As a recruiter, if you are not actively seeking candidates, you will want candidates to come across your job postings and want to learn more. This is where good job descriptions come in handy.
With this in mind, your job descriptions must give your candidates the information they want and need. The majority of this essential information will be in the “Job Duties and Responsibilities” and “ Skills and Requirements” section of your job descriptions. These sections should be your typical bulleted out essential duties and key points your hiring manager has told you that candidates will need to have to be the candidate for the position. Beyond these two basic and typical sections, this is your time to shine.
Use your creativity to showcase company culture, ideas, pro, cons, and anything and everything that you need to tell your candidate that they won’t be able to google.
GREAT job descriptions will be set up like this:
An intriguing introduction to the position
This part of your job description should be the hook – It should be exciting and make the candidate want to read more. The introduction to your position should be a written paragraph (not bulleted points for obvious reasons) and give candidates a general idea of what they’ll be doing day-to-day. Make sure to talk directly to the candidate. This will make the job descriptions feel more personal and encourage potential candidates to picture themselves in the role. Keep it short, and don’t be afraid to include descriptive words to make the job more interesting and exciting.
Give buckets of information…that even Google couldn’t tell the candidate
This is the fun part. Within this part of the job description you should include things candidates wouldn’t necessarily know if they googled an industry-standard description of the role. The type of information in this section could be company culture and perks. It could also include candidate personality traits, motives and desires that the company would want in a new hire. This section, though fun and makes the candidate excited to read more, should be in distinct section to draw the candidate’s attention. This section will be effective in any job description as it will have enough information to appear attractive and thorough, but will avoid highlighting tasks that are not essential functions of the job or can be relayed next in the job duties and responsibilities.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Simply list no more than eight to ten bullets of essential duties. Need I say more?
Skill and Requirements
Lastly, list all essential education, certification and knowledge requirements. What does your candidate need to have to qualify for the position? They need to know if they aren’t a doctor, they can’t apply to be in a doctor position. This is the easy part.
If you can navigate through this guide, you’ll be killing it out in the job description world. The better the JD, the more likely you will snag the best candidates. Happy Hunting.
If you are interested in seeing a real life, GREAT JD in action, check out our open Gigs, if one catches your eye – Apply!