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 »
Posts by Rob Kelly
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 »
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 »
5 Things to Avoid in Your Job Titles
A job title is the first part of a job ad that a candidate sees. Its purpose is critical: to get the candidate to click through to read the entire job ad. Below are some common mistakes to avoid in your job titles: Note: This article is part of our ongoing series on job titles called: Job Titles: The… Read more »
Dell Inserts “Join Our Talent Community” Before Application on Job Descriptions
Some of you may worry that you’ll lose a candidate during your lengthy ATS apply process. Dell has a nice workaround to make sure it doesn’t completely lose the candidate. Here’s the candidate experience flow: 1. The first step is that the candidate clicks apply on Dell’s nice dynamic job description: 2. Dell then offers… Read more »
HR Tech Conference 2018 Recap: Most Valuable Tweets
The Human Resource Executive HR Technology Conference is consistently one of the biggest HR conferences of the year. Since there were so many insightful tweets we made a table of contents to make it more organized. Enjoy! Table of Contents Employee Experience & Engagement Candidate Experience Recruitment Marketing & Content HR Technology Women in HRTech… Read more »
How Long Should a Job Title Be?
I’m sometimes asked how long a job description title should be. Below are a few opinions from others I trust. Note: This article is part of our ongoing series called Job Titles: The Definitive Guide. 1 to 3 Words Job titles with 1 to 3 words had an apply rate twice as high as those with… Read more »
How to use Candidate “Commitment Theory” to Boost Engagement & Apply Rates
Entrepreneur Magazine once wrote about how the job descriptions my Ongig software created for our clients caused candidates to spend up to 5 minutes and 23 seconds viewing the ad (more than 6X the time spent on typical job ads at the time). At the heart of this high candidate engagement is what I call… Read more »
Caution: Are You Using the “Kitchen Sink”-Style EEO Statement?
Are you using an EEO statement like below? There are a few reasons that the above EEO statement is less effective at attracting candidates/diversity. It’s: Too long. At 64 words, it’s a tough read Not punchy (21 words per sentence) (8 to 13 would be better) More likely to offend (it’s tough to keep track… Read more »
Top 15 Problems TA Pros Have with Job Descriptions
I wrote recently about The Top 10 Problems TA Leaders Tell Me About. Job Descriptions was the #1 category. Note: Check out our free Job Descriptions Guide — it tells you everything we know about JDs, job ads and the like! And, for more tips on writing job descriptions, check out How to Write a Job Description — Best Practices… Read more »
