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How To Write The Perfect Ad For Hiring Staff
4
Tips
60%
OF KNOWLEDGE NEEDED TO WRITE GOOD ADS.
A
Skill Level
7 Minute
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Overview
Hiring staff is never easy. As you log onto LinkedIn or Indeed and find the same ad with the same title and descriptions, you’re left wondering: How can I stand out from the rest? This question can finally be squashed as you’ll unravel inside exactly how to stand out from the rest…
Benefits from reading this blog:
- Understand your audience better to make sure your ad stands out
- Exercises to apply the knowledge
- Examples of a good ad for inspiration
- Learn exactly how to qualify your candidates
Who is the blog for?
Anyone who has been searching far and wide, posting ad after ad, and still seeing time wasting candidates or people who just aren’t up to scratch. Even if you’ve had no problem finding staff in the past, it’s always useful to have this knowledge.
Today I will show you how to write the perfect ad when hiring staff. There are four sections we will cover, and those are:
Identifying your target personality & traits
Knowing what they respond well to
Compiling your knowledge into an ad
The vetting process
IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
You may think this is a very pointless task, as you already know who you want for your business. However, I’m sure you haven’t outlined the personality, what skills you want them to have, etc.
So that’s what we’re going to do first.
Let’s outline the traits and personalities you’re looking for. Answer these questions to start to gain a good understanding of what exactly you desire.
What do you want them to be good at? (IT, Finances, Legal, Nursing, Bricklaying, etc.)
Name 5-10 personality traits you would like the candidate to have.
Write 10 things you don’t want them to have (this will make sense later).
Is there a minimum requirement for experience?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you have now built an ideal profile of who you would actually like to bring onboard. Remember, the more you write under these questions, the easier it will be to complete the next 3 steps. 80% of your work should be done in this section.
Now it’s time to understand that we have to draw them in through our ad, whether that’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reed, or Indeed. Doing this has just become much easier because you’ve initially outlined the ideal persona you desire.
KNOWING WHAT THEY RESPOND WELL TO
So, now you have four questions answered in depth regarding who it is you would like to hire. Furthermore, this has also given you the checklist you need to stop time-wasting applicants from taking up space in your calendar.
Go back over your answers to the questions and write ANYTHING down that they would respond well to. It could be computers if they say they like IT, or mechanics if they say they like cars. Write anything and everything you could possibly think of that they would respond well to.
Spend a good 20 minutes minimum on this; just pour out everything that springs to mind, even if it sounds ridiculous.
You should now have a huge list of topics and incentives you can use inside your ad copy; this is going to really help you attract the correct people.
Now all you have to do is look at the list and figure out what things you could use and what things need adjusting and changing to suit your current situation (for example, if someone is into cars, you aren’t going to buy them one when they sign on).
Have a think and see what you come up with—you should have a few things you can use in order to attract more applicants for that profile of person.
WRITING THE ADVERT
Now you just treat this like any other ad (such as Google or Meta). Let’s run through each stage of the ad and what exactly needs to be included, along with an example…
Headline (with benefit / incentive)
Lead-in (the first 2 or 3 sentences of the ad must be super intruiging)
Requirements (getting the bad lead out of the way)
More benefits (keeping the reader intrigued)
Job Description (you should have enough interest now)
CTA (get them to take the next step)
You can test different formats, such as moving the description towards the start of the ad. But I advise going with this one to start with, as it sparks a lot of intrigue and qualifies the user early on without boring them.
Let me make an example ad for a Dentist.
Headline:
*GENERAL DENTISTS NEEDED* Free certificate funding, – Free courses & training
I’m calling out who I want from the start and following up with benefits that my ideal persona would want to hear. Furthermore, not many people are using incentives in their ad headlines, which is a good thing for you!
Lead-in
I know how painful it can be to fund courses and training on top of everything else that’s climbing in price. Which is why every general dentist who signs on with us gets ___ certificate funding and free courses and training.
Again, these incentives may not be true, but I’m using this as an example of something that they like/want. You want to elaborate on the headline, don’t give too much away, and always build even more intrigue!
Requirements:
This is probably the easiest section here, all you want to do is just outline everything you don’t want from this applicant (you did this in Section 1). If you’re still stuck, use this example below for inspiration…
Must have decent sales skills.
Willing to learn
Good at managing multiple tasks
Efficient with time
Must be tech-savvy
Etc
Etc
More Benefits
Now we’ve shown them the people we don’t want to apply for this job. It’s now time to see what else is in it for them, so give them some more benefits to feed off before we move onto the long job description.
58 Days Holiday a Year
£70,000/per year 40% above minimum wage
Opportunity for head dentist in the future
Etc
CTA
What’s the next step? Is it for them to give you their details in a small form? Do you have to send them a questionnaire to qualify them further?
Whatever your next step is, you need to make it absolutely clear what you want them to do. If you fail to do this, everything before this point has been useless, so please make sure you get this right to avoid poor ad performance.
Use a benefit in the CTA if possible, for example:
Claim your free courses & join the team here.
Leads with a benefit again and also reminds them that they’re actually applying for a job if they get too caught up in your benefits.
THE VETTING PROCESS
Every employer will have their own way of vetting patients as well as candidates for a job position. Further, it’s up to you how you do that; however, I want you to become aware of the questions you’re asking.
So, before the ad writing, I got you to write some things you wouldn’t want from this candidate, which we’ve already used. We now need to use the answers and turn them into questions—you need to think, How can I provoke these answers without directly asking them?
So if you wanted to figure out if they have been asked to use their leadership skills or if you just wanted to know if they’ve done leadership tasks before, you would probably ask something like this:
Have you managed multiple people before?
Most of the time, the answer to this question will be NO. The better question to ask is:
Have you managed multiple tasks at once? If so, how did you do it?
This second question draws out the leadership SKILL not the EXPERIENCE, which is what you’re after anyway. Usually, if they can manage tasks and organise them in a good way, it means they have good leadership skills.
Everyone’s vetting process is different; some have a more complex one, and some don’t really have one at all. On the other hand, it’s not my place to say HOW you should do it because what works for you depends on your own skills and schedule.
Now I want you to write your own ad using everything you have learned in this blog post. Try to create an ad that will really stand out from the crowd.
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