How to Optimise a Job Advert: Techniques Proven to Boost Your Application Rates!

Avoid these common mistakes in your job adverts:

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Don’t Redirect Jobseekers to Your Employer Career Page

Redirecting jobseekers to an employer career page is a terrible idea. Studies I’ve conducted consistently show 92% of applicants never apply if you redirect them.

Before you make a terrible mistake, please review what I’ve written on redirecting jobseekers to employer career pages.

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Don’t Put Applicants Off

You might have a “fast-paced environment” or require staff to “work well under pressure”, but these are red flags for many applicants. Similarly, if a job only involves dealing with a small number of complaints, don’t mention it as it gives a bad impression and few people like dealing with irate customers.

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Don’t Request Industry Experience

Requiring industry experience is a terrible idea. In many cases, you’re asking for the impossible. It is much better to give yourself options. Explaining what your business does will naturally attract applicants with industry experience.

If a stakeholder is adamant that applicants must have industry experience, and you don’t get any suitable applicants within one week, change your advert before it is too late because the results are unlikely to improve.

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Don’t Include Soft Skills and Cliches

Frequently, adverts require applicants who are “passionate” or “inspirational” about a particular industry/product/job! I doubt you’re genuinely passionate about the organisation you work for or your job, and I wonder if your colleagues would describe you as “inspirational”. (Congratulations if you are, but you’ll appreciate you’re a genuine outlier.) The problem is that these adverts set an unreasonably high standard. Jobseekers are less likely to apply because they read the advert literally or think you’re deluded.

Recruiting someone with an “interest” is more reasonable.

Additionally, many job adverts contain generic soft skills, such as “great communicator”, “motivated”, and “able to use initiative”. Unfortunately, these terms add little value to a job advert because almost everyone thinks they have these attributes.

Finally, I’m sure you’ve read many CVs from applicants who are “able to work independently and as part of a team”. It’s a common cliché. Unfortunately, many adverts contain the same or similar cliches, making jobseekers second-guess whether an employer takes recruitment seriously.

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Don’t Include Closing and Interview Dates

When holding focus groups, jobseekers explained they often lose the impetus to apply when they see closing and interview dates a few weeks away. Some hope to get a job sooner, so avoid long processes. Inevitably, they forget to return and apply, so you’ve lost their application.

Additionally, recruitment doesn’t always go as planned. I wouldn’t want to prevent a potentially great applicant from applying because they were a day late or couldn’t make an interview date.

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Don’t Ask for Cover Letters

In the olden days, many applicants would attach a cover letter with their CV to differentiate it from all the others. Sometimes, these letters would add value, such as explaining why an applicant was relocating or changing careers. But in reality, they would be a simple copy-and-paste exercise.

As time has passed, the practice has become less relevant. In response, many job sites do not provide an option for jobseekers to upload a cover letter.

To circumvent this lack of functionality, a minority of employers ask jobseekers to include a cover letter in their CV. However, this is impractical as most jobseekers only upload one CV when registering with a job site. It would be very challenging to craft a new CV for each application, especially when they are added to CV databases.

Importantly, focus groups I’ve hosted have shown a few jobseekers think covering letters sets the wrong tone. One jobseeker said, “When I see they want a cover letter, they really want me to beg for their job!”

For these reasons, do not request a cover letter.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Warning:</span> If you’re still prepared to lose many applicants by asking for cover letters, appreciate that jobseekers may use AI to write them! While you could try using AI detection software, it takes up a lot of time, and we found that the software rarely works in testing.</span>

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Don’t Ask Applicants How They Will Undertake the Job

I occasionally see job adverts that ask applicants to, “Write an A4 page about how you would fulfil the job”. Problems with this include:

• Motivated vs. desperate: Only the most desperate applicant will likely do this task because Great Performers have so many options that they don’t have to jump through irrelevant hoops.
• It’s the wrong time in the process: The information is largely irrelevant at this stage. Applicants don’t know enough about the organisation or the job to make an informed opinion. All you’re assessing is their creative writing skills.
• Damaging to the employer: The employer may come across as clueless, crowdsourcing ideas without a clear direction about how they want the job performed.
• Arbitrary instructions: I assume an A4 page is requested to ensure brevity, but if you don’t want that much information, why ask for it in the first place?
• Technical difficulties: Finally, uploading this information is technically very challenging for an applicant, because many job sites don’t have this functionality.

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Don’t Ask Applicants to Call or Email You

Some hiring managers like to include their contact details in a job advert. They do this with the best intentions of being more approachable and making it easier for jobseekers to ask questions.

However, many job sites will remove contact details, often because it is against their terms and conditions. They primarily do this because they want applications added to their CV database, which they can sell! Additionally, job sites want to be attributed as the source of applications so they can demonstrate they added value and therefore win repeat business.

Aside from a job site’s motives, you don’t want to publish your contact details. You will be inundated by calls from recruitment agencies and salespeople trying to sell services, and applicants chasing the progress of their job application. You simply won’t want to answer the phone again for fear of it being another interruption!

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Don’t Ask for Portfolios of Work

It is common to ask for portfolios of work in creative jobs such as graphic design. A portfolio is often a much better indication of an applicant’s ability and creative flair than a traditional CV.

Unfortunately, portfolios can be a nightmare for job sites to process because they come in many file formats and are huge file sizes. For this reason, I do not know of a single job site that allows applicants to upload a separate portfolio. Consequently, there is no point asking applicants for something they can’t provide.

A good workaround is to contact applicants and ask them to send you a copy of their portfolio directly. Applicants will often use WeTransfer, Dropbox, or similar services to circumvent restrictions with email.

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Don’t Request Reference Details

Some employers request that references be supplied at the time of applying. However, jobseekers may be concerned that you will contact their references without their consent, and it’s difficult to justify why you would need them before an interview.

Instead, I recommend candidate-arranged Reference Calls before making a job offer.

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Don’t Explain Your Recruitment Process

Employers occasionally include a statement such as “Shortlisted applicants will be initially invited to a video interview, and then a face-to-face interview”. Or they try managing a jobseeker’s expectations by saying, “If you haven’t heard from us within 7 days your application has been unsuccessful”.

In split tests I’ve conducted, outlining a seemingly simple selection process results in far fewer applications. This problem is even worse when mentioning video screening technology and psychometrics. I suspect jobseekers think it sounds too long-winded, or pre-empt being rejected.

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Don’t Use Screening/Knock-Out Questions

A few job sites allow you to ask jobseekers screening questions. Sometimes, these are “knock-out” questions; if an applicant doesn’t provide the desired answer, they’re immediately declined. An example is below:

Screening questions are often “abused”, requesting:

1. Confirmation the jobseeker has read the advert: For example, an advert clearly explains that applicants require a car but then asks screening questions such as, “Do you have a car?”
2. Duplicate information: They may ask applicants to reiterate information already on their CVs, which greatly frustrates applicants.
3. Irrelevant information: Finally, they may ask all applicants to confirm their right to work in the country because a minority won’t. Again, this frustrates some applicants who don’t appreciate being asked such basic questions. (Furthermore, in the UK at least, the only way to check an applicant’s right to work in the UK is by checking specific documents.)

From a usability perspective, screening questions cause application rates to drop. Many web users naturally resist completing long forms, whether requesting an insurance quote or applying for a job. You want to make it super easy for a Great Performer to apply, but some employers think they need to make it more difficult because it “proves” a jobseeker is motivated (when they are often just desperate!).

A bigger issue is that the screening questions rarely improve the quality of applications. Many jobseekers know they will be rejected if they don’t provide the desired answer, so it is easier to lie.

Overall, many jobseekers find these questions patronising and pointless, leading them to believe the hiring manager is lazy and uses knock-out questions rather than taking the time to review all applications properly. Some Great Performers are becoming so frustrated that when they see screening questions, they now boycott applying altogether!

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Don’t Include Equal Opportunities Statements

A few employers still place equal opportunities boilerplate at the end of their job adverts. For some, it is a box-ticking exercise to get some certification. Others genuinely do it with the best intentions. However, every organisation must be an equal opportunity employer, so there is little value in stating the obvious, particularly when word count is at a premium.

Our jobseeker focus groups found many believe these statements have little value, seeing them as a form of diversity-washing. Similarly, our eye-tracking studies identified that many jobseekers have a “banner blindness” to such statements and ignore them.

Ironically, in one example I read, an employer had discriminatory copy in their advert and proceeded to include an equal opportunities statement at the end!

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Additional Resources

• Talent Acquisition Book: The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Emloyees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Revealed: The Ultimate Structure for High-Impact Job Adverts.
• Article; How to Write a Advert That Attracts Great Performers: Secrets Revealed.
• Article; Write a Job Advert: Crafting the Perfect Posting to Attract Quality Applicants.
• Article; Advertising Jobs With a Company Logo is Probably a Waste of Time!
• Article; How to Publish Job Adverts: Manual vs. Automated.
• Article; Best Time to Advertise a Job: Recommended Schedule.