Job Board Posting Best Practices

Posting opportunities to job boards is a popular and effective method for finding talented professionals to fill your roles. However, in order to make your job posts effective, you have to target them towards the widest demographic of relevant candidates. The following tips will help you to eliminate practices that cause potential employees to ignore your listings or avoid applying to your company.

The Women Who Code job board averages 100,000 page views a year. Once you read through these best practices check it out.

Keep it Simple

Job boards list many different positions. Therefore, if your description of the job is too long, people will skim over it or skip it altogether. Using copy that is short, snappy, and distinct will help your post to stand out. It will also help you to catch the attention of not only active job seekers but passive ones that are just browsing the possibilities.

Fact: 60% of job-seekers do not complete long applications.

Eliminate Unnecessary Requirements 

It is important to only list the most important languages, technologies, and frameworks that will be needed for the job. Too many requirements will cause qualified people to ignore your listing. Finding a high quality employee is more important than finding someone who has specific skills that can be learned on the job.

Particularly when listing the stack, make sure to only mention the professional expertise that is absolutely necessary to perform the role. Everything else can be learned on the job.

Fact: On average, women are much more likely to apply to a position only if they meet 100% of the listed requirements. In contrast, men are likely to apply to the same job even if they only meet 60% of the requirements.

Weak: We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer with 5 years experience to help build out our responsive web interfaces.

Strong: Join an amazing team and forge the next generation of responsive web interfaces!

Benefits

Women Who Code members reported benefits such as remote opportunities, flexible schedules, and parental leave impact whether they apply for a position.

Salary

Including a salary range when posting a job ad increases transparency and will help you to gain more interest from potential employees. If you can not include a salary range in the actual ad, make sure to note when compensation is discussed in the hiring process.

Fact: 70% of applicants consider salary a top priority before applying.

Challenges Over Responsibilities

When writing a job description, emphasize the opportunities and challenges the position will provide the applicant. This focuses on the exciting part of the role, while solely focusing on the responsibilities makes the job seem tedious and boring.

Weak: You will manage a team of engineers and oversee the health of the network platform.
Strong: You will lead and collaborate with a team of engineers to overcome the challenges of the network platform.

Describe the Hiring Process

Women Who Code members indicated that one of the biggest pain points when applying for a job is an obscure hiring process. Including the hiring process details improves conversions and encourages transparency.

Explain Why the Position is Unique

Your job board ad will be competing with countless other companies offering the same or similar positions. To make your listing stand out, explain why your company and your advertised role is unique. This could include the nature of the work, corporate culture, benefits, or anything that sets you apart.

Weak: An expert software developer is responsible for technical design, coding, testing, and support of custom software applications.

Strong: Attention all expert software developers: come work at a company where you will get to build and develop financial tools that will change the world!

Positive Language

“You can not,” “you will not,” and “you should not” are limiting terms that cast a negative connotation on the opportunity that you are presenting. Instead use empowering language that tells people what they can do, the options at their disposal, and emphasizes the freedom to handle their daily tasks.

Speak to the Person Directly

Personalized job descriptions resonate better with potential employees. Try using language that speaks to them directly such as using words like “you” to replace more impersonal terms like “the candidate.”

Weak: Seeking an applicant that can manage large teams.

Strong: You will manage large teams.

Gender-Neutral Wording

Using gender-biased terms in job descriptions limits the diversity of applicants. When writing job descriptions, avoid using gender, pronoun, or background specific language and use neutral wording instead. 

List of best practices for gender-neutral wording. 

Corporate Culture 

Work is a significant portion of a person’s life, therefore the interactions at work that take place there are often powerful and meaningful. Sharing your corporate culture in a job post is a way to humanize your company, showcase your organization’s personality, and provide insight into what it will be like to work there. Often corporate culture subconsciously is more important to an applicant than salary and benefits.

Peer Review

Enlisting peers to review and provide feedback on your job post copy glean a wider perspective of opportunities for improvement. Choosing a peer with previous experience in the role to review your posting is often most effective. 

Engage With the Community

Engaging with our community before posting on the Women Who Code job board leads to the best results. Whether that is through a blog post, social mention or event, this will familiarize our community with your company and your story. 

Conclusion

When posting to a job board it is important to try and think like a potential employee. You have to highlight the things that are important to them, while avoiding language and requirements which might cause the right person to completely skip over your ad. Emphasizing benefits and challenges while using positive, proactive language can help attract a larger pool of applicants. This gives you more options to choose and a higher chance of finding the perfect person for your role.