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“Is My Job Post Any Good?”
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I get an email about once a week from an old friend, event attendee, LinkedIn connection, or student from my online course. They usually begin with a nice round of pleasantries. Then, they ask.
“I was just wondering if…”
“You mentioned you wouldn’t mind…”
“It would help a ton…”
They’re all sending me job postings to see if I will “just take a look.” They want to know if their job posting is any good. I get why they aren’t sure. I’ve traveled the world asking people if they have been taught how to write a job posting, and the overwhelming answer is, “Nope.”
The catch about figuring out if a job posting is any good is this: I don’t know if it’s good by reading or looking at it.
If I haven’t spoken to the hiring manager, I don’t know if your post is accurate. Accuracy is the No. 1 criteria of good and often where bias starts to creep into the job postings. However, accuracy isn’t precisely a measurable output. Instead, we need to look across multiple dimensions to understand the success of job postings.
The catch? Success isn’t universal, and every company should set its baseline for success. Start any recruiting project, including overhauling your job postings, with your goal already in mind. Ask yourself questions like these to distill your goals before you begin to write.
Some teams also look to metrics like application volume, quality of pipeline, and traffic as big wins.
Now, even without talking to the hiring manager or knowing your goals, I can tell you a few things that will drive the wrong results from job postings. For one thing, did you start by creating a job posting by copying and pasting what someone else wrote? Start over.
If your postings aren’t performing now, look to these areas of opportunity to create more effective ones:
So if you’re wondering if your job post is good, don’t wonder. Simply take the advice above and make content stand out for all the right reasons and attract the right people.
Want more practical, concrete advice from Katrina by joining an interactive webinar, “How to Write Job Postings That People Will Actually Respond To,” on Thurs., July 29.