If you are hiring more than 50 people per year, you can benefit in a big way from using Ongig’s Text Analyzer for your job descriptions. Let me give you 5 examples: 1) To See How Your Job Descriptions Compare to Peers A good text analyzer compares your job descriptions to the industry on things… Read more »
Posts by Rob Kelly
5 Ways to Avoid “Crapplications”
My head of TA friend Marnie (name changed to protect her identity) told me this before agreeing to do business together: “Rob, I want more pipeline, but the last thing I want are more “crapplications”. By “crapplications”, Marnie meant that she didn’t want crappy (low-quality) applications. Crappy applications are often worse than having no applications at… Read more »
5 Creative Things to Add to Your Job Ads
If your job ad doesn’t stand out, neither will you. Here are 5 ideas you might not have thought of. Enjoy. 1. Employer Branding Tab A lot of employers talk about their employer brand. Dutch clothing manufacturer Hunkemöller has actually written it into their job descriptions. Candidates click the middle tab (see below) and get a… Read more »
8 Examples of Unconscious Bias in Job Descriptions (2020 Update)
The examples of unconscious bias in job descriptions are rampant. I’ve included 8 of them below. The bad news: your job postings likely have some bias. The good news: it’s easy to fix. You can eliminate unconscious bias in job descriptions manually (see tips below) or through a solution like Ongig’s Text Analyzer software. What is… Read more »
“Needs”-Based Job Ads Outperform “Skills” Job Ads by 14%
I love job ads. I just found a study on them that I feel silly for missing. Sorry! It shows that speaking to a candidate’s needs in a job ad gets you 13.6% more applicants than focusing on the skills your job requires. In other words, focusing on THEM beats focusing on YOU. Not only… Read more »
10 of the Best Job Descriptions in 2018
Note: Here is the updated post for best job descriptions of 2019. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————— Here’s a shout-out to 10 of the best job descriptions for 2018. They grab the candidate’s attention and engage them. Note: Check out our free Job Descriptions Guide — it tells you everything we know about JDs, job ads and the like! For… Read more »
Ongig’s Free Job Descriptions Guide
I’ve written a lot about job descriptions. But I figure you might want one single place to quickly find something you need on anything related to JDs, job ads, job postings et al. So please enjoy this new Free Job Descriptions Guide. When I say it’s “free”, I mean it. It’s not gated. You don’t… Read more »
How to Avoid Hiring a Job Hopper
The job hopper. It’s a sore subject but well worth talking about. Especially about how to avoid them. After all, job hoppers can make or break a team or company. What is a Job Hopper? Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri should know. He and his co-founder David Duffield are so into hiring that they interviewed the… Read more »
10 Company Career Page Ideas To Consider in 2018
Here are some company career page ideas that stood out to me recently. Enjoy! 1. Career Site-Wide Chatbot A timely (if not immediate) response is key to keeping candidates engaged on your company career site. If a candidate is asking questions that means they’re interested. You don’t have to send them to a contact us… Read more »
A List of 20 Awesome Employee Benefits
Did you know that 608,000+ people per month do a Google search on this type of phrase: “[name of employer] benefits”? (Assurant, Walmart, Costco are the top 3 by the way). Candidates want to know the list of perks and benefits that big (and small) companies are offering. Did you also know that each benefit… Read more »
7 Reasons “Why” Candidates Should Work for You
The most important question a candidate has is: “Why should I work for you?” The operative word is “why”. That’s why it’s surprising that the 4 most common sections of a job description focus almost entirely on answering the question “What?” Examples: Overview/Summary of Job — Most JDs use this to say “what” the position… Read more »
5 Uses of Chatbots in Recruiting
Chatbots is a new tech concept getting a lot of attention in recruiting and beyond. I don’t think that chatbots is the Holy Grail for any one thing in recruiting. I believe that Chatbots will instead become a ubiquitous interface for different parts of the recruiting process. I’ve looked at a few uses of chatbots and… Read more »
A List of Offensive (Exclusionary) Words Used in Job Descriptions [2020 Update]
There are quite a few words and phrases that can crush your job descriptions. Use just one of these phrases and you could lose 50%+ of your candidates. These words are considered “exclusionary” by some and just plain offensive words by others. Exclusionary words in job descriptions are so rampant, that Ongig’s Text Analyzer now flags… Read more »
Who’s Better at Recruiting: The Introvert or Extrovert?
The head of talent acquisition at a cloud software enterprise asked me the other day: “Who’s better at recruiting: the introvert or the extrovert?” Traditionally, most people have considered extroverts to be the best salespeople. And since recruiting is often just sales by a different name (especially in a candidate’s market), conventional wisdom is that extroverts… Read more »
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Candidate Needs (for Job Ads)
I’m reading a great new book about winning political fights — it’s called The Fixer by Bradley Tusk. It reminded me of a powerful marketing tool (“self-interest”) to win over candidates through job ads. What’s a job candidate’s top self-interest? You could do worse than to use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’ve transposed the normal Maslow… Read more »