Top 7 Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Advertising Open Positions

Top 7 Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Advertising Open Positions

There are plenty of reasons why a particular recruitment ad does not work well. Sometimes these mistakes are tough to recognize and even harder to learn to avoid. Here are seven reasons that can make an ad not be effective:

1. Poorly written ad copy. We have previously issued an article on writing an effective ad. In summary - grab the job seekers attention, give a little history, give enough details about the position to make it clear what the candidate will be doing, keep ‘requirements’ brief, outline what makes this position / company special, make sure that your ad is ‘keyword rich’, and make it easy to apply. View the full article here.
2. Putting all your eggs into one basket. Why would you? Monster & CareerBuilder are both great sites, but neither is the end-all, be-all for all positions. Too often companies pick one board and that is all they use…regardless of the position. Bad idea, for many reasons. Often times the position would receive a much better, more qualified response on a niche board. OR the position is such that they could have spent a lot less money on a regional board and gotten an equally good response.
3. Not tracking ROI. What is working? What is not? You do not need the latest ATS to track where responses are coming from. A simple job code, unique to each position AND advertising medium, will allow you to track the source.
4. Reactive, vs Proactive recruitment. Waiting for an employee to quit is the worst time to start a plan. Developing a comprehensive recruitment strategy BEFORE the need is urgent is the best way to effectively source and evaluate various avenues.
5. Know your target audience. Where are they looking for jobs…or ARE they even looking for jobs. This is an important question to evaluate what site / paper makes the most sense, as well as to decide whether a particular campaign should be focused on active, or passive job seekers.
6. Not using the selected medium properly. Job boards actually want you to get a hire and to be happy with responses. They want your money and they want you to use them. The major sites are constantly offering new products or enhancements to better get you applicants. This presents a problem as you need to know how they work to work them effectively. For example, on CareerBuilder you are allowed up to three job classifications. If three are relevant, use them. Hotjobs uses a “short description” field that, when used properly, greatly enhances the search results placement of a posting, getting it in front of more eyes. Monster now offers Auto-Refresh postings to better increase the number of folks that will see an ad.
7. “Set it and Forget it” Attitude. If you are dealing with an online posting, you have the ability to evaluate the early applications and massage the verbiage in the ad to better attract qualified candidates moving forward. Don’t wait until the posting has expired and then say “that didn’t work”. Figure out why something is not working early on in the process and adjust the position copy to address the initial shortfalls.