“Think of job posts as targeted direct marketing,” said the speaker at a recent recruiting conference. “The best hires come from the best job posts and the best job posts include the most ways you are different. Typical job posts do not impact a candidate’s desire to apply. Unless we can affect that, we will not get the right candidates, the best candidates.”
I have been paying particularly close attention to job posts lately, and most of them are pretty pedestrian.
They don’t differentiate a company, and they don’t make a case for why a candidate should apply. That is even more true for tech jobs, such as a java developer, where a candidate likely has lots of choices. Check out this job posting from smartrecruiters.com below.
Description: We are looking for a Java developer to help with a website.
• 3-5 years of Web development experience
• Java 1.5, Tomcat, Spring
• Javascript, HTML, CSS
• Oracle 10g
• Linux
That might be an extreme example, but you get the idea. Boring stuff.
Now, check out this job description I just came across on a PR website, and see the difference telling a story makes.
Director of Public Relations for Vonage
Mother’s Day is only a couple of weeks away. Wouldn’t it be nice to call home on one of the busiest phone holidays on the planet with news of a fresh job prospect?
Not only can Vonage help you with that call, but also it might help you with the job. The telecommunications provider is hiring a director of public relations to assist in any day-to-day media management and lend a hand with internal communications.
Although you’ll certainly be up against a number of other qualified candidates, don’t worry about getting a busy signal when you apply—which you can do online here.
It’s not particularly detailed in terms of why a candidate would like Vonage, and so on, but at least it kind of piques your interest a bit.
As a recruiter once told me, when you do a good job of marketing your jobs, you don’t have to work so hard at selling your company.
