Advice for Employers

Vacancy Advert Writing

Gradplus.com receives over 350,000 hits every month so your advert is likely to attract a lot of individual attention. However, if your advert does not sell the job to the candidates then you will not have many applications.

The team at Gradplus.com are all experienced graduate recruitment professionals, who have valuable experience of the recruitment process, including writing effective adverts that lead to more applications from the right candidates.

The candidate marketing team will be glad to review your advert and if necessary restructure it to include positive and catchy language that appeals to the candidates and calls to action. Contact the sales team on 0870 766 7621 or email sales@gradplus.com for this consultancy service which is included in your service.

Alternatively here are some tips to make the most out of your advertising space. Remember that the job is your product; the readers of the job advert are your potential customers. The aim of the job advert is to attract interest, communicate quickly and clearly the essential (appealing and relevant) points, and to provide a clear response process and mechanism.

Job adverts and recruitment processes should follow the classical AIDA selling format: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. A good job advertisements must first attract attention (from appropriate job-seekers); attract relevant interest (by establishing relevance in the minds of the ideal candidates); create desire (to pursue what looks like a great opportunity), and finally provide a clear instruction for the next action or response.

• Make the advert easy to read. Use simple language, avoid complicated words unless absolutely necessary and keep enough space around the text to attract attention to it. Less is more.
  
  
• Use short sentences. More than fifteen words in a sentence reduces the clarity of the meaning. After drafting your communication, seek out commas and 'and's, and replace with full-stops.
  
  
• Use bullet points and short bite-sized paragraphs. A lot of words in one big paragraph is very off-putting to the reader and will probably not be read.
  
  
• Get the reader involved. Refer to the reader as ‘you’ and use the second person (‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ etc) in the description of the requirements and expectations of the candidate and the job role. This helps people to visualise themselves in the role.
  
  
• Be unique. You must try to emphasise what makes your job and company special and dynamic.
  
  
• Credibility. You must never mislead candidates about the role. Be realistic about the duties of the job but use positive language. Employers or jobs that sound too good to be true will only attract the gullible and the dreamers.

Job advert checklist

• job title
• employer or recruitment agency/consultancy
• location
• description of business and market position and aims
• outline of job role and purpose - expressed in the 'second-person' (you, your, etc)
• indication of scale, size, responsibility, timescale, and territory of role
• outline of ideal candidate profile - expressed in 'second-person'
• indicate qualifications and experience required (which could be incorporated within candidate profile)
• salary or salary guide
• other package details or guide (pension, car etc)
• response and application instructions
• contact details as necessary, for example, address, phone, fax, email, etc.
• website address
• corporate branding
• quality accreditations, for example in the UK, Investor in People
• equal opportunities statement