Content is king. There are millions of jobs for job seekers to go through and attain potential recruits and if you do not pique their interest from the beginning, there is a high risk of them moving on to next job. Content is king with regards to recruitment advertising as well. Like all marketing activities, your goal is increasing your conversion rate amongst your target audience. With excellent job content, people read your job description and hit the apply button

In a recent webinar session with Bharat Jayaprakash, Senior Director, Indeed.com, he highlighted how content plays a significant role in attracting talent and how content marketing has paved ways for better recruitment. Technology among many other things is quite disruptive. Often changing the way, a product is delivered and putting huge companies out of business.

Bharat shared nine tips for optimizing job content:

Get attention

Don’t lose a candidate’s focus with a generic description. Think about your organization and what makes the job exciting for job seekers. If you are unaware of the job requirements, ask employees who have the same job role or your recruiters and hiring managers for more insights. Describing your organizational culture and giving a brief insight into your company’s way of functioning and requirements is a great way to attract the right candidate.

Target and be precise

Gather data on how your target audience is searching for a job and use content based on your research to optimize the data. Use keywords that are search engine friendly and use job titles to describe the main aspects of the job. Use titles that are specific and targeted and yet deliver the right message to your audience. If your job description is accurate, the click-through rate and conversion would be higher. In recruitment, quantity does not play a significant role it is quality that matters.

Be open

Employee benefits, salary, benefits and other relevant details should be mentioned in the job description to give candidates an insight into your organization. Specifying your vision and mission and what you as an organization wants to deliver and achieve.

Make every word count

Make every word of your content useful and do not be afraid to delete parts that are not required. “Because sometimes deleting content is as important as adding,” says Bharat. Keep your content long enough to be precise, descriptive and engaging. Indeed’s data shows those job descriptions that range between 700-2,000 words gets 30% more applicants. 

Avoid jargons

Most employees search for jobs based on job titles. It is important while trying to gain access to the right talent and audience that you get into a job seeker’s shoes and think like one. You should match what a job seeker is looking for and use words that are being searched. Remember that keywords keep fading as people are now searching for jobs specific to their knowledge and experience. Organizations must update themselves as per the latest trends and requirements.

Be honest

Do not exaggerate or underplay the responsibilities of the job. Use job titles that reflect the role you are trying to fill. Do not use fancy titles or make promises that would not be fulfilled post-hiring. Honesty should be the stepping stone to create a long-term relationship and credibility in the market.

Keep it simple

“It can be tempting to over format job description, use bullet points and sub-topics but do not feel obligated to use all the available space. Keep things simple and only the most impactful information,” says Bharat. Do not give general requirements too much importance by making them part of job descriptions, it can be discussed in interviews, and they don’t need to be a part of your content marketing strategy.

Test everything

If you are planning to use a new job title or a new job description, then test it to understand if it delivers traffic and better hires. Here are three techniques that an organization can use to test their job content.

• Contact client services to set up a test campaign and give you insights on how to modify the content to improve the result.
  
  
• If you have an applicant tracking system or someone who helps you manage talent, discuss possible techniques for testing the new job description.
  
  
• Work with your marketing team as they test and research new ideas and strategies that work in the market.
  
  

Audit and proofread

To stay on top of your game,  you need to ensure that the content is relevant, up to date, user-friendly, well maintained and of course free of spelling and grammatical errors. To regularly maintain and update your content, test your career site and job description for readability and comprehension. Hire writers or work with the marketing team periodically to audit your content. Measure the reviews of your job titles, description and optimize based on learnings.

“Measurement is incredibly important. If you adjust your content, test new titles but are not tracking you would not know what works for your organization,” says Bharat. The measurement parameters should be based on how your job content impact applications and hiring. What methods of promoting jobs are working in your favor? Remember to include the quality indicators that should be tracked as per your organization’s requirement. Also, make sure you review the kind of data that is being used to plan and measure campaign success.