The top 4 reasons your job ad isn’t attracting the right (or even any!) candidates

Sick of interviewing candidates who are nothing like the person you read about in their resume?

Tired of receiving resumes from people who aren’t even close to ticking any of your job criteria?

Frustrated you haven’t got a single application for your ad yet?

In a tight labour market it’s hard enough to find any candidates, let alone candidates who are a great fit for the job you’ve advertised.  And candidates know they have the advantage.

Historically, people have always portrayed themselves in the best light in their resume, but the incidence of resume “padding” has increased exponentially as candidates gain better access to templates, examples, and generative AI tools such as Chat GPT and Bard.

From your perspective, it’s time-consuming advertising the role, shortlisting candidates, interviewing your shortlist, and then reference checking the final couple. 

When you’re underwhelmed by the applications you’ve received and are struggling to find a reason (other than desperation) for interviewing anyone who’s applied, you ask yourself what you’re doing wrong and why you can’t find someone who’s halfway decent to fill the role.

When this is the third time you’ve got your hopes up after reading a resume that ticks all your boxes, only to discover they’re far from the right person for the job during the interview, you get angry that your time’s been wasted and tell yourself that surely there must be a better way.

While there are many reasons people may not be applying for your job, if your job ad isn’t written to attract the right person in the first place, you’re facing an uphill battle before you’ve even started.  A poorly written job ad will always under-perform.

Here are four reasons your job ad may be under-performing and what to do about them to attract a better quality (and number) of candidates, and waste less time:

Reason #1: You aren’t articulating why a candidate would want to work for your organisation.

Candidates want to know how working for you will give them something of value.  They want to know what’s going to be in it for them. 

Now, we’re not talking about remuneration here; we’re talking about how they’ll grow and develop as a result of working with your company.  We’re talking about how they’ll be contributing to the bigger picture.  And we’re talking about what it will feel like for them to be part of your team, part of your vision.

Solution:

Create (or reinvigorate) an Employee Value Proposition.  To capture and communicate the compelling reasons people choose to work with you, ask your existing employees what they value about working there.  Turn those reasons into a punchy headline and three or four short explainers.

Here’s an example:

Headline: We actually care.

Explainer 1: We care about our people.

We actually care about people. We care about our team, we care about our clients, we care about our suppliers. We care about people striking a blend between their work and personal lives so that every day is fuelled by enjoyment rather than obligation.

Explainer 2: We care about our environment

We actually care about the environment in which we work. We care about making the environment in which our clients work, safe. We care deeply about creating a thriving workplace culture where everyone’s ideas and suggestions are welcomed and heard; a space where people love coming to work and working collaboratively.

Explainer 3: We care about your success

We actually care about your growth and development because when you’re successful, we’re successful, and our clients are also successful. Together, our success is all about making a positive impact and doing meaningful work with a whole bunch of people who feel the same way.

An EVP is not the same thing as core values.  Core values are more client facing; letting clients know what you stand for, what guides your collective behaviour, and they might expect from you and your people.

An EVP is employee facing.  It articulates your organisation’s purpose from an employee perspective and captures the compelling reasons that people value working there.

Adding your EVP to your job ad will create resonance with candidates who want to know what it’ll be like to work there, and what they might expect to gain personally from working with your organisation, before they decide if they’ll apply.

Reason #2: You haven’t stated the salary range.

Advertising the salary range for your job helps immediately filter out those candidates for whom your salary fails to meet their expectations. 

Every job seeker has expectations around the salary they are looking for, for all sorts of reasons.  They may have a hefty mortgage. In the current environment with increasing interest rates, that may be driving a need for a higher salary. They may want a promotional opportunity and see that opportunity coming with a higher wage tag; or they may already be on a salary in that range but want what they perceive to be a better workplace culture, without compromising their family’s income.

Not advertising your salary range is a bit like putting your fridge on Facebook marketplace without stating the price.  Most people will scroll through to the next fridge because they won’t want to waste their time asking for the price only to find out it’s outside their budget.

Solution:

Use a resource like Hays salary benchmarking to establish a fair salary range for the job you’re advertising. 

Be clear in your mind what levels of skill and experience you associate with both the bottom end and top end of your range because many applicants will immediately want the top-end figure.  Be prepared to justify the exact salary you’re offering based on what each candidate brings to your organisation.  

Find out enough about the candidate to understand what they value and how their current workplace falls short in meeting their needs and expectations.   You also need to be able to explain how the role you’re offering WILL meet those needs. 

During a recent engagement, where I sat in on a client’s interview process, we convinced our preferred applicant that a reduction in their current salary was a small sacrifice in order to gain a role that fulfilled their needs for social interaction and a more collaborative environment.  The salary agreed upon was $3,000 less than they were currently getting and $8,000 under the top end figure in the advertised range, which they had expressed was their expectation during the first interview. 

Reason #3: Your ad reads like a job description

Populating your ad with a list of the tasks involved in the job is no way to create excitement or the desire to apply. 

No one’s going to beat a path to your door from reading a job description.

If your ad reads like a list of ingredients on a food label, people may give it a cursory glance, but they’re not going to be like, “oh wow!  This job sounds amazing.  It’s the job I’ve been waiting for all my life. I can’t wait to apply!” 

If your job ad reads like a job description, it may well be the primary reason you’re getting few or no applications.  In fact, the only applications you may receive will be from people who need to tick the “yes, I’ve applied for a job this week” box to substantiate their Centrelink payment.

Sure, you can make a job description available once the candidate has successfully passed your first interview stage, but don’t use it as the basis of your ad.

Solution:

Think of your ad as part of your marketing engine.  We “market” our services or product to attract people to it; then, if they’re interested, we move them into our sales process. 

Your job ad needs to be enticing.  It needs to make the right candidate feel they simply have to apply. 

Craft a personality-driven description of your organisation: what’s it really like to work there?  What are you (and the job) not like?  Talk about your values and how this job connects to your organisational purpose.

People, especially young people, want to feel they are part of something that’s making a difference; they want to know that the job they’ll be doing has some sort of impact on someone or something.

And before you say that some jobs have no impact, think again. 

The cleaner hired to clean toilets has a significant impact on the day-to-day experience of your customers (and employees).  The person employed as part of the accounts receivable team has a direct impact on the organisation meeting its sales and revenue targets.  And the person adding the spoon to the cutlery pack handed out on board the aircraft plays a significant part of the traveller being able to eat their custard dessert.

Every job has an impact on someone or something.  If it didn’t, the job would be redundant and you wouldn’t be hiring for it!

Reason #4: You’re speaking the wrong language

If you’re not clear about the type of person you’re looking for, or if you describe your organisation with language that fails to resonate with the type of person you’re looking for, your job ad will fail miserably.

Not only will you not attract any of the right candidates, you may find you unwittingly attract people who are completely the wrong fit for the job.

For example, advertising a job that focuses mostly on data and facts, and needs someone reserved, analytical, and serious with a description promoting it as a fun, friendly, family-oriented environment, will attract the exact opposite of the type of person you want.

It’s common sense. If you write in French, but you’re looking for someone who speaks Mandarin, you’re not likely to get the result you want.

In addition, many job ads entirely fail to describe the person they are looking for.

Solution:

When writing your ad, try to employ behavioural language – that is, language that describes both the job and the person you’re looking to recruit.

The first step in using behavioural language in a job ad, is understanding the behavioural makeup of the job in the first place. 

Does the job involve dealing with people on a regular basis?  Does it require initiative and the drive to work independently?  Does it comprise a heap of routine, repetitive tasks?  Does it frequently call for the making of exceptions, or does it involve high attention to detail?

Once you have a clear understanding of the behavioural makeup of the job, you can use this “language” to write your ad.

Using the right language helps attract the right candidates and repel the wrong ones. 

For instance, a person who is lively, fast-talking and loves persuading people to buy something will be repelled by an ad that says this job is about analysing data in a quiet, professional environment.

Here’s an example of a couple of key sections in a job ad that we’ve crafted behaviourally:

About the role:

We are looking for someone who is exceptionally client-focused to professionally manage our office and the installation team. 

The purpose of this role is to help our business run at maximum efficiency and manage growth opportunities, while continuing to deliver the exceptional standards we are well known for.   The goal is to make things happen – to keep jobs turning over and keep our installers working at full capacity – on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, so that our installation jobs run like a well-oiled machine. 

It will see you, day to day:

• Working in a systematic and patient way with technical information and processes
• Managing the day-to-day operations, making sure everyone is in the communication loop
• Working autonomously with focus on the work to be done
• Adapting to changing priorities and scheduling work to ensure maximum utilisation
• Bringing your creative, critical thinking side to solving problems.

About you:

You probably describe yourself as a reserved, diligent, and conscientious individual, with a strong commitment to high quality work.  You’re the “quiet achiever” who uses imagination and strong problem-solving skills to find the most efficient, yet quality-focused way to tackle a task in differing environments. 

You’re organised and self-critical, and prefer to work alone at a measured pace, following your own plan.   You find it highly satisfying to see things ordered and organised, and you enjoy developing and maintaining knowledge of systems.   You prefer to get the job done, and get it done well, with very little outside interference.   One of your key strengths is capturing processes and procedures so that you can create systems that improve efficiency. 

Your approach to work:

• Demanding, critical and exacting of self
• Pays close attention to detail and focused on high-quality results
• Measured pace, but able to work at a faster pace without compromising on quality
• Organised and disciplined – likes to create procedures and systems.

You’ll notice that this ad describes (a) the behaviours required by the job: systematic, patient, client-focused, working autonomously, changing priorities, high-quality, critical thinking. 

It also describes (b) how the person will be: reserved, diligent, conscientious, concerned with high-quality output, organised, self-critical, working alone to their own plan, ordered, not easily distracted, focused on process and procedures.

As humans, most of us are innately aware of the ways we behave and what we need; we recognise them easily because they resonate.

That stimulus-response (or resonance) is exactly what we’re looking for when we write a job ad this way.  Using the correct “language” will create a resonance with those who recognise their own behaviours and needs.  Others will read it and immediately move on because of its lack of resonance.

Makes sense. Right? 

Writing ads for jobs is a bit of an art, but having a proven formula to follow not only reduces the amount of time it will take you (some of our clients claim it’s reduced the time it takes them to write a job ad from around 2 hours to somewhere between 20-30 minutes), but also improves the quality of candidate you’ll attract.

If you’d like to know more about how to write a behaviourally-targeted job ad, let’s chat. 

People first.  Now more than ever.