CREATING JOB DESCRIPTIONS
How to attract best fit
candidates to your business...
The first step to recruiting a great candidate is writing an excellent job description. A poorly written job description will attract the wrong candidates putting you and your business in a bad position right from the get-go.
Including too little information can mean you could invite candidates who don’t have the right skills or experience. Including too many requirements can indicate you’re looking for a unicorn, and nobody will feel qualified or safe to apply.
When it comes to automatically matching job descriptions to resumes and getting the balance right, below are a few pointers worth taking on board. Once you’re done and you have your landing page link, here are some ideas on how to advertise a job.
- Avoid including company, culture, salary and benefits information in the body of the job description. You can enter all of this information when you create your Business Profile and using the Job Details sections. This information will be included on your jobs landing page but won’t be used for matching purposes. Also, omit company names, including your own from the body of the Job Description.
- Candidates are always encouraged to talk about their hard skills and accomplishments when creating their resumes so it makes sense that job description should cover these too. All too often, however, the focus is on the less tangible. To generate the best matches, talk about the hard skills required to be successful and what success looks like.
- Job titles should be more common and generic and in proper case. For example, calling the role “Sales Whiz Genius” when what you’re looking for is more commonly called a Business Development Manager will limit matching. Also, Business Development Manager is better than Business development manager or BDM.
- Try to write important criteria as bullet points, not narratives. For instance, looking for an experienced tool and die machinist familiar with CNC techniques is far less parseable than
Job Title: Machinist
Requires: CNC, Tool and Die - For Experience, include a single statement e.g. Requires 10+ years of experience. For Education, include the minimum requirement e.g. Diploma of Accounting. For Management Experience, include a statement e.g. Requires 3+ years of management experience.
Resume matching systems will make matches regardless of the quality of the Job Description; however, if you follow the above guidelines, it’ll make it easier to pinpoint the best candidates early on in the process.
