How do I write an employment ad?

Learn the tips and tricks needed to write effective employment ads.

Tutorial

To write an effective employment ad, you must find the right balance between truthfulness about the position, and sales pitch to make the job sound attractive.

Too many employers over promise in their ad. For example, saying “Six Figure Potential” with respect to a sales job. Well, they could mean when you are in management three years down the road. But they still put that in the ad to attract candidates. The only problem is that they are attracting candidates with unrealistic expectations. Once in the interview process, the truth will come out and the candidate will likely decline. This over statement resulted in wasting the employer’s time and the candidate’s time.

You do, however, need to put in enough information about the job to make it sound appealing, and to give an accurate representation of the job responsibilities and the skills required to fulfill the responsibilities.

There will be a charge for a few additional lines of your employment ad. But look at it this way…what is the opportunity cost of conducting tons of useless interviews because your ad was so vague people have to come to an interview just to get a clue as to what your company does. That opportunity cost is likely much higher than the few extra dollars you’d spend to accurately represent the position in you ad.