The Importance of Reviewing Your Recruitment Adverts

This week, we’re looking at the importance of regularly reviewing your recruitment adverts on job boards and how to manage the quality, quantity and relevance of the applications you receive. Job board advertising isn’t just a numbers game, keep in mind the ultimate goal of any recruitment campaign: finding great applicants for your job roles. We’ve listed 5 steps below to help you achieve this goal:

1. Proofread before you publish

It is always advisable to proofread your advert before publishing. It’s not just about typos that make you look a little daft but some typos have a huge impact on your job coming up in searches, imagine spelling the title or location incorrectly – no one will find it!

2. Review your advert early in the process

Checking your recruitment campaign intermittently will allow you to spot any anomalies early. Is your advert performing well (or as expected) within the first 3 – 5 days? If not, why not? Bear in mind that the first week of a campaign is critical, it is when most people apply for a role as job boards list recruitment adverts in order of date so most recent jobs are listed on page 1 and as such are in front of more people.

3. Amending your advert depending on your views-to-applications

Going back to your campaign will allow you to identify and correct anything within the recruitment advert that may be affecting the number and quality of applications you receive. Some factors such as salary, location or hours of work may be unavoidable but try to focus on additional benefits that counteract these. For example, the starting salary is lower than your competitors but you offer a range of incentives, bonus schemes and 6 monthly salary reviews.

4. Benchmarking your vacancy

Job boards are a great tool for comparing your recruitment advert within your market as it keeps similar job roles and industries in one place. By returning to your campaign after a week, for example, you can see that X company has bought a featured job, or that Y isn’t paying market rate. It’s a good way to benchmark your role against others in the industry and thus identify your recruiting USPs or areas for improvement.

5. Review at 14 days

Reviewing your recruitment advert isn’t always just about attracting large numbers of applicants; sometimes it is about attracting fewer, more relevant applicants. For example, Administrator roles are often inundated with applications – many of whom are unsuitable. To keep your candidate pool manageable and to ensure applicant relevancy, go back to your advert after it has been live for 14 days. You could look at making it more specific by refining the amount of experience required for example. Remember that when attracting applicants that quality is more valuable than quantity – 5 suitable applicants are worth so much more than 30 irrelevant applications. The goal of any recruitment advert is to attract and hire top talent to your vacancies. That’s why it requires more care and attention than banging out a job advert, publishing it online and seeing what comes in 28 days later. To ensure relevancy and quality of applications, it is important to carry out steps 1-5 effectively. By doing so you will be in a position at the end of your campaign where you can shortlist and hire from a well-matched candidate pool, therefore you can confidently say that your recruitment adverts are successful. If you need any help with your recruitment advertising don’t forget that Flat Fee Recruiter offers the whole package from just £199 +vat. This includes a job board optimised advert, 30+ leading job boards, a dedicated Account Manager, regular campaign reviews and access to the application management system. Don’t hesitate to get in touch on 0113 3227243 or contact us if you have any enquiries. If you liked this, you may also like:

• All you need to know about job board advertising
• Selecting your perfect candidate
• How to proofread/write for online job boards