Job adverts come in all different shapes and sizes. From lengthy adverts with lots of detail (maybe too much at times) to the short and sharp that don’t provide the job seeker with much info at all; what information you put in a job advert comes down to the personal preference of the hiring company or recruiter.
The purpose of the job advert is to capture the attention of the job seeker, to engage with them with the hope they get excited about the opportunity and decide to submit an application for the job being advertised. With technology developments, we’ve moved from print adverts to online job boards, to posts on social media channels. There has been an increase in the use of imagery and the use of video to make our job adverts more exciting and engaging. All with the view of attracting the right person for the job. In today’s candidate short market attracting candidates through job adverts continues to get harder and harder.
With that in mind, there is one piece of information that I believe is absolutely crucial and should be in every single job advert:
The phone number and name of someone to call and talk to about the position.
It’s job advert information that is becoming extinct; more job adverts are leaving out this vital information than ever before.
Recruitment is all about engagement. Engaging with the job seeker. Engagement starts right at the point of advertising a vacancy. If you remove the opportunity for a potential new hire to engage with you what message are you sending to them?
Changing jobs is a big deal for most people. They don’t tend to make that decision on a whim. The job seekers who take applying for your vacancy seriously will undoubtedly have questions. Questions they want answered before they invest hours of their time putting together their application. By not giving them the opportunity to ask those questions you are increasing the risk of missing out on the best of the best talent.
When talking to job seekers, they often tell me I saw a great job advertised but there was one or two things I didn’t have much experience in so I didn’t apply. I always responded with, in that instance call the contact person and talk to them about the role and find out how well suited your skills and experience are to the role and how important that particular requirement is. Now more often than not those job seekers tell me there was no contact info to call and find out about the job. The process is now all online. Just hit the apply now button. Use the online application platform by populating the information the hiring company wants. By leveraging technology we have removed the human contact element of recruiting.
Please don’t tell me you can’t put your contact details on your advert because you don’t have the time to deal with the flood of calls you’ll receive. I put my name and mobile number on every job advert I write and in today’s recruitment market I’m not flooded with calls. It amazes me how few job seekers make the effort to call and find out more. However, those that do call are often the job seekers I’m trying to attract and engage with. They are the ones that are genuinely interested in the job, that want to engage for the right reasons and want to understand if this is going to be the right opportunity for them to achieve their career goals.
They are the candidates I want to be talking to early on in the process. Removing the doubt they may have, encouraging them to apply if they have the right skill set, even if they don’t tick every box of my job advert.
Organisations talk about recruiting for culture fit and the need for the job seeker to be aligned with their Vision, Mission and Values. This “fit” often sees a less experienced or less qualified candidate appointed to the job because they were the better fit. If culture fit is so important don’t you want to engage with the job seeker as early on in the process as possible? The more touch points the better to assess how they conduct themselves. Job adverts that talk about culture fit being key and their focus being on the customer experience yet leave out contact info on a job advert are sending mixed messages. Isn’t the job seeker a customer? What experience do you want to give them? Do you want to leave them thinking you are not important enough to invest the time in talking to until they have given us their resume, covering letter and key selection criteria? Or do you want to make their experience as human and as engaging as possible?
Put contact details back in job adverts if employing the best people matters to your business.
