7 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Job Listings

Looking to hire sometime soon? If you want to make your job listing stand out on job boards and attract the top talent, you’ll want to read these seven tips on making the most of your job posting.

1. Have a Clear Job Title

According to Kevin Walker, Indeed.com’s Director of Employer Insights, a well-crafted job title can increase traffic to your listing by up to 1000%! So what exactly does a clear job title look like and what do you need to do to make sure your listing has one?

• Make the Title as Specific as Possible – For example, “Guest Content Editor” is much more descriptive than “Editor 2”

• Research Other Businesses and See What Job Titles They Use for Similar Positions  – Most industries have some kind of standard job titles for specific positions. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, use industry standard titles to tap into search traffic already focused around that title.

• Bold the Title and Put It On Its Own Line – Don’t mix the job title in with the rest of your body text. Put it near the top of the page, bold it, and put it on a separate line from everything else.

2. Include a Short Survey or Questionnaire

Today’s job board sites make it super easy for applicants to fire off resumes willy-nilly for any job posting that looks remotely interesting to them, simply by clicking a button. That puts a burden on the employer to filter through which people are seriously interested in the job and which are just fishing.

That’s why including a short survey or questionnaire is a great idea. We have started doing this at Fit Small Business when we create our job listings. It serves 2 primary purposes:

• It weeds out people who are not very interested – They see a survey, realize it might take more than 5 minutes to apply, and move on.  

• It helps give you an idea of an applicant’s intelligence level and familiarity with your industry – We just recently hired several sales people for our newest website, Fit Biz Loans. We asked them, “If you were a small business owner getting a loan, what questions might you have?” Just by asking a few simple questions in a survey, it was pretty easy to tell the top candidates from those who were not as qualified or experienced.

3. Make Sure to Include a Physical Business Location (Even If You Don’t Really Have One)

Job boards and search engines such as Google are always looking for specific addresses on job listings. The more specific the address, the more chance that your listing will show up when potential employees search for jobs in your specific area or city. Even if you do not have a specific physical address, get a PO Box and put that address on the listing or just use your home address. A physical address not only makes your business look more professional; it also gets you more search traffic.

4. Make Sure Your Listing Is On the Right Job Boards

The majority of job searches anymore, at least initially, are done online. The key is to make sure your listing is on the job boards that will get you the most traffic. There are several things to keep in mind:

• Check out the big job boards – Large job boards such as Indeed, CareerBuilder, and Monster are great places to reach out to job-seekers. Those three sites have more than 35 million unique monthly visitors. If you want to reach as many job seekers as possible, you won’t want to ignore these.

• If you have the money, don’t be afraid to diversify – If you have a solid hiring advertisement budget, diversify. The more ads you have on different job boards, the higher your chance of finding the right employee for your business.

• Don’t overlook niche job boards – Specific industries often have specific job board sites tailored just to that industry, such as All Retail Jobs or MediaBistro. The smaller the niche, the smaller the audience – but the more relevant your posting will be to that audience.

• Try Craigslist – Although Craigslist ads can be hit or miss, it only costs $25, which is hard to beat.

5. Have a Unique Landing Page and URL for Your Job Listing

Job boards and search engines reward listings that have URLs that are specific to that listing, placing them higher in search results than listings that simply link to a company’s job listing page. Some, such as Indeed.com, won’t even link to a page that has more than one job listing on it. The best thing to do is to create a landing page for your job listing that has its own unique url and is for that job listing only. This ensures several things:

• Job boards will link to your listing

• All relevant info will be easily available on one page

• Applicants can get to your listing and submit their application in 2-3 clicks or less, minimizing the chance they will get frustrated and abandon the application along the way.

6. Make Sure to Include a Detailed Job Description

Having a clear and concise job description is also really important. Whenever possible, include keywords in the description that are popular in your industry or get a lot of search traffic. Also, if possible, repeat words that are in the title several times to increase your SEO friendliness.

Job descriptions should generally include:

• Responsibilities associated with the position
• Required skills and experience level
• Other job related details (full vs part-time, flexible hours vs 9-5, type of personality, etc)
• At least some information on compensation – even if it just says “competitive salary”

7. Have Clear Submission Instructions and Guidelines

Be sure to have instructions on your listing that make it clear how the applicant is to submit or conclude the application process. This can be a “Submit Application” button. Or it can be something to the effect of, “Send application forms and resumes to abcd@yourbusinessname.com.” Just make it clear what the applicant is supposed to do to finish things up.

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