Top tips for online recruitment success: Clear job titles
Posted: October 12th, 2009 under Help and Advice, Job Boards, Online Recruitment.
Tags: job board advertising, recruitment websites, Top tips for online recruitment success
Over the summer, whatjobsite did some research on job boards to find out how the recession was affecting them. While we were at it, however, we also asked those same job boards another very important question: what did they think were the most important things employers could to do make a success of their job ad on their job boards.
The thing that UK job boards said was the most important thing that recruiters could to ensure success for employers recruiting on their websites was… a clear job title.
Yep, it was that simple and straightforward. The reason this is considered most important is that most job boarders, unlike employer recruiters, know how their job boards work. The vast majority of job board search engines rank jobs in search results according to the closest match to a number of criteria but number one of every job board is job title.
That is, when someone inputs a keyword search on a job board, the first search process is to match it against job titles. Therefore, all the keywords in the world won’t make a difference to someone seeing your job ad unless your job has some kind of similarity to the job title they are looking for.
As simple and implementable as this advice is, many recruiters simply refuse to take it. One whatjobsite client didn’t want to change its position titles becuase they thought that good candidates should know to look for their obscure job titles. In other words, their peculiar, odd and obtuse job titles were a kind of “screening process” for them —the assumption being that only really clever candiates would think to look for their job titles.
The only problem was that they were completely wrong. Really clever candidates actually searched using common job titles rather than obscure ones. Think about it, if you are a candidate looking for a job, and typing your job title into a job board search engine produces a list of relevant jobs, what’s clever about not doing that. In the end, thankfully, the client did relent and saw their application rates increase by an average of 400%.
On a related point, good job titles can also have implications for your own Search Engine Marketing Strategy on your own careers website. However, whatever the case, the lesson is clear.
Top tip: Clear job titles