The Internet is full of both jobboards and sites that provide advice on how to write good job postings. But yesterday’s advice is not necessarily the best one for tomorrow. That’s why I wanted to ask a simple question today: What will the job posting of tomorrow look like?
Have you ever seen these examples of job postings, job offers, or recruitment announcements that surprise, stand out, make people laugh – and sometimes all three at the same time? The creative genius of some of them often leads us to ask ourselves, “why didn’t I think about it?” Let’s face it: even for a seasoned specialist in temporary or permanent recruitment, writing a job posting is a perilous exercise. It is a one-way communication intended to attract attention, arouse curiosity, and invite to action.
In other words, and I will probably not teach it to you: writing a job posting has become a marketing operation, integrated into what is called HR marketing, the interweaving of elements, language, and techniques resulting from marketing in the processes related to human resources.
I therefore called upon the key concepts of HR marketing to glimpse 5 rules that will define the offer of jobs of tomorrow.
Rule # 1: “Practice your role play”
Before even raising his bow, the best archer takes the time to observe his target.
Before even launching a marketing campaign, the best marketer takes the time to establish personae.
Why shouldn’t the best recruiter take the time to put himself in the candidate’s shoes before writing a job offer?
Every good job posting contains a space to describe “the candidate we are looking for”, to indicate that “you are the ideal candidate if …”. But in most of these job offers, this exercise is not complete and suffers from two flaws:
- It is limited to one paragraph of the job posting, while the rest of the tone completely ignores the target.
- This is only a “usual” framework for displaying information related to the profile of the candidate sought.
How to avoid falling into these traps? By not hesitating to borrow tools from your neighbor. Indeed, marketers have been building customer personas for so long that changing their skin seems like second nature to them.
The goal of the game does not consist in “addressing the candidate”, and is not limited to “using the language” of the latter: it is a question of putting yourself in the reader’s shoes and asking yourself “how would I like the recruiter to talk to me? “
How to play? Draw up a table for each of the personae you want to join: what is his background? His professional experiences so far? His place of life? His needs? What are his non-technical skills?
Why play? Because this composite image not only serves to define the tone used to write the ad: it will also serve to identify the sites and networks on which the offer will have the greatest potential to impact.
Rule # 2: “Write a chameleon offer”
The multiplication of job boards is surely an advantage for job seekers, but can become a headache for the person who seeks to disseminate his offer on several platforms. Writing a chameleon offer, which goes everywhere and adapts to its environment, is therefore as important as putting yourself in the shoes of your reader.
Certain elements of an offer are essential:
- Description of the company
- A detailed overview of the position and the missions it covers
- The profile of the candidate sought
- The type of contract and the benefits of the position
- How to apply.
By maintaining a well-defined, clear, and fluid structure, the recruiter facilitates the publication of his offer on several different platforms while maintaining a general tone and a presentation that suit all media. It then becomes interesting for him to use a multi-platform distribution tool. Did you know that this is a feature offered by PRIM Logix for permanent positions as well as fixed-term mandates?
Rule # 3: “Emphasize your employer brand”
Standing out from the offers published by competing temporary or permanent staffing agencies is an essential objective of a good advertisement in a period of strong competition in the recruitment market. But that doesn’t mean you should stray from what makes your own business so unique: the best way to appear original is to be original!
In marketing, the elements that make up a company’s own and unique identity form the employer brand, a concept which, in a nutshell, colors the Human Resources of a company from the palette of shades that make up its brand.
Formal and professional, funny and light or even technical and rigorous: the tone of a job offer directly gives the candidate clues about the work atmosphere they will expect to find once recruited. While it is therefore necessary to beware of possible disappointments, do not hesitate to transcribe in the advertisement the values and the culture that define the daily life of the employees of the temporary or permanent staffing agency: your advertisement is indeed the first contact that your future employee will have with you.
Rule # 4: “Flatter the search engines”
A French study conducted by Pôle Emploi in 2019 indicated that nearly 9 out of 10 job seekers use the Internet in their job search (article in French). In this context, our marketing friends can once again share their best practices with us and introduce us to natural referencing.
SEO – for Search Engine Optimization – consists of taking advantage of the positioning criteria of a web page to appear among the first results provided during a search by keywords. Optimizing your SEO therefore means carefully choosing each of the words used in your ad, to guide it to the top spots in the results. By using well-chosen keywords adapted to the temporary or permanent staffing agency (the sector of activity, the name of the agency, the mission), the writer improves his positioning score while increasing the notoriety of the agency on search engines: a “win-win” operation for the HR and marketing sectors!
By the way, did you know that SEO also applies to the posts you make on social networks? So don’t hesitate to use these methods when posting your ad on your business pages.
Rule n˚5: “Measure your performances”
Since, in the world of marketing, the stake does not end with the act of sale, the signing of a contract should not mark the end of a recruiting campaign. There is indeed a plethora of indicators that allow, once dissected, analyzed, and compared, to predict improvements for future campaigns.
In this sense, inspired by marketing, the recruiter of a staffing agency can also practice segmentation and A/B testing when posting a job offer.
Used for example to compare the effectiveness of several models of the same Internet page or of a campaign of sending mass e-mails, A/B testing is a method which allows, after realization, to proceed to a return experience to compare the best performing version, which will therefore be favored in future campaigns.
How is this method useful for a recruiter?
- By using multiple distribution channels and types of advertising, the staffing agency employee will be able to assess which ones are most effective in reaching their personae.
- By varying content and platforms, it will also be able to identify those who reach out to candidates considered most relevant.
- By varying the job title – and sometimes its content, without violating rule 2 – the recruiter can establish the formulations that are most successful with candidates.
Conclusion: is there a rule # 6?
Simple to apply, these five rules will undoubtedly give your job postings a head start. But, at a time when marketing and recruiting merge more and more, it would be appropriate to add a sixth, perhaps more important than all the preceding ones: remain good friends with your colleagues in marketing, because it seems to me that they will still have a lot of things to teach us about creating effective job postings!
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