Write a Job Advert: Crafting the Perfect Posting to Attract Quality Applicants

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>To write an effective job advert it’s important to understand the needs of jobseekers.</li>
<li>A good job advertisement follows a particular structure: headline/job title, location, salary range, and contract type, then a description of the job’s highlights in the body copy of the advert.</li>
<li>Job highlights are the main part of the advert and should consist of a summary of your company, a compelling overview of the job including clarification of the contract type, required skills and experience, salary and benefits, location and a call to action.</li>
<li>Once you’ve drawn up the advert, refine it using the guidelines given.</li>
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If you’re advertising your vacancy on a job site, employer career pages, social media, LinkedIn etc, then you’re going to need to write your own advert. 

A job advert is not a job description, but employers often confuse the two, posting adverts full of meaningless jargon and disclaimers that hamper their recruitment efforts. 

You need to adopt the mindset of a marketer and be able to sell why your ideal applicant should join your company rather than a competitor. 

Don’t get AI to do this for you because the technology isn’t currently trained on the right type of data. Instead, follow this guide where I’ll lead you through the creation of your advert using results from scientific research that I’ve carried out using focus groups of hundreds of jobseekers.

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Job Advert Structure

• Headline / job title: The headline helps jobseekers find your advert and encourages them to click on it.
  • Use familiar job titles that jobseekers will be searching for, eg. rather than “Executive Flight Attendant”, just use “Cabin Crew”.
  • Add extra information at the end, for example: “Web Developer PHP”.
  • One to three word headlines work best; avoid headlines longer than six words.
  • Avoid special characters as these can confuse search engines.
• Location: 
  • Jobs in cities attract more applicants.
  • If your job is in a sparsely populated area, list the nearest major town, then in the body copy include further location information.
  • For regional jobs, state a central city. Some job sites do allow you to specify a whole region, but be careful with this as regionally tagged jobs are sometimes placed at the bottom of search results.
• Salary range: Always state a salary: adverts that don’t tend to receive 80% fewer applicants.
  • If salary ranges are too wide they become meaningless. I recommend ranges of £5,000 or so, such as £25,000 – £30,000. 
  • In the body copy you can go into more detail about bonuses and other benefits.
  • If you aren’t sure what the appropriate salary level is, search on a job site to see what your close competitors are paying for similar jobs. 
• Contract type:
  • State whether the job is permanent, contract or temporary.
  • State whether the hours are full-time or part-time.

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Body Copy

This is the main section of the advert where you have the opportunity to give extra information about the job and sell its highlights. The optimal length is 250-300 words, though this can be longer for senior roles. For each section, follow these simple rules:

• Use capital letters for headings. 
• Use bullet points instead of large chunks of text. 
• Keep sentences short – ideally under eight words.

Include the following sections in this order:

• Opening paragraph about your organisation: Write a couple of sentences about your company and why it’s a great place to work.
  • Include information about how long you’ve been in business, how many staff you have, the nature of the work environment and why your company is better to work for than your competitors.
  • Avoid hyperbole and marketing jargon. 
  • Don’t go into too much detail about your product or service.
  • Emphasise the positive aspects of your workplace. 
• Overview of the job: 
  • State the main responsibilities, showing how these add value to customers and contribute to the company’s vision.
  • Avoid meaningless caveats like “anything else that may reasonably be expected” or obvious requirements such as “maintaining positive work relationships”.
  • Here you can also expand on the information you gave at the top of the advert about the contract type. For example, if the job is maternity cover state whether it will turn into a permanent job, and for part-time and shift jobs specify work hours and whether these are negotiable.
• Key skills and experience:
  • The more of these you ask for, the fewer applicants you’ll get, so don’t turn your advert into a ransom note of demands!
  • Review your Great Performance Profile and draw up a list of the skills needed for a person to be a Great Performer.
  • Stick to essential skills. Leave out desirable ones as this can put off applicants if they think they don’t have them.
  • Avoid vague and hard-to-measure “soft” skills such as “passion” or “initiative” as well as meaningless platitudes like “able to work independently and as part of a team”.
• Salary and benefits:
  • Give more details about the remuneration package such as whether there’s a bonus and overtime pay.
  • Include holiday allowances, health insurance, pension schemes, car parking arrangements and other perks.
  • Jobs with more benefits attract more applicants. 
• Location: As mentioned, in the location field at the top of the advert it’s best to specify a major city. Within the body copy you can give more details.
  • If your job is outside the city you’ve specified, provide further explanation and include information about transport links.
  • For London locations, specify nearby tube stations.
  • Hybrid office-remote roles attract 12% more applicants, so if this applies to your job say so near the top of the advert.
• Call to action: When you explicitly ask jobseekers to apply, you get more applications.
  • Don’t just say “please apply”. Say “Apply now and join our team!”
  • Let them apply through the job site. If you ask them to email or call you’ll get fewer applicants.

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<span class="purple-callout"><p>A friendly nudge – I'm available for advice or practical assistance. Let's book a call.</p><p>You may find my best-selling talent acquisition book useful.</p><p>And for only £199, I can advertise a job on the leading UK sites.</p></span>

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Optimise Your Job Advert

Apply the following steps to perfect your advert:

• Remove closing dates and interview dates: You wouldn’t want to exclude a promising applicant just because they saw your advertisement a day after a closing date.
• Don’t include your company logo or name: Unbranded, plain text adverts work best. Jobseekers scan adverts quickly and rarely look at logos. Also, anonymity can be useful to save unnecessary interruptions from salespeople and applicants.
• Be clear about times: Use am and pm (eg. 11 am – 5 pm) rather than the 24-hour clock. If you work “normal” hours, there is no need to include this information.
• Don’t explain your recruitment process: Giving information about even simple selection procedures tends to reduce the number of applications.
• Be realistic and honest: Are you promising too much? If so, new hires will get disenchanted and might leave.
• Use clear, everyday language: Avoid jargon and specialised terminology as this will put off some applicants. 
• Use relevant keywords: To get your advert higher in search results, include keywords (eg. “sales”, “marketing”, “finance”) while keeping the language natural. For best results, keywords should take up 5% of your advert.
• Check for discrimination: Avoid a minimum number of years of experience as this could be construed as age discrimination. Ask for “native-level fluency” rather than “native fluency” as the latter may favour particular nationalities. Avoid gender-specific pronouns or nouns such as “handyman”.
• Check spelling and punctuation: Errors don’t give a good impression.
• Check readability: Readability scores can help you make sure that your advert is easy for people to read. A Flesch Kincaid grade 9 or lower is a good level to aim for.
• ‍Publish your advert on Monday to Thursday: Jobseekers tend to look for jobs during the week, and applications dip at the weekend.

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