Wednesday 20 July 2011

Job ads writing

A perfect job ad will sell, winning you best candidates with least effort. A loosing job ad is just like a messy sales pitch, pushing customers to your competitors, a completely waste of time and money. Look at a scenario: A jobseeker looking at various job ads for the same position he or she’s looking for, may react different ways to those ads. Some would take his interest, some totally being ignored, luckily he would interest in some ads and take action by applying for the job. Spending the same amount of ad expense, some job ads would generate more responses from the others, some ads may result in a big zero. You know it, everybody who pays for the ads know it. So, let’s make the ad worth every single penny you spent for expensive ad space nowaday.

You will need to prepare a job ad whenever you would like to publicize a manpower need. Writing a job ad is not so tough, writing a job ad that sells is a totally different thing, it’s not just rough scope of work which includes responsibilities, reporting lines, geographical working areas, and requirements but also a description in details of kind of “what’s in it for me?” stuff. Let’s take this as an example: two companies offer 2 same position, same work level, same salary. But because of business nature of each corporation might be different, each company has its own strategy applying on each position. Small firm gets it hard to compete with large corporations in attracting capable calibrates. The point comes into how small firm can get the people that best suits its business. What do you have to offer to attract that candidate? Beside cash income, what other non-cash benefit you propose. Spend some time conducting a market research to find out what kind of benefit other companies (in the same range with yours ie. Competitors, location, …) are offering to candidates. At the end of the day, writing a job ad just like doing the same thing for sales ad, that’s it. Each company comes up with their own strategy, but it’s best to have a strategy. Normally, an initial selling process would include the following stages, aiming at pooling the potential candidates, some hiring managers put it upfront all what to give, some takes it step by step. Think about what you have to give, what’s the benefit for the buyers, how to get the attention of your potential buyers in the first place. How to inspire their interests, how you ignite their desires to join your team and finally how you encourage them to take action by sending you their job application. You don’t have to “over-sell” it or it may generate a backfire.

Once the job ad completed, think about how to spread it around, where you think you might get the targeted pool of candidates. Sources of candidate might vary, from newspaper to headhunters, from internal notice board to job boards online such as jobacancies, each hiring gate has pros and cons, depending on what type of position you are recruiting and some other factors such as budget, confidentialities … you decide how glorious your campaign could be.
Give it a try today to wrap up a job ad that sells! You can grab the below template to start off:

* Position title: The job title goes here, a specific title coming your organization chart
* Opening date and close date: Give the time when this recruitment campaign will end
* Job description: List all tasks which you think the candidate will take on
* Requirements: Education level, personality, skill set that describe an ideal candidate for the job
* Compensation and benefit: What you will propose to your candidate, this should describe both cash and non-cash benefits
* Contact: The conclusion lists contact details, who to call, email, website…

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