Why you should read this
When it comes to making a star signing, the best hiring leaders work out exactly what they need before even looking at the market. Having devised a hiring playbook to determine what skills and mindset you need to assess for a perfect fit, it's time to prepare to hook your game-changer by creating a compelling job advert and role description. Here’s what you need to know.
The Ad Copy
The ad copy is short and punchy. It creates an emotional pull in your candidates. It triggers day dreams about working for your company. It gets the right person to hit the ‘apply’ button. When writing the ad copy, stick to the rule of four.
The four sections for framing your ad copy
- Why us
- What you will do in the role
- Who you are
- How to join us
The four principles (the four As) for writing a compelling ad
- Audience: Your candidate is your customer. Who are you trying to appeal to and what will make them respond?
- Authentic: Be real and think about which words accurately describe your unique identity.
- Awesome: Be salesly on this hiring tool; blow your own trumpet.
- Ad clever: Get noticed to get traction. Use plain English, keywords and searchable terms, while avoiding acronyms, abbreviations and repetition.
What’s more, research has shown that 68% of candidates feel company culture is the most important factor in considering a role and video adverts attract candidates 2.5x more often than a written company overview (and is 2x more persuasive).
The Role Description
In comparison, the role description is longer and more detailed. Designed to hit both rational and emotional hooks, it should accurately describe what great looks like in the role, once the candidate has been hired. This includes their core accountabilities, how they are likely to spend their time, what they will be measured on and what they can contribute to and learn in their career.
Best deployed at the ‘engage’ stage of the hiring process, you should send out the role description to an interested candidate you believe has the potential, providing them with a roadmap to becoming a high impact hire. The role description should be written with the candidate’s perspective front and centre. The candidate may read the role description and self-select out of the process, but if this happens, count it as a blessing as you’ve just saved many hours and a lot of pain and expense.
The outline structure of a well-written role description looks like this:
- Who we are
- Why this is an amazing opportunity
- What you will do in the role
- What success looks like
- Who we are looking for
- What you need to be great at
- How you will add to the culture
Here’s what you need to include
Thank them for looking at the opportunity and provide contact details for the person they should call to discuss the role further.
Patience is rewarding
Taking time to produce job adverts, role descriptions and the hiring playbook can seem arduous, but this valuable preparation pays dividends when you are competing for the best talent.
Checklist: Before you press ‘go’, answer these questions
- Have we completed a scorecard and a separate role description, plus ad if required?
- Will our selected track record achievements (on the scorecard) give us accurate indicators that the candidate can achieve the objectives of the role?
- Are the role strengths function, level and growth stage specific? Are they the qualities that matter most in the next 12-18 months? Have we written these with fresh, laser focus on this hire, rather than copied from another scorecard?
- Have we highlighted the top must-haves and do they give us a multi-dimensional, 360 degree view of the candidate?
- When we select the Edge must-haves, have we chosen competencies which complement our current team, to make us more diverse and ‘stronger together’?
- Have we agreed and written the behaviours which show up in people who possess our values? Do we articulate how people who fit our values think, act and collaborate?
- Does each interviewer know the 3 competencies they will focus on in their interview? Does everyone know who the key voters are?
- Have we agreed who will take responsibility for being the candidate point person during the process and do they promise to ensure every candidate gets feedback?
- Do we all know that we must remember to ask each other for evidence. “Why is the candidate a good match”, rather than “do we like them”?
- Is everyone clear on process timing and deadlines?