Before your firm communicates in any other way with a candidate, they will encounter your job board advertising and immediately begin coming to conclusions on your company and vacancy. Your job adverts, then, aren’t mere information sources, actually being key to your marketing offer to candidates.

Write a great job advert and post it in the right places, and you will attract more of the most suitable candidates, sooner. (Find out more about making the most out of your recruitment campaigns by downloading our 2016 Guide to Online Recruitment Advertising.)

To make an instant impact with your own next advert, follow these five tips.

1. Be concise and direct

The reader of your job advert needs to be immediately told, in no uncertain terms, what your role actually requires. It is vital for you, because you need your job advert to quickly begin separating the more suitable from the less suitable candidates.

So, get to the point. Make sure you know exactly what you are looking for in an applicant, and state it. There are few things more damaging to your campaign than a vague job advert.

2. Outline the role’s responsibilities

Here’s where it’s really important to emphasise: a job advert is not the same as a full job description!

Of course, the former can link to the latter, but for the main advert, your emphasis should be on capturing a candidate’s attention and stating the most important responsibilities straight away – between five and seven bullet points is a good guideline.

3. Introduce your company

Remember that the reader may have never heard of your company before – so stick firmly to the important stuff. What does your firm do? What has it achieved to date, and what does it want to achieve in future? What are its values and culture?

Get these details into just a few lines in a compelling way, and you’ve added even more power to your job advert.

4. Have your ad checked by someone else

Another pair of eyes really can make an immense difference, picking out faults with the job advert as written that will seem obvious in hindsight. You are showing the ad to other people on a job board, after all, so you will need to get a sense of how other people interpret it.

Do any rewriting, refining and editing that you need to do now, and ask for feedback again… before posting it to a job board for the public’s gaze. Remember that your company’s professional reputation is affected by any sloppiness in what you write!

5. Post the ad to a suitable location

Is your job board advertising even being posted to the right job boards? By “right”, we mean the places where your dream candidates are most likely to be. Ask yourself… if you were one of those candidates, where would you search for opportunities?

Consider various alternative places to post your ad in the context of your budget. Remember that it’s all about getting more of the right eyes on your ad!