Improve Your Job Postings: 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid

In today’s market, job seekers have a lot of options.  When they scroll through millions of job postings on online job boards, social media networks and in emails, they aren’t likely to stop and pay attention unless the job advertisement really peaks their interest.  In fact, research from TheLadders found that job seekers spend an average of 49.7 seconds before deciding that a job isn’t a fit for them, and an average of 76.7 seconds if they feel the job posting matches their interest and skills.  To determine if your job advertisements are effective, ask yourself if you are attracting not only enough applicants, but also the right qualified applicants for the job.  To improve job postings for your organization, here are some common job posting mistakes employers make:

1)  Bad Formatting

It’s important to format your job postings in a way that’s easy for the job seeker to read and grasp the basics of the job right away.  Instead of writing the description of the job responsibilities in one long paragraph, break them up into bullet points.  Include the most important responsibilities first, followed by the ones you would like a candidate to have but do not consider to be mandatory.  To improve your job postings, be sure to include the description of the job before the description of the company.  Also, make sure important information like your contact details (preferably an email address of a specific person in the company), education requirements and certifications for the position stands out.

2)  Forgetting to mention salary

While you may not want to give out a specific number for salary, most qualified job seekers want an idea of what the job will pay or else they won’t bother applying.  Give a salary range based on experience.  Also, another one of the job posting mistakes employers make is failing to mention all the benefits and perks the company offers.  Along with basic benefits like health insurance and 401k, if your company offers unique benefits such as healthcare reimbursement arrangements, work flexibility options, stock options or on-site laundry, improve your job postings by highlighting them.

3)  Not enough keywords

Keep in mind that job seekers search for openings based on terms such as job title, specific skills and sometimes certain employee benefits they want from a job.  One of the common job posting mistakes employers make is forgetting to include enough keywords about the job.  When you mention job titles, include other variations of the same job title potential candidates could search for.  Think of relevant terms that are highly recognized in your industry, related to specific skills and qualifications.   Research descriptions for similar jobs from other companies to find more relevant keywords.

4)  Too many keywords

While you want to make sure your job advertisements are keyword-optimized, another one of the common job posting mistakes employers make is going overboard with keywords.  If you crowd too many keywords in the job postings, not only could you be penalized by Google (which will hurt your search engine rankings), you could also potentially overwhelm and turn off potential candidates.

5)  Getting too fancy with job titles

Some employers think that if they get creative and dress up the job title in their job posting that it will be more attractive to job seekers.  But this is another one of the common job posting mistakes hiring managers make.  Job seekers can get confused and frustrated with a job title that isn’t clear.  For example, instead of “Spin Sensationalist,” include the simple job title of “Marketing Director”.