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Get More Applications For Your Staffing Firm Part 2: The Value of Job Titles and Posts

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We’re back with more insights about how to drive more applications for your staffing firm! In this post, we’ll break down everything you need to know about the value of job titles and posts and how to optimize them for maximum candidate applications.

Missed our last post in the series? Check it out here:

Get More Applications for Your Staffing Firm Part 1: Recruiting Reality 

Job Titles Must Match What Candidates Search For

Save the fun and snappy titles for business cards and email signatures. Your job titles need to match what candidates expect to see when they type in a search query. Remember—a job aggregator is a search engine. The algorithm delivers results to answer candidates’ questions.

Adjust your job titles and recruitment postings to reflect popular search terms and attract more candidates to your jobs.

How do you make your job the answer to candidates’ questions?

Tools like Indeed Hiring Insights, Google Search Trends, and the CareerBuilder Supply and Demand Report can give you valuable insight into:

  • what terms candidates are searching.
  • how competitive jobs are in your region.
  • which terms you should be using in your job posts.

What have our clients learned about job titles?

  • Hiring for a marketing specialist job in Florida is easier when the job title is “marketing associate,” “marketing assistant,” or “marketing coordinator.”
  • Hiring Class A drivers in California is easier when the job title includes the word “truck.”
  • Mid-month change led to a 12% decrease in application cost and a 42% increase in application total.
  • Hiring leasing consultants in Florida is easier when you include the words, “leasing agent.” Making this change tripled applications in one month.
  • Using “now hiring” or “hiring immediately” in your job title will deliver your post to candidates ready to work right now.
  • Automation (like the programmatic software [link to https://www.recruitmentmarketers.com/programmatic101/] we use at Haley marketing) can make it easier to test multiple job titles in job posts and track results.

Job Posts Must Instantly Convey Value (WIIFM)

The first 2 to 4 sentences of a job post are crucial. Candidates want to know “what’s in it for me” before reading further. If you put them to sleep with a boring list of job duties and responsibilities, they may never learn what your job has to offer.

Compare these two job post excerpts for industrial warehouse jobs (geography, pay and duties are the same):

  1. Where are the warehouse workers who LOVE OVERTIME!?!?! Join this team where business is booming. GREAT PAY, 1ST SHIFT, AND OVERTIME!
  2. If you are looking for a great work-life balance, then look no further! We have a 1st shift production position with great hours and weekends off!

Both posts are for similar jobs with similar geography and similar pay. What’s different? The value for the candidate.

A candidate who has flexibility and wants overtime will apply to the first job. A candidate who needs a set schedule or prioritizes personal time will choose the second job. Taking it a step further, your job post also sets expectations for what it will be like to work for the company. If a candidate is expecting (or not expecting) overtime, you’ll need to meet those expectations or risk having them leave the job, creating frustration for everyone.

Job Posting Tips

With 3.12 million fewer people in the workforce and 11.6 million open jobs, you need to market your job posts to get applications. Consider creating 2 to 5 job post templates for your team so they know exactly how to get candidates excited about a new job post.

What needs to be on your job post template?

  • Awesome opening: Write 2 to 4 sentences focused on “WIIFM.”
  • Important job details: Once you have their attention, create expectations for pay, schedule, and location.
  • Job responsibilities: Include duties or responsibilities that you feel are necessary last; they are least important to candidates at this point in the process.

What Do Candidates Want?

Ask them.

Take advantage of opportunities during the hiring process to explore what’s important to today’s candidates. Connect with them during interviews, onboarding, and after joining the team. Conduct surveys, focus groups, and exit interviews. Do whatever it takes to understand what’s important to your candidates. Guess what? It probably isn’t what you think.

Create a simple process to gather data and be consistent about following it.

Test your job posts—manually or using job advertising automation.

Experiment with the “WIIFM” in the first few sentences of your job posts and see how they perform. Testing them requires time and effort, but it will keep your jobs fresh. You’ll be able to tell what’s connecting with your candidates and leverage that data in future posts.

As you might guess, this is one of the reasons why we are such big fans of programmatic job advertising. This type of automation makes it easy to test different versions of jobs, job titles, bidding strategies, and more to see what will deliver the best candidates at the lowest cost.

Reduce Friction with Your Job Applications

Candidates expect everything to be simple, especially on their mobile devices.

Examine your job application with an eye toward simplicity. 

Are candidates looking at your job application and seeing multiple fields to complete? If so, they’ll probably click away and find an easier application. What information do you need the first time you make contact with a candidate? Try to keep it as simple as possible—only ask for the minimum information you need to guide the candidate further into your hiring process.

Haley Marketing simplified the application we use in our Career Portal software, and it increased applies by 10.6%.

Test your application everywhere.

Be sure it looks and performs as expected when viewed on:

  • Mobile
  • Desktop
  • Indeed
  • ZipRecruiter
  • And everywhere else it appears

Reduce friction to generate more applications.

Are you using quick apply processes on job boards, or are you driving people back to your website to apply?

Driving candidates to apply on your website captures their information for your ATS, but it creates friction. You will likely receive fewer applications because candidates will have to make more effort to apply.

Less friction equals more applications. Every firm will need to decide where they want candidates to apply, but all firms should keep their application process as simple and frictionless as possible.

Our client’s cost per application increased 80% when switching from Indeed Quick Apply to Indeed Company Apply. Switching back delivered instant results!

Up Next: Get More Applications for Your Staffing Firm Part 3: Optimizing your Jobs-Budget Ratio

Our last post in the series will give you all you need to know about optimizing you jobs-budget ratio and get the highest ROI from your recruiting spend. But if you don’t want to wait, you can check out the full ebook here!

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