Writing the perfect job description is an art which very few recruiters know. The fact is, productive employees are the essence and lifeblood of a company. They invest their time, talents, skill sets to help and keep the company’s success graph up. So, hiring ideal and great employees is basically the fuel which keeps a company going and so that makes the hiring process one of the most important parts of owning a business.

Before you start hiring, it is critical to have a written job description in place for each individual position. And as a matter of fact, first impressions always are extremely crucial. In the case of hiring, job descriptions are the very first exposure and impression that eligible and potential future candidates get for your company.

Many companies often end up writing monotonous job descriptions which are generic and reads like all the others, or even worse, leave out the most important information. A perfect job description should not only outline the specifications and responsibilities of the candidates, but it should also provide a glimpse into your company and the features of the position. So, writing perfect job descriptions is extremely important.

Today, we are going to tell you how a great job description can help you get more qualified candidates for your ambitious company. We will list all the effective ways that should be adapted to write an impactful job description to hire great candidates.

1. Choose a Clear and Simple Job Title:

Writing a job description starts with a job title that is captivating. Creative, witty or fun job titles may seem cool and you may think that they represent the company’s personality, but in reality, they just make job seeker’s eyes roll.  You sure need a job title that will have its reader’s attention immediately but using dramatic and unrealistic words just doesn’t work.

The title of your job description must be extremely specific about the job and its responsibilities and should be crystal clear in the most simple way possible. Creativity indeed should be incorporated but keeping simplicity and clarity as a priority.

2. Keep it Short:

When potential candidates visit the world of internet for a job hunt, they tend to just skim through the job description. So if a job description includes jargon and confusing phrases, it can definitely turn them off. Lengthy, overly complicated and difficult to read job descriptions simply pushes great candidates away. This is not at all desirable and we always want candidates to pay close attention to what they’re going through.

So, to grab the attention of candidates, the job description needs to be short and simple. Using short paragraphs, preferably bullet points, and headers help candidates to brush through the entire description quickly and have conclusions. This improves the quality of your candidates. Some Applicant Tracking Systems provide quality job templates for almost every jobs.

3. Use of Strategic Keywords:

Everyone is aware that the world we have made for ourselves is majorly dependent upon the internet for almost each of its aspects. So a job description is to be made searchable to survive amidst the ocean of various other job descriptions. To do this, using strategic keywords is extremely important while writing a job description.

If these are not used, the candidates will probably end up landing on the job description of other companies who may be your rival and hence you’ll end up losing a great hire. So to avoid this disaster, take a good look at your competitor’s job description and make yours better. Or various online tools can be used to get a bunch of keywords to decorate your description. 

4. Think About the Candidate’s Point of View:

The person you are about to hire is eventually going to become a part of your team. They are about to invest their time and use their skill set to build a better and planned out a productive working environment.

Considering their investments, it becomes very important for recruiters to decide on the profile of the potential candidate or a perfect recruit beforehand designing a job description. That does not mean that one has to be rigid while doing so, but having a rough idea is great. This can be done effectively by visualizing the candidate you would like to recruit and accordingly build the job description as you yourself would want to read it. 

5. Be Specific and Concise with the Duties and Responsibilities:

With choosing the specific keywords and a well-designed structure, now we come to the main part of the job description, that is describing the job. Half of the burden of effectively describing the job is reduced with a good job title but still, it’s not enough.

Usually, job seekers expect a long boring list of job duties and they tend to read half way and move on from such descriptions and so the best candidates may even leave the page already. To avoid this, you need to step away from the crowd a little bit and make your job description short and concise, yet fun and exciting to read.
Ideally, the length of your job description should be about four to five sentences explaining the job duties in as fewer words as possible. In this way, many people would want to work with such an efficient and resourceful organization. 

6. Sell Your Company’s Open Position:

If the candidates are currently unemployed, then they will obviously be looking for a great opportunity for employment and choose your job over others. And if a candidate is already working in an organic, he will be needing compelling reasons to leave their current workplace. In either way, you need to sell your job to the potential employees.

The brand personality of your company should appear in each and everything you do, including your job description. Your job description should be infused with the tone-of-voice of your brand to stand out from your competitors.

Also, to attract great talents your company’s career page plays a crucial role. Career pages are simply a gateway to the world of potential candidates. Tweak your career page and make it look professional to get more qualified candidates and build a powerful employer brand.

7. Speak Through Your Job Description:

Last but not least, give a human touch to your job description. Nobody wants to work for robots and that’s exactly the message you will be giving out to your potential candidates if the job description is over formal or rude in some way.

So make sure the job description has a pinch of the voice and personality of your company and the tone in which the job description is designed is compatible to the culture, moral and ethics of your company. 

Hope this helps you create quality job descriptions.

Originally published on: https://recooty.com/blog/how-to-write-the-perfect-job-description/