The Inspirational Job Posting

It may seem odd to focus on job postings at a time when recruitment is declining and layoffs are rising. To my way of thinking, however, now is the very best time to explore the intricacies of a superior online recruitment ad. Why? Because the winners in the coming recovery (and it is coming) will be those organizations that both improve the capabilities of their workforce in the present and upgrade the skills of their recruiters for the future. Learning the secrets of superior job postings enables you to augment your current workforce with top talent despite their fear of change in today’s economy and to ensure that your staffing team will be able to outperform the competition when things begin to look up. Think of it as a dual strategy, one that can help you with disaster minimization and recovery optimization.

What is a superior job posting? Certainly not the majority of those we normally see on the Web. Today’s online recruitment ads are more akin to a cure for insomnia. They’re dull and lacking in any persuasive power. That’s not a problem, of course, if you’re content to recruit mediocre talent, but if you want to hire the best, then boring ads aren’t going to work. In an economic downturn, a recession or at any other time.

Why? Because the best talent always has choices. They can stay right where they are and avoid the disruption of change or they can pick from what is often a number of other, competing employment opportunities. If you’ve connected with a person who has a hard-to-find skill, a person who has a track record of “A” level performance or that rarest of rare talent, a person who has both, then you can be sure that the prospect:

is employed and well taken care of by their current employer;
the recipient of constant messaging from other employers promising to do the same.

That’s why I think we need a new kind of job posting, one that can compel even the most happily employed and the most sought after prospects to submit an application. I call it the inspirational job posting.

The inspirational job posting four key attributes:

Passion

You can’t inspire others if you aren’t first inspired yourself. Work isn’t always fun, but on your best days, there are likely to be aspects of your time on-the-job that inspire and motivate you. So, figure out what they are. Pinpoint what is it that makes you willing (maybe even eager) to contribute your talent, your effort, your commitment to your current employer. Then make those factors the central feature of the value proposition you present in your postings. In fact, lead with your passion-make it the first thing a reader sees in your ad-and express it in a vocabulary that lets the emotion show through. That’s not unprofessional; it’s good advertising.

Vision

Communication is the art of enabling people to picture your message in their mind’s eye. To envision it as well as comprehend it. Videos are helpful, of course, but probably not feasible for every ad you post. The alternative is to create “word pictures.” These descriptions need not be Shakespeare, but they must be vivid enough to convey a mental image. They must touch the reader on the right hemisphere of their brain-the creative side-as well as the left hemisphere-the rational side. That can be a difficult task, of course, if the vision you are conveying is inadequate-if the leadership of your organization hasn’t given it a compelling sense of purpose-but it is always essential and especially powerful when the vision is worthy of your presentation.

Focus

Write your ad from the prospect’s perspective. Describe “what’s in it for them” but do so with both the features and the benefits of your value proposition. There’s an old saying in sales that, every year, hardware stores sell six million quarter-inch drill bits-a feature-and nobody really wants one; what they want is a quarter-inch hole-the benefit. So, throw out those corporate-centric position descriptions and present the requirements and responsibilities of your openings in a way that will affect the reader-what are the advantages and benefits your opening offers to them.

Conciseness

People don’t read on the Web; they scan. Moreover, high caliber, passive prospects-the talent we most want to hire-have the attention span of a gnat and flit from posting-to-posting as if they were one. The key, therefore, is to change the format of your ads. Don’t write them in the thick, pithy paragraphs of the print medium. Instead, express your message in headlines and bullets so that the reader can quickly grasp your key points and, if appropriate, make a decision on-the-fly to invest more time in getting to know what you have to offer.

An inspirational job posting is able to sell even the most reluctant employment prospects when other ads won’t. Why? Because in a good economy as well as a bad one, people-especially those who are talented-want hope. They want to believe that there is a special opportunity for them. And, they want that hope expressed in a way that speaks to them. That’s what an inspirational job posting delivers. Not a chance to work at some job, but a chance to fulfill their dreams (source: weddles.com).

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