created AdTuner. This Eploy tool evaluates the length of your descriptions while giving you insights into ways you can improve the content to ensure your job adverts meet best practices. See below on how AdTuner also helps with reducing bias when writing job descriptions and email communications.

Clearly Defined Responsibilities

Well-written job descriptions include clearly laid-out responsibilities, formatted in a concise and understandable way, which helps improve the accessibility and readability of the job description. It is important to ensure the responsibilities are written using wording that is understandable for all, which can be achieved by avoiding jargon or terminology only understood by your current employees. Instead, provide a straightforward overview of what the role entails. This helps create a clear picture of what is expected of the candidate and increases your chances of attracting suitable talent.

Job descriptions should also be downloadable and available from your careers site too!

Remove Gender Bias and Foster Inclusion

Some jobs receive more applications than others, making it important to fully understand how your job description might be perceived by different genders.

Eploy developed a tool exactly for this reason to act as your Recruitment Content Assistant. AdTuner was designed to help craft job descriptions and email communications that are inclusive and engaging. Based on academic studies, research and Eploy’s proprietary algorithm, AdTuner scores your content using a series of tests.

AdTuner Score algorithm provides a valuable benchmark for analysing your Job Descriptions. We then recommend creating dashboards that measure your vacancy performance based on your AdTuner scores. Over time, as part of our AI strategy, AdTuner will learn and adapt to real-world results, assisting you to craft and adapt your content to deliver the results you desire.

SEO Optimisation

SEO optimisation is yet another key aspect of writing a winning job description. Making sure your content is optimised for search engines ensures that candidates searching for similar roles can easily find your listing. Use relevant keywords, keep the descriptions at an optimal length, and ensure the job title is clear to improve discoverability by both candidates and search engines.

Resources to Help You Consistently Create Winning Job Descriptions:

Creating a winning job description is an essential step in attracting top talent. By focusing on clarity, length, and inclusivity you can attract high-quality candidates. And following the best practices of Search Engine Optimisation within your job descriptions, ensures they are easy to discover by a wide audience of skilled talent. With job descriptions playing a key role in the candidate sourcing process, following these best practices will help you stand out and consistently attract the right people for your roles.

Leveraging tools like Eploy’s Ad Tuner will make it easier to fine-tune your descriptions by removing gender bias and optimising readability. If you want to see Ad Tuner in action, then drop us a line.

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