Nothing is as frustrating as desperately wanting new employees yet being told that none want to work for you or applying. This can be frustrating for everyone involved.
If you know your company is fantastic and that employees would be lucky to work with you: here are the top reasons they may be overlooking your listing.
None of these are permanent issues! A little work can correct any of them.
Your Wording Isn’t Eye Catching
What type of wording are you using in your job listing? From the title to the listing itself, it’s important to consider what your candidates would want to see. For example, if you’re offering entry-level work and expect mostly high school-aged applicants, you can’t word this listing as something that will be the only work they ever do. In this case, stating that there’s a lot of room for ‘upward mobility within the company can be alluring to many.
You Aren’t Posting to the Right Sites
What sites are you posting your listing to? Craigslist? Local news sites? Consider how people job hunt in the modern-day. Many are more likely to use job search engines instead. Try not to post to more than three sites to try to focus heavily on these. From here, use an applicant tracking software so you can see how long they stay on your page, how many people click onto it, and what site or page they came from.
The Job or Industry Isn’t Well Known
If an applicant feels like they’re woefully unprepared or like they’d have to learn a college degree’s worth of knowledge for a job, they may refuse to apply even if the listing is for something that’s considered ‘entry level’ in your industry, many clicks away from listing for jobs that need more than they’re willing to give.
Be honest about the work that will be expected of them, but also give them the chance to see that it’s not as complicated as it sounds and that you’re willing to work with them to teach them.
Your Listing Is Too Cluttered
When someone clicks into your job listing, are they greeted by ten pages of text? Did you write out what their entire career would look like moving forward from day one? This attention to detail can be nice generally, but wasting it on a job listing ensures that nobody will read the entire thing. The average job listing shouldn’t be longer than six hundred words if you want to ensure you keep their attention. Less is more, of course!
Your Listing is Coming off as Disingenuous
When job applicants see your listing, it may give off scam or spam alarms if you’re not careful. On the other hand, being too overly descriptive about the generals of the job without explaining the details can be a lot. For example, if the job is custodial work at a middle school, say that! You can word it in a way that sounds nice, but don’t lie about it.
Some phrases that can come off as disingenuous, or lying, are things like “tech job, entry-level,” or titles of “work from home job with benefits,” where listings avoid specifics and stay general.
