Recruiting great talent is expensive and time consuming. While it’s rare to find a company that hasn’t turned to the Internet for finding talent, few are using it optimally. Spending just a few extra minutes on the strategy behind your listings can increase the quality of your candidate pool.
These tips will help you make the most out of your job postings. While you may need to cozy up to your company’s content manager, webmaster or online marketing team, it will all be worth it in the end.
Are Your Job Listings Making it to Google?
First things first, you want to make sure that search engines can reach jobs listed on your company website. Some recruiting software hides job listings behind login screens or candidate profile engines that search engines robots can’t get past. Others simply direct search engines not to visit job pages. This prevents the listings on your site from ever making it into the results on Google and other search engines.
To test if your job listings are listed in search engines, go to Google.com and search “site:[yourcompany.com] AND [title of position]”—without the quotations. If no listings from your company website show up, you’ll want to contact your web team to help make your listings visible.
Writing an Optimized Job Listing
Once you’re sure your listings are being picked up by search engines, it’s time to start thinking strategically. In addition to the listing itself, you’ll want to write as many of these elements as possible: the page title, URL and page headings.
Once you’ve figured out the above, it’s time to start your research. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you research keywords to use. Identify three to five keywords related to the position and make a point to include them in the description, all while keeping the copy natural to the reader.
Be local. Mention the city or metropolitan area (if in a small area). If telecommuting is an option, say so.
Avoid flashy language in the title―save that for your copy. (Hint: Your next great hire isn’t typing “Rock Star Systems Engineer Needed at Awesome Startup” into Google.)
If you’re always hiring for certain positions, consider creating optimized landing pages. For example, a large call center based in Milwaukee might create a page optimized for “Milwaukee Customer Service Jobs,” linking this month’s latest openings on the page itself.
Remember: Job sites like CareerBuilder and Monster are search engines too, with their own algorithms. If you’re not showing up high for searches related to your keywords on these sites, examine the competition’s listings. Do they have a shorter job description with higher keyword density? Do they list the location in the title? Experiment with rewrites and monitor your position over a few weeks to find what works best. You’ll want to keep listings fresh too. Renew your listing once a week to catch users who limit their searches to recent postings.
