It’s time to hire for another vacancy at your organization. But, this time you need to make sure the process is shorter, smoother, and more effective. There might be a few things that you haven’t thought of, or applied in practice, that will make hiring for your vacancy easier. If we were to cover the obvious, you’d know what the vacancy is in terms of job tasks, title, who the candidate will be reporting to, and the required skill set. If you didn’t already know this, writing the job description is the first and most crucial step to hiring. That’s why we, at Bayt.com, are giving you the six steps to improve your job descriptions instantly!
1. Plan Your Content
If you’ve used job description templates for your previous vacancies, you’ll know that they’re a helpful tool in terms of guiding you through the process. But, even if you haven’t used templates before, we’re here to tell you that you can’t fully recycle them for writing the actual content of your job description. These templates will give you an idea of the different sections of a job description, but won’t tell you how and what you should write in your specific case.
Before putting pen on paper, you’ll need to know certain things about your vacancy in the utmost detail. This will include things such as the job title, the position in the company (ie. department, division, etc.), who the candidate will be reporting to, what their daily tasks are, the skill set required to carry out the job effectively, and any other prerequisites (ie. level of education, language proficiency, etc.). Once you’ve got all of those items covered and you’re fully aware of all the requirements for the vacancy, you can begin drafting your job description.
2. Create Your Headline
You’ll need to begin writing the headline and making sure it attracts the type of talent that your vacancy requires. The headline of the vacancy will be the first words a candidate reads once they come across your job announcement. Your headline needs to include keywords for the position you’re hiring for (ie. Senior Marketing Manager or Junior iOS Developer). You can also include other details in your headline such as the location of the vacancy or the years of experience. This will filter out candidates who don’t live in the same location or don’t have the required experience.
3. Craft the Description
Your job description is the text that will immediately follow your headline. One of the most important practices is to make sure the content of your job description matches the headline. Let’s put things in a clearer perspective. Sometimes, different positions can have similar job descriptions due to overlapping tasks and duties.That’s why it’s crucial to make sure your job description is detailed and comprehensive and relevant to the headline so that there’s no room for confusion in the candidate's’ mind. Unclear job descriptions will result in irrelevant candidates applying for your vacancy, which will slow down your hiring process and make it unnecessarily time consuming. This is why it’s very important that whatever keywords you include in your headline (ie. title, years of experience, etc.) are clearly stated in the job description as well in order to avoid any possible confusion that can occur when candidates apply for your vacancy.
4. Ensure It's Attractive
To make the process shorter and easier, a clear and concise job description that includes daily tasks, responsibilities, duties, and the skill set needed is more likely to get the right talent to apply. But that may not be enough. To make sure that your job description is actually attractive, try to see what tone it sets and how it would be read from a job seeker's perspective. If you’re only excited by the headline but then feel bored or overwhelmed when you’re reading through the description, then you’ll need to make a few changes.
To put it simply, your job description MUST be exciting. Writing bullet points with tasks and responsibilities is a must, but they can often be tedious. Try writing the tasks, responsibilities, and duties in a day-to-day perspective. Let the candidate know what their day will be like from start to finish. This way, they can start painting a picture of what a normal working day would be like at your organization while simultaneously reading through their tasks, duties, and responsibilities. Excite the reader about how their career will progress and how they will be an integral part of the company by taking on this position.
5. Include Benefits and Company Overview
Aside from the important duties and tasks your candidate needs to be carrying out, you need to let them know what they’ll be getting in return. One way to do this is to include benefits that are offered by the position. This can include health insurance, housing, transportation, bonuses, incentives, etc. This is a sure way of getting candidates interested in your vacancy. Another essential step is to talk about your company. Let the candidates know what industry your business operates in, what your mission, vision, and values are, and also educate them about your company’s history. By giving them a summary of your organization, they’ll be better prepared when applying because they’ll know the type of environment they’ll be getting into.
6. Decide Where to Announce Your Vacancy
After figuring out what needs to go in your job description, you’ll need to decide on how you’re going to announce your vacancy to potential candidates. Bayt.com is a great place to post your jobs and make them available to millions of potential candidates. Not only that, but Bayt.com also offers several filtration tools so that when you receive CVs into your employer inbox, they’ll be exactly what you’re looking for! This will greatly improve the overall time it takes you to announce your vacancy, shortlist candidates, and begin interviewing them.
In conclusion, job descriptions are more important than you think. Crafting a good job description takes some time, even if you are using a template. If you’d like to learn more about job descriptions, you can take a look at our free resources page where you’ll find several job descriptions for different positions.
