A job advert is often the first impression a candidate will get of your organisation.

It is important therefore that candidates can understand key information from this, including:

• What the company is looking for in terms of the role responsibilities
• What qualifications and experience you require (what is essential or desirable)
• The job details – pay, location, benefits etc
• Who the employee will report to
• The closing date (and interview date if known)
• How to apply
• Contact details for informal enquiries (if applicable)
• Company details – overview of what the company does, who the key customers are etc

It is important to make sure the job title you advertise the role at advertises what the job actually does. This will help your job to come up when candidates search for jobs on line by job title, but also avoids any confusion about the role responsibilities.

Consider what aspects are essential (i.e. a candidate must be able to evidence their experience of) and desirable (things you would ideally like them to have, but that are not absolutely essential). Often desirable aspects are things that can be taught on the job, or developed.

Some companies choose not to list salary on job adverts, instead listing “competitive salary” or “salary to be discussed at interview”. Although there may be benefits of this in terms of being able to negotiate salary, and current employees not seeing the salary advertised, this can sometimes put off potential applicants who want to know the pay before they apply for jobs.

Another important consideration is to make sure your job advert is not discriminatory. You may want to consider areas such as job titles – previous “Dinner Lady” titles would certainly discriminate against male applicants. Equally roles like Postman, Dustman, Lollypop Lady and Handy Man will be advertised under more generic, non-discriminatory titles. Aspects such as working hours may be indirectly discriminatory, especially those working on a Sunday for example, or over school hours.  Before advertising your role, review it throughout to ensure there are no discriminatory aspects.

Other things you may want to consider, prior to advertising the role will be internal decisions such as where the role will sit in your structure, who will it report to, and what the salary will be. You can use job evaluation as a tool to evaluate salaries, and this can provide a clear method to evaluate roles against.

You may have internal employees who would be good candidates for the role, and therefore it is possible to advertise the job internally only.  If you choose to advertise externally, there are many places you can do so, including LinkedIn, online job platforms, your own social media pages, or via a recruitment agency.

 

Please contact us (team@hrprime.co.uk) if you need any support writing job descriptions, carrying out job evaluations, or advertising roles – we can support with the end-to-end recruitment process, from advertising, interviewing, appointing and onboarding your new candidate.