Nearly everyone has seen a job post at least once in their lives. Be it on print (like newspapers or random notes around bus stops) or on media (like the internet and online job boards), these job posts usually share one similarity – which is to describe the role of the position. Essentially, what you can expect to do if you land the job!

These job posts are usually very serious documents that outlines the responsibilities of the job as well as state the requirements to take on this role (Usually technical abilities. After all, you do need to know programming if you want to be a programmer…). There is absolutely nothing wrong with such a job post. However, we chanced upon a couple of rather interesting job posts and decided, ‘Hey. This company sounds fun. We are fun. Why isn’t our fun oozing from our job posts?’.

Thus, we embarked on a journey to improve our job posts. It was not an easy one, but we learned a lot along the way and finally settled on our current incarnation. Find out more about the 3 things we look at when creating our job posts after the break.

1. What’s in a name?

It all begins with the job title. Although it sounds simple enough, we actually did a research on commonly searched job titles. Even though a ‘Software Developer’ and a ‘Programmer’ might be doing the same types of work, the amount of searches for each term can vary… greatly. We find that understanding our target audience and how they search for jobs online is one of the most important aspects of generating leads (in our case, prospective candidates). But wait, what if our job title happens to be an obscure one? That is completely fine as well since 70% of search engine traffic are unique searches and these unique searches have a higher chance of conversion.

Think about it this way. Person A who searches ‘Shoes’ (a very popular keyword resulting in tens of thousands of searches per day) vs Person B who searches ‘Best price on Shoe X size 12’. Generally, Person B already knows what he/she wants and definitely has the greater chance to convert.

2. Style of the Job Post

Yes, you read it right. A style for a job post sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Shouldn’t it simply be a straightforward document detailing the job and what it takes to do it? Again, we looked into a number of interesting job posts and extracted the gist of what the companies are trying to convey and in truth, their job post turned out to be an extension of their company culture. A reflection of themselves that they are willing to be candid about. (It is not always about fun and games however as there are also serious job posts that are portrayed very strictly most likely due to the job’s hazardous nature.)

I guess what I am trying to say would be that we learned that a job post is also a touch point with your prospective candidate. Touch points are also opportunities for companies to connect with their audience.

We then decided to re-work the style of our job posts to better reflect the type of people we are that makes up Titansoft. We even roped in our software developers to help us with this revision as they understand the day to day routines of the job better. This is important to us as we want to set up the right expectations to our prospective candidates.

3. Receiving Feedback is Important

As HR personnel, we are always looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of our job posts. As such, we occasionally write up different styles of job posts and seek feedback from our colleagues or even our consultants. By constantly trying out new ways to write up a job post, we learn what resonates with people and what may not really work out as expected. Yes, even HR does testing and we are proud of it. The learning from these tests are incredibly valuable allowing us to perform our roles more effectively.

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So how do you think job posts should be like? Let me know on the comments below!