Comparing Job Posts
Posted December 5th, 2016
You want to make sure that your company is attracting the best candidates. But how do you do that? Naturally, company reputation, salary, benefits, and culture all play a role. But there is another important vehicle for attracting people that you may be overlooking. That is your job advertisement.
Top candidates can afford to be particular about which advertisements they respond to. So, they will naturally examine them carefully for indications of what the job will be like. Does it sound like the job will be interesting, exciting work? Moreover, your job posting will be up against those of your competitors for the attention of candidates as well.
How does your job ad stack up against your competitors? Because if theirs is better, you lose out on quality candidates. To make sure your ad is the best out there, you need to do a quality comparison. That is, you need to have job candidates look and your ad and your competitors’ ads and determine which is better. If yours does not come out on top, you need to go back to the drawing board for revisions.
Here is the process you need to go through.
1. Find your competitors.
Have your recruiters identify those firms who are competing with you for talent.
2. Find competitors job postings.
These can be easily located on job boards
3. Block any information that will give the company away.
In other words, you need to delete any information that will enable the person to identify the company in the job post. This applies to the job titles as well. If they are a giveaway, you need to change them. There should not be anything in the postings that will enable the person to identify companies when they are put side by side.
4. Select people to assess the posts.
The ideal people would be job applicants. You may also want to use employees. Or you can use both to get an overall assessment. You should try to have somewhere between five and ten people look at the ads.
5. Have them evaluate the posts.
For this evaluation, you need to put the job ads side by side. Since most job applicants spend only about 50 to 80 seconds reading a post, you need to limit your reviewers’ time with each post to about one minute. Then, have the reviewers rank each post from the most attractive to the least attractive.
6. Conduct an information session
After the reviewers have conducted the rankings, meet with them individually to find out why they ranked the posts as they did. Find out what made a post good or bad.
7. Change your post
Once you have determined the information that makes the post attractive to candidates, change your post to incorporate that information. Then run another test to see if makes a difference in how the reviewers evaluate it.
If your company is looking for competent, reliable employees in the science and technology areas, Bayside Solutions can help you find the talent you need. Bayside specializes in recruiting science and technology workers, saving clients time and money in hiring. Give Bayside Solutions a call today.
