Recruiting & Hiring Blog for HR Professionals

We know you want to find the best person for the job to fill your open position. But to do that, you have to make sure you are attracting (and not repelling) the best applicants. Mistakes at the start of the hiring process can leave you with a dismal applicant pool, and ultimately a bad hire for your team. So stop scaring off the best candidates by avoiding these 5 common mistakes:

Job seekers from around the word visit major job sites every day looking for available positions. In fact, an estimated 140 million people visited indeed.com last month looking for employment opportunities.

But, if there’s supposedly such a large pool of potential applicants, you may be asking yourself: “Why is no one clicking on MY job posting?”

The answer is simple – you need to update your job title and description.

Another job requisition granted, another job description to be written. Next up is getting all those important job details down on paper. But where do you begin? Rather than sit there and suffer from a severe case of writer’s block, we think you could use a head start. 

To make writing a job posting easy as pie, use this free printable template as your guide. Here’s a sneak peek at the writing tips you get with our handy template:

For many job seekers, your company’s job description is the first thing they read to learn about a new role within your organization. Unfortunately, many job postings fail to include three critical things:

1. A description of how the role supports business objectives
2. Realistic expectations for experience and qualifications
3. Insight into the company culture and work environment

HR pros and industry thought leaders will often wax poetic about the importance of job descriptions and how writing a killer job description is an essential first step in the recruiting process. But if you work in the every-day trenches of the HR world, finding the time to continuously develop and refine your job descriptions may seem like an impossible task.

We know that you are stressed. Often overworked and underappreciated. And that adding yet another thing to your never ending to-do list does not sound ideal. But take a moment to consider the power of a great job description and how it can improve your overall hiring process.

Do you think individuals who apply for jobs at your organization are highly satisfied with their experiences as candidates? The odds suggest the answer is probably “no.” A recent survey found just 5 percent of applicants rate their experiences as excellent.

We’ve all been there before—staring blankly at a computer screen as we try to craft the most compelling job description. Rest assured, you’re not the only one who’s suffered from writer’s block. Even the world’s greatest writers needed a jolt of inspiration from time to time, and the same can be said for writing a great job posting.

Here are nine of our favorite job description writing tips from the literary legends themselves.