High-quality job postings are essential to attracting high quality candidates. One of the simplest things you can do to improve your online recruiting is to buff up on your position titles and your use of location. Follow these best practices for job posting optimization and improve your applicant pool, conversion rate, and overall recruiting strategy.
Optimizing Your Job Titles
Job titles are your first avenue for success on any job board or careers page. They often determine whether a job seeker will click to learn more about the position… or miss your posting completely. Thus, it’s extremely important to nail this small but crucial detail.
Make it Searchable
The first thing to keep in mind when crafting a job title is that seekers will be looking for terms that they know, use, and can identify with. So, although words like “ninja” and “rockstar” are fun and inviting, they’re not typically searched-for terms. In fact, they can actually make it harder for job seekers to find your posting, especially through search engines like Google that rely on their algorithm to answer peoples’ questions directly and in the way that they asked.
Place yourself in a job seeker’s shoes and consider what you would search for when looking for the job that you’re offering. Sticking with common terms that denote field (e.g., ‘marketing’) and even rank (e.g., ‘specialist’) is the most likely way to get searchers to find you where you’re at. Another great way is by using industry specific terms, like ‘RN’ instead of ‘Registered Nurse,’ to get only the eyes of people that you want applying to your jobs.
Boost Your Benefits
The next thing you want to consider when writing strong titles that job seekers want to click on is how to use them to showcase the job’s best benefits. Promoting things like the wage you pay, flexible hours, or other benefits you offer, is a great way to increase a job’s click-through rate. For example, earlier this year, we ran an A/B test for one of our clients utilizing our Talroo job advertising software. We tested one straightforward job title, “Machine Attendant” against another, more informative one, “Machine Attendant start at $13/hr.” The latter received almost double the number of applicants. Additionally, more hires were made from the second posting, indicating that more qualified and intentional candidates applied upon learning that the wage listed was worth their time.
When including benefits in a job posting, don’t confine yourself to time off and pay – think bigger! Do you work with big brand names that consumers like? Are you a flexible employer who never makes employees work weekends or overnights? Are you letting employees work from home through the pandemic? Use your strengths as an advantage and tell people about the inviting pieces of your company culture.
Curious to see how job seeker needs have changed throughout the Covid pandemic?
Our data-filled infographics document the latest trends.
Keep it Concise
A final thing to keep in mind when writing a great job title is to keep it concise. It sounds crazy, we know, to try to include searched terms, benefits, brand names, and more into one measly title, all while keeping it short. However, according to ERE, the ideal job title length is right around 50-60 characters. Titles that do so outperform their competitors by 30-40%. So, while trying to achieve one of the goals from above, just be sure to keep in mind that you don’t want your title getting cut short – it might decrease your click-through rate.
Optimizing Your Job Locations
When considering the success of your title and overall posting, don’t forget to optimize for location. Take your career offerings to the next level by excelling at yet another piece of the puzzle.
Turn on Location
Most, if not all, major job boards should have a feature that allows for location enablement. By attaching the location of your job, you’ll make sure your posting will show up higher in job seeker results. Did you know, though, that this line of thinking works backwards as well as forwards? By doing research on where people are searching for certain jobs, you can be sure to post jobs where they’re being looked for.
Harness the power of Talroo Insights to learn where people are applying for certain jobs, which job titles resonate most with your audience, and tons of other job seeker insights.
Vary by Industry
The importance of job location differs from industry to industry. Trucking, for example, is obviously one where employees will care less about where their operations are based since they’re on the road so much. For warehouse jobs, however, and lots of other in-person workplaces, location matters a lot and candidates are less likely to apply the further out a job gets. Expanding your job radius can be a good idea for employers in industries where location is less important, but the more important it gets to applicants, the less likely you are to have a good conversion rate on a posting from doing it.
Target New Employees
Finally, as many workers are trading in their gas budget for a rising electricity bill – aka, working from home – your job posting can be optimized even further by targeting WFH candidates. By posting in major cities across the U.S., you’ll find job seekers where they are and provide them with opportunities they might have otherwise missed (while reaching candidates that you otherwise might have missed).
Need more help optimizing your job titles, descriptions, locations, and posts? As we mentioned earlier, it can get pretty difficult to manage the impulse to pack your titles with good info and the knowledge that short and sweet is what works best. That’s where our Client Success Analysts come in. From optimizing your titles to finding the right cities to post in to managing your source attribution and more, these subject matter experts are there to help you manage campaigns and make the best job postings you possibly can.
