Have you ever been asked to write a job post before? If you have, you probably know that it’s not considered a favorite workplace pastime.
But it is here at Textio! We love job posts (cheesy, I know). We know that job posts are literally advertisements for your company, just directed at a smaller audience. Everything you write in a job post has an impact on who gets hired, and how fast.
Since joining Textio, I’ve counseled our customers on how to make the most of their job listings. Now, I’d like to share some of my insights with you, backed by data from Textio’s predictive engine. This will be the first in a series of posts over the next few weeks.
Why job posts matter
One thing I’ve noticed is that the hardest part is usually knowing where to start. You probably copy an old listing from your company’s careers page, update the text a little bit, and publish it. Good, right?
Wrong.
Let me share why this outdated approach doesn’t work.
Why does it matter? Every person who views your listing might be your next big hire. You don’t want them to turn away because the language you chose didn’t persuade them to apply.
The words you use in your job listings have real-world impact. Here’s why you should care:
- Good job listings save your team’s time and resources now. What benefits would your company see if you could shave two weeks off the time-to-fill for every single role? How much would your company’s productivity increase if you sped up hiring overall by 20 percent? What could recruiters do with that time? How much would that resource-strapped team adore you if they got that much-needed team member in four weeks instead of six?
- Good job listings save your team’s time and resources later by attracting the right and most qualified candidates to the job. What if you could make your listings as inclusive as possible to bring in a diverse pool of candidates, while also targeting the right fit? Optimizing for diversity as well as your company’s values means less turnover, greater job satisfaction, and higher-functioning teams, all of which boost productivity.
Three ways to improve your job post
Textio analyzed its database of over 70 million job listings and found that the strongest listings do three things:
I’ll be writing three posts where we’ll walk through data-driven ways to help you with each of these three steps. By the end, you will understand how to use real linguistic data to attract qualified, diverse candidates and filling roles more quickly.
Remember, with data you can objectively measure how well your job posts perform in the real world, and make them better. Want to know how your job listings currently stack up against your competition? Head over to Textio and check out how you rank on the Textio Index, a measurement of how effectively your job posts are at attracting candidates in the real world.
Here are the other parts of the series: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.