You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a Great First Impression

Your job posting will likely be the first interaction most candidates have with your company.

For this reason, your posting must not only highlight the role, responsibilities and benefits, but also showcase your employer brand in the best light possible.

It has to demonstrate your employee value proposition, provide compelling examples of your company’s workplace culture, give insight into the senior leadership team, and capture the feeling of belonging that the reader is looking for.

Given that the stakes are high, it’s worth devoting significant time and attention to nailing a great first impression.

Regrettably, many businesses still regard job postings as little more than a list of the skills and experiences to outline the profile of the ideal candidate.

To help offer insight on job posting best practices in employer branding, we’ve compiled some of our top recommendations below.

Put the Candidate at the Centre

A great way to communicate your employee value proposition to candidates is to approach the hiring process with the candidate’s desires squarely at the centre. In order to get this right, create in-depth candidate personas and detailed candidate experience maps.

When created from a candidate-centric perspective, job postings communicate with a greater emphasis on what the role entails, the importance behind it, and why working at your company will benefit the candidate.

By expressing the culture and values of your business with authenticity, and aligning them with what the reader is seeking, you will attract applicants who are better matched - and more likely to become successful employees.

Give the Candidate a Real Flavour of the Role

When done well, a job posting can offer prospective candidates a glimpse of a day in the life of a role.

The position’s current occupier should be able to read the description and feel like it captures their experience.

With that in mind, an employee currently in the role, or as close as possible, should be included in the job posting creative process to ensure it encapsulates what makes the job fulfilling and exciting.

This employee can then be utilised as a brand advocate and asked to share the written and video job ads with their networks. Furthermore, this material can be repurposed for use on social media and career sites to further promote your open positions.

One Size Does Not Fit All

The aspirations and fears of tech jobseekers differ greatly from those of in sales.
With this in mind, it’s important to create employee value propositions that are aligned with the unique desires and pain points of your primary talent audiences.

When a candidate lands on your job posting, they are reading to assess whether your business can meet the needs that their current employer is failing to fulfil.

In a market where there are many more job openings than available talent, your job postings must be produced in a manner that quickly persuades your reader that your company is their ideal place to work.

Collaboration is the Key to Success

Let’s be real, in most companies, no one person knows everything necessary to create a winning job posting. Studies have shown that the most effective postings are collaborations between HR, marketing, and the hiring manager.

Different people bring different skills to the table. Your hiring manager can offer insight into what candidates are looking for and how best to talk about their wants and fears. As well as, outlining to the skill set required, what success looks like, and what the perfect candidate can expect from a personal development perspective. HR will give D&I a voice and promote inclusive language and messaging, which enables your posting to connect with a further reaching and more diverse talent pool.

Your marketers can help with SEO and offer creative ways to get the posting seen, perhaps even incorporating less common formats such as video.

As you go through the process, you should find the anatomy of the perfect posting begins to emerge.

This will allow for more efficient templating that includes consistent employer branding and highlights the sections that can and should be editable for each new posting to get optimised results.

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