Wondering where your advert went?

If you advertise your vacancies on job boards and they seem to disappear into the realms of pages that are so far down the list candidates struggle to get to them, then I hope these tips may be of some help.

The first thing is to make sure that they contain keywords which Candidates will search for.  If you have a role which could have a different title from company to company this can be tricky.  Sales roles are a good examples of this as they could be one of many titles from “New Business Development Manager” to “Sales Executive” if a candidate only searches for one of these job titles you could find your advert never gets in front of them.  It is important therefore to include as many different versions of potential job titles as possible.  You will see that a lot of Recruitment agencies often list a whole string of job titles at the bottom of their adverts to address this very issue, I would suggest just using a different job title in reference to the role as many times as possible in the body of the advert – but you could always try the latter if you are struggling to get responses.

Reviewing your responses after a couple of days can also offer a valuable insight as to whether your advert is hitting the mark.

  • Look at the responses it has received to date
  • Are they relevant
  • Of the calibre that you were expecting
  • Too few, too many

If you have an ATS which “scores” your applicants according to their application details this will make reviewing your results simple and quantifiable.  Adjusting the advert at this stage offers two benefits, amending it can help you to capture a more relevant market if necessary – but also when you update your adverts (in most cases) it will move your job back to the top of the list as the most recently advertised vacancy.

In a nutshell it is not enough to quickly cut and paste a Job description into an advert, if you are able to spend a bit of time reviewing your results, adjusting and tweaking your adverts, you will find that you are rewarded with more applications from relevant candidates. Once you have adverts that work for you, next time you advertise you know what will get the best results and so you will also save time in the long run.