There is some great support out there if you are an employer, consultant or advisor looking to post a job on-line to any number of the growing job advertisement sites. The advice you receive includes things like the following.
- What job category to post your ad
- What key words you should use
- What salary bracket indicators to use based on market salary conditions
- General advice how to cluster your ad information
- Number of folks who have looked closely at your ad, after viewing it, then applying for it.
The list goes on and on depending on the site. All well-intended information to help win the war for talent.
And what is the war for talent after all? A term created by an employee at McKinsey & Co. it refers to the increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting appropriate candidates.
Call the market competitive, or call finding good candidates increasingly difficult is probably saying about the same thing. Nonetheless, there are many job categories where it is not a matter of sifting through the wheat from the chaff as far as quality candidates go but finding any kernels of wheat at all.
This brings us back to the ad. It is often the crux of our attraction strategy.
Some job posting sites ask you to think about what the Unique Selling Points (or USP’s for short.) These are the attractants about the job and/or the organisation. In other words, why would someone want to work for a company in that job.
For some hiring leaders and organisations they struggle a bit trying to figure out what some USP’s could be. However, if you were to hang out in the coffee room and randomly ask staff members why they like working there you would probably get some good feedback about what they are. (Of course, if you did a staff satisfaction survey you could probably get some good USP’s there too.)
If you don’t already, you may want to consider this when you advertise.
Whether you advertise for different roles within your own organisation, or for specific job categories, simply ask the preferred candidate, “What is it about the ad that motivated you to apply?”
While some candidates may simply say it was because they needed a job, you may glean from other candidates some very fruitful information.
Perhaps they liked something about the values of the company they saw in the website. Maybe the career progression that was referred to in the ad floated their boat, or simply because there was a specific skill required they had. Maybe a relative worked there or your ad has been spidered to a website you never heard where people are now seeing it.
This untapped info may be most helpful. Helpful when you are back at war for talent and advertising again