The ideal candidate cannot simply be convinced. Fortunately, there is more and more science available about how you can do that. Like these 7 tips, which have proven to attract more people.
When you write a vacancy text, you soon think that the ideal candidate can’t wait to take in every word with love. But the reality is unfortunately different for most texts. In fact, if you’re lucky, a candidate will pick up your text and scan it quickly. All those beautiful, important details that you have hidden in your text? They are – and remain – often hidden gems.
The better your vacancy text, the greater the chance that the ideal candidate will see it and respond
The better your vacancy text, the greater the chance that the ideal candidate will still see it and respond to it. But what is a good vacancy text? Fortunately, nowadays there is a lot of research that can help with that. For example, LinkedIn recently investigated which vacancies respond best. For this, it not only analyzed millions of (incidentally only English-language) vacancies on the platform itself, it also asked about 450 candidates on the basis of a few (fake) vacancies that they (say they) pay attention to.
Aside from getting your business found by applicants via a Spydialer phone lookup, here are 7 tips to help you find the perfect candidate.
#1. Keep it short
A vacancy text with a maximum of 150 words results in 17.8 percent more applications than a text with 450 to 600 words. Keeping your text concise ensures that candidates can quickly find what they are looking for. And since more than 50 percent of vacancies are now viewed on mobile, short vacancies also fit better with the modern job seeker, says LinkedIn.
#2. Not too informal, please
A not-too-serious or heavy tone is welcome. But be careful with jokes and an informal approach, as the data shows. Candidates who were shown an extremely informal vacancy text were 4 times more likely to indicate that the employer did not suit them, and was 2 to 4 times less likely to apply.
For this research, three texts were composed: an ‘ordinary’, a formal one, full of business jargon, and finally an informal one, with a few jokes and texts such as ‘kick-ass corporate manager’ and weird hashtags such as “#spreadsheets4life”. Remarkably, the latter category of texts scored the least on all parts. The lesson, according to LinkedIn: it’s good to show a human face and show your culture. But don’t overdo it – if your intention is to attract candidates.
#3. Let candidates know what you have to offer them
This conclusion may not be surprising, but it is often overlooked. But candidates do not (immediately) look at what you expect from them in a vacancy. They first look at the opposite: what you have to offer them. The salary plays a prominent role in this, but also more everyday things, such as: what they can expect from an average working day. And, also important: whether they have a real chance of getting the job.
Candidates decide in no more than a few seconds whether they will continue reading a vacancy text. So make sure that the information they are looking for can be found quickly. Candidates want to know if it is worthwhile to invest time in your vacancy. Once you’ve made that clear to them, they’ll want to know more about the role you have to offer.
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#4. Don’t make your company the core of your vacancy
Things like your organizational culture or your mission? Candidates rarely indicate that they find that helpful information. Not that they don’t care what your business looks like, or what you do. They just don’t find the most interesting information in a vacancy text. If they are looking for such information, they do so elsewhere, not so quickly in the vacancy. So do not spend too much space in your vacancy on that, according to the authors of the study, but rather make it clear on your website what kind of culture applicants can expect. Then you can focus on the job in question in the vacancy.
#5. Define what success looks like
Something candidates find particularly useful: how your organization determines whether someone will be successful in this role. And if all goes well, you have of course already thought about that before you draw up the vacancy. How do you want to look back after 1, 2, or 5 years? Where do you stand then?
Something candidates find particularly useful: how to determine if someone is going to be successful in this role
Candidates want to know such results as specifically as possible so that they can estimate for themselves whether they will achieve those goals – and therefore whether they have a chance of getting the job. It’s an easy way to quickly improve your vacancy texts. And it makes your text stand out even more too. Therefore, talk to stakeholders in order to formulate realistic, concrete, and quantifiable performance for the position.
#6. Post your vacancy on Monday
We’ve known it for a long time, but Monday is still the day of the week when job seekers go on the hunt for another job. Tuesday and Wednesday also score well, but Thursday and especially Friday are already a lot less. Not to mention the weekend. So don’t expect a flood of applications when you put a vacancy live on Friday.
#7. Use gender-neutral words
Men generally apply more than women, and 13% more. A study in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that this is partly due to the vacancies themselves: some contain so many ‘masculine’ words that women no longer feel addressed. Even if they are qualified for this. So avoid terms such as ‘strong’, ‘assertive’, or ‘ninja’ in your text, the researchers advise.
