A quick copywriting lesson…
One of the things I’ve learnt from doing several hundred coaching sessions with recruiters over the past 3 years is they don’t do enough with their job features.
In particular, those job features that might be the thing that attracts someone to apply.
Here’s an example:
“This role has great career options.”
Lot’s of job posts say something like this. Is it true? And who’s deciding that it’s “great”?
If it is true, get the data. You can learn how to get better at doing that here.
Let’s assume it is true and that 3 of the previous 5 people who did this job have since been promoted.
Then your sentence can become:
“60% of the people who’ve previously done this job have been promoted.”
There’s nothing clever about this sentence, it’s just stating a fact. A fact that lends credibility to the “great career options” line.
Also, the benefit is implicit. It’s implying the reader could also get promoted.
To make sure the message really lands, you could make it explicit by adding another sentence like:
“Fancy increasing those odds to 66.67%?”
This could work particularly well for a job that involved good number skills.
So, to put it all together:
“60% of the people who’ve previously done this job have been promoted. “Fancy increasing those odds to 66.67%?”
The chances are that by the time you’ve finished your job ad, these two sentences will be the strongest.
Then you have to make sure that everyone who looks at the job ad will read them.
That means NOT putting them in the middle of the 3rd paragraph from the bottom.
It means putting them right at the top of the body copy. Because everybody who looks at any piece of content will reading the opening sentences. It’s how people decide if they’re going to keep reading, skim read or click away.
Creativity isn’t a special gift. It’s about thinking about things in the right way. Every single good writer I’ve ever known has been a good thinker. Not one exception.
You can learn how to build your thinking muscle here.
If you would like more thoughts and musings on recruitment, you might want to download Mitch’s free book “On Recruitment”.
