JOB ADVERTISEMENT

A type of advertisement for a job, position or form of employment created, designed and used to
be placed in a newspaper, website, recruitment agency, recruitment website, organization website, social
media network or other type of suitable form of advertising detailing the job description, job person
specification, job location with postcode, job salary or hourly pay rate details, advertisement posting date,
advertisement closing date, job interview date and intended job or employment start date and other vital
details to empower a job applicant or candidate to make an informed choice when choosing to apply for
the job, employment or position.

Job advertisements are an important part of a recruitment process so its important the vital details
are included to ensure the company receives applicants from skilled and potential candidates and the
applicant has all the detail it needs to self-assess their ability, experience and skills to perform the role.

A job advertisement is a paid announcement in a newspaper or other medium about a job

vacancy. The advertisement is part of a wider recruitment process designed to attract suitable qualified
candidates for a job. Job advertisements are created by human resource professionals or external
recruitment agencies working with the managers of departments who need to recruit staff.

PURPOSE OF JOB ADVERTISEMENT

The main purpose of a job advertisement is to attract suitable candidates for the position. An
effective ad reduces the time companies spend interviewing unsuitable candidates by providing a precise
statement of job requirements. A job advertisement also plays a secondary role by helping to position the
company as a growing organization staffed by quality people. This can help create awareness and interest
from qualified people who might be attracted to the company for future vacancies.

Corporations, educational institutions and organizations occasionally run job advertisements to

attract potential workers. Employees retire, leave companies to take other jobs and even quit their jobs to
pursue business ventures. Consequently, organizations need to apprise the public of new openings. There
are many different types of job advertisements, including newspaper and online advertisements. However,
a job advertisement must be designed specifically for a certain purpose to be effective.

Significance

The main purpose of a job advertisement is to attract the right candidate for an open position.
Companies spend a lot of money to place ads, sorting through resumes, selecting candidates for an
interview, then running reference checks, and possibly testing for drugs. Some job candidates have to be
flown in for an interview. The company may also need to pay her living expenses if she is the candidate
chosen for the open position. Hence, it is essential to place a job advertisement that appeals to the person
with the right education and experience, according to LatPro.com.
 Situations

Different situations may slightly alter the purpose of a job advertisement. If a company is trying
to replace an existing employee, it may run a blind advertisement, which does not mention the company
name. That way, the company can pursue the application process without the employee knowing about it.
Sometimes, a company may run a job advertisement just to get a feel for the available talent, even if it has
no job opening.

Features

An effective job advertisement starts with the heading, which is used to attract interest among job
seekers. The heading should either identify the type of worker a company is seeking, or mention a
specific position title. Subsequently, the body of the advertisement should include the level of experience
required for the job in years, and the minimum education requirements. The job advertisement, in varying
degrees, should also summarize some of the duties for the job.

Identification

Another purpose of a job advertisement is to show social responsibility. Some companies may
have tax incentives to hire workers in a certain area. These tax incentives may also stem from certain
federal programs, according to the article "Tax Credit for Hiring New Employees" at
MacoAssociates.com. Hence, it likely behooves the company to place a large job advertisement, featuring
all of the available openings. Later on, the company may want to publicize the number of people it hired
as proof that it upheld its end of the bargain.

Considerations

Some job advertisements are designed to appeal to money-motivated individuals. This is

particularly true of commission sales jobs. The company may mention that sales reps will work on
commission, but also include the earning potential of the job. "Earn Commissions Up To $120,000 Per
Year" may be a good heading for a company to run for a commission sales rep, provided the statement is
true.

TYPES OF JOB ADVERTISEMENTS

Job adverts, just like product and service adverts, also come in different shapes and sizes, in
order to attract more potential applicants. There are two main forms or types of job advertisements:

Display advertisements

These advertisements are designed to be displayed and to grab attention at first glance. It makes
use of bold headlines and a generous amount of photographs, illustrations and other graphics. Thus, they
are usually prepared with the help of graphic ad designers.

In display advertisements, size matters, and so does creativity. The adverts can come in various
sizes, and the general principle is the bigger, the better. Of course, those with limited budget may settle
for adverts the size of a small box, while those with more money to spend may pay for job adverts that
will be run on full pages of newspapers or magazines. Those who have even more money to spend could
even run their advert in two pages, making it a full-spread job advertisement.

Classified advertisements

Compared to display advertisements, classified advertisements are simpler and much more
straightforward. Think of an entire page filled with job advertisements that, at first glance, essentially
look the same. There is a general heading indicating a job category, and under that category will be the
job advertisements, which are usually composed of a heading and text relevant to the job being
advertised.

There is often no room for the company advertising the open position to exercise its creativity in
this type of advertisement, and neither does it have the freedom to style it in a way that is sure to grab the
attention of jobseekers perusing that page.

BASIC ELEMENTS OF JOB ADVERTS

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, a job advert is effective if it reflects the
role that the selected applicant or candidate will perform once he is hired by the company, as well as the
expectations of the employer regarding his performance.

Various literature and sources have quoted the basic elements of a successful job posting or
advertisement, listing varying numbers of these elements. Some compressed the basic elements into five,
namely:

1. Information about the job opening or vacancy: This includes the duties and responsibilities of
the position or job opening that the organization aims to fill.

2. Candidate profile: This is an outline of the education, experience, skills and other requirements
of the open position.

3. Company information: This provides potential applicants an insight into the working
environment.

4. Employee benefits: This includes the salary range and other benefits that the employee who will
be chosen for the job will receive once he is employed and performing.

5. The application process: This basically provides instruction on how the applicants will apply,
and where they will send in their application letters and resumes.

From the above lists, we can safely say that the basic elements of a job advertisement include the Job
Title or Designation, the Job Description, the Company Description, and a Call to Action. We will go into
the elements in more detail once we discuss the key points in writing a successful job advertisement.
WRITING THE JOB ADVERTISEMENT

Factors to Consider Before Writing a Job Advertisement

Your ideal candidate for the job: Before you can write a job description, and the job
advertisement, as a whole, you should first know exactly who your ideal candidate for the open
position will be. Imagine the type of person, employee or worker that you want performing the
tasks that the job entails. By putting yourself in their shoes, you will have an idea what they are
looking for in a new working or employment opportunity.

The platform for advertising: Where will you post your job and recruitment advertisements?
Your medium or choice of advertising platform may have an effect on how you will craft your
advert, especially with respect to its styling and design, as well as what you will write in the Call
to Action section, where you will instruct interested applicants to apply for the job opening.

Your budget for job and recruitment advertising: Publication of job advertisement in
newspapers and magazines generally cost money, and the same goes for advertising on television
and radio. Knowing how much you are willing and able to spend on the advertising will
determine how long the advert will be. If you have allotted more than sufficient money to be able
to afford a half-page advertisement, then you will have more leeway on the amount of content
you will include in the advert. If budget is tight, and you are given only a small box to fit the
advert in, then you have to be more circumspect when choosing what to put in there.

Key Points in Writing the Job Advert

In noting the key points that one must remember when writing a successful job and recruitment
advertisement, we will follow the seven basic elements as enumerated by the Wentworth Institute of
Technology.

1. Job Title, or the headline

This will serve as the Heading or Title of the entire job advertisement. There are some cases
where a sub-headline is used, mainly to provide a brief description of the job, as in the case of jobs of a
contractual nature, or for a limited period of time only.

Use a job title that is industry standard. It should make use of descriptive words that anyone
will immediately recognize and understand the moment they lay their eyes on it. While sticking to
industry standard job titles, it should also be specific, and one way to do that is to target specific
groups based on the area or field of study that the job belongs to. For example, a pharmaceutical
company may use words such as Medical and Researcher in its heading. A healthcare facility
may come up with a job advertisement with a title containing words such as Nursing,
Healthcare, Caregiver, and others. This will make it easier, say, for a jobseeker with a
nursing background to spot the advertisement even when it is listed alongside other similarly-
formatted job adverts in a full Classified Ads or Job Wanted page.
 Job title must be clear and does not mislead anyone who reads it. You are looking for a
Software Engineer? Then say so. Writing An engineer skilled in software development implies
that you welcome applications by anyone with a background in any engineering field, as long as
he has knowledge on software development.

Job title must be catchy and appealing. This does not mean that you should include a
catchphrase in there to grab the attention of jobseekers. It simply means that it must contain
keywords that can potentially attract suitable candidates. For example, a job title that says Clerk
is not as catchy as, say, Accounting Clerk or Administrative Assistant.

Keep it simple. Avoid using jargon words. You may also be inclined to use flowery words and
adjectives to make it more appealing, but it may only end up becoming ambiguous and off-
putting when the reader of the job advert looks at the full context. Remember the goal of writing a
job title, which is to tell the readers exactly what the job is. You have more chances to elaborate
on that later on in the body of the job advert.

2. The Hook

Usually, this is the first paragraph of the job advertisement, and it serves as a lure or a lead that
answers the following questions:

Why would a jobseeker be interested to perform this specific job?

What is so unique about this job, setting it apart from other similar jobs? Basically, the hook is
where you will try to attract the jobseeker, or anyone reading the job advertisement, even
someone who already has a job. Some of the hooks or attractions that you can probably include in
the first paragraph of the job advertisement are:

One or two specific functions of the job that utilizes the primary skill or expertise of the
individual. Or it could be anything that will grab the attention and interest of the candidate, and
motivate him to respond to the job advertisement. For example, you could write the hook as a
sentence, like Are you creative and innovative? Be our next Junior Designer! Or they could be
simple phrases, such as seasoned and creative, great career opportunity, or even fun working
environment.

Benefits that will be received by the employee who will perform the job, on top of his salary.
Examples are subsidies for clothing and housing, and also transportation and representation
allowances.

Exciting programs and projects that the company is currently working on or will work on in the
future where the job and the jobholder will play an active part in.

3. Company information

This is the second paragraph of the job advertisement, and it covers information about the
company, including its offerings (products and services) and some more general information that provides
a glimpse of the corporate and working culture within the organization.
 Keep it short. Do not fall into the trap of giving a compressed history of the company. It will be
up to the applicants to do further research on the company. Just give them the bare bones, so to
speak, to introduce the company to them. You may speak briefly about its founding, but focus on
the companys current position or standing in the industry. You want to paint your company to be
an attractive prospect as an employer, one that employees would be able to grow in and with.

Indicate the services or products of the company. Why is this important, you ask? It is possible
that the jobseeker may have never heard of the company, but once he reads the company
information and learns its products, it may turn out that he has been a long-term user or consumer
of that brand of product or service.

Highlight any successes or recent accomplishments of the company. Again, this will provide
an insight on the companys potential for growth. The top candidates are most certainly going to
look for employment in companies that are relevant in the industry, and you have to clearly
demonstrate that in your job advertisement.

Include any information about the working environment and the overall atmosphere in the
workplace, since many applicants are also curious about the company or organizational culture
that they will be applying to. It is common sense, really: people want to work in a place where
they can enjoy their work, and not be worked to the bone like slaves.

Include a link to the company website, if any, or other sources where the jobseeker may find
more information about the company, in support of the short introduction that you just made in
the advert.

We come to one issue where you may rethink including the company information in your job
advertisement: that is if the company does not want to announce to all and sundry that it is recruiting or
hiring. It may be because it is company policy, or it may be because it does not want the competition to
catch wind of its recruitment actions.

If this is the case, you may opt not to reveal the name of the company. However, you should still
include a snippet in there about the type of business that the company is involved in, or the industry it
belongs to, such as a pharmaceutical company or a local nursing facility. Not mentioning anything
about is bound to cause more questions than answers and, most likely, low applicant turnout.

4. Skills, experience and education

These are the requirements of the job, meaning that the person who will perform the job must
have these skills, experience and education on his first day on the job.

Be clear, specific and concise. Upon reading this section of the job advert, the potential applicant
should be able to immediately conclude whether they are qualified for the position or not.

Choose the essential or critical skills, instead of listing ALL the skills that you want the person
to have. Keeping the required list short will accomplish the task of attracting jobseekers, instead
of boring them and, worse, even overwhelming them to the point that they will be discouraged to
apply for the job. Similarly, you have to identify every detail about the experience that you want
 the candidates to have. If you are also looking for specific certifications and accreditations, such
as a professional certification or license, spell that out in the job advertisement.

Make a clear distinction between requirements and additional qualifications.You must

distinguish the must-have qualifications and skills from the other qualifications and skills that
are nice to have, but not really strictly needed in the applicant. For instance, you may create
two separate categories for the skills, one for the required skills and the desired skills, which are
appropriately described as desired or preferred, but not required. This will encourage more
applicants to apply because, even if they do not have those desired skills, they are not strictly
required, which means that their application may still have a chance. This is in direct contrast
when you list down all the skills as required (or make no differentiation or qualification),
resulting in less applications received by the company.

In many cases, employers also specify some preferences or special criteria that the applicants
must be able to meet in order to qualify. This is one of the ways that hiring managers can
eliminate applicants that are unqualified, or fall short of their expectations. For example, a job
advert for a project manager or project team leader may ask applicants to include a project
proposal along with their application letters and resumes, in order to be given a job interview.
This requirement should also be clearly stated in the job advertisement.

Avoid listing personality traits since, technically, these are not skills. Personality traits such as
proactive, outgoing, and with pleasing personality are not measurable, and are even
subjective. It is easy for applicants to convince themselves that they have these personality traits,
for the simple reason that they want to apply for that job. Some may resort to imitating these
behaviors and pretending to have them when everything else says otherwise. Listing items that
are considered to be rhetorical is also not recommended. Examples are hardworking and with
strong work ethic. It is a given that the employer would want to hire workers who have these
traits, so it would not make sense to include them in the job advert. You may only end up making
the advert unnecessarily long, taking up space that you can use for other, more important content.

5. Responsibilities of the position

This is where you will indicate the tasks, activities, duties and responsibilities that the future
jobholder will perform on a regular basis. The purpose of this is to clearly state the purpose of the job, and
provide a glimpse of its relationship to the other positions within the organization or company.

List down the major responsibilities. Do not include all the tasks that will be performed by the
employee, because you may end up with a job advert that is more than two pages long. If there
are a lot of responsibilities, select three to five of the major ones, or those that take up a large bulk
of the time of the jobholder.

Be specific about the role of the would-be employee, especially with regards to his skills and
experience, and even educational background. This is so that the advertisement will discourage
those who are not qualified, or who do not meet the minimum requirements, from applying for
the open position.
 Start the responsibilities and duties with action words. Action words provide more impact and
give more weight to the actual functions of the job. Updates ledgers and inventory records
certainly comes across as having more impact than stating it as maintenance of ledgers and
inventory records. Preparation of letters and communications sounds a bit vague when
compared to, say, writes letters and communications. Use action verbs that directly describe the
action that will be performed by the jobholder.

6. Compensation and Benefits

There are instances when companies do not include any information regarding compensation.
Which should not be the case. As early as the job advertisement, the elephant in the room must be
addressed because lets face it a very large part of the reason why people look for jobs is the pay.
They want jobs with handsome pays, or where they will receive pay that is commensurate to the work that
they are expected to put in.

Indicate that money comes with the employment opportunity. For many, this may seem like a
foregone conclusion, but it is still important to state that fact. There are several ways to go about
this, and some of the most popular and commonly used phrases are with competitive pay and
compensation commensurate with skills and experience.

Again, be specific. You may not be able (or are unwilling to) state the exact salary or
compensation that the eventual jobholder will receive once he gets the job, but what you can do is
put in a salary range or average instead. In fact, a range is more recommended than stating the
monthly or annual rate up front, because it means that there is room for increases or income
growth as the employee stays longer in the job or performs better. Another advantage of putting
in a salary range is that you will eliminate the risks of entertaining applicants who want to be paid
more than what you are offering for the job. Naturally, the moment that a jobseeker with high
expectations with respect to a salary find that the range stated in the advert is not what he had in
mind, he will move on to other advertisements.

Provide a list of benefits that will be offered along with the job. By breaking down the
benefits, you will be able to attract the potential applicants further. Of course, this does not mean
that you should include all benefits, including free lunches on Wednesdays or carpooling
privileges. Select the benefits that will appeal more to your candidates, such as retirement
benefits, health and medicare insurance, transportation allowances, and other subsidies.

7. Call to action

At the end of the job advertisement, you are now going to tell the prospective applicant what to
do in order to apply for the job.

Shape it in the form of a direct message to the reader. You are talking directly to him, enticing
him to apply for the job, and telling him exactly how to go about it.

Provide a clear outline of the next steps that the applicant needs to take. Make sure the
following are addressed:
 o How to apply for the open position, whether you accept online applications, actual
physical submission of documents, or submission of application via email.

o Where to direct their applications (e.g. mailing address, email address, or the actual
address of the place where applicants may personally submit their application letters and
documents, and contact numbers)

o What documents to submit aside from, of course, their application letters and resumes

o The inclusive dates of acceptance of application, putting emphasis on any deadline of

submission

Keep the application process as simple as you can. Do not inundate them with a lot of steps to
follow in order for them to be able to get their resumes to you. By keeping it straightforward and
simple, more candidates will apply, and you will also have greater chances of attracting the
stronger ones.

You will notice in the above points that there is one underlying principle that must be followed by
anyone preparing a job advertisement, and that is to be specific. Be specific when writing the job title,
when listing the required skills and qualifications, when providing information about the company, the
job, and the compensation and benefits.

EXAMPLE OF AN EFFECTIVE JOB ADVERTISEMENT

Display advertisements
 Classified advertisements

Creative Engineer

Google
User Experience & Design

Mountain View, CA, USA

Google is known for its speed and clean design, and our websites must also be fast and clean. Our
Webmaster team creates and maintain Googles web sites. As a Webmaster, you collaborate with
Marketing and Engineering teams to create compelling, efficient and accessible web pages. You work
independently on many projects, but also take directions from team members across the organization. The
impact of your work is huge as millions of users traffic our websites every day.

As a Creative Engineer, you will work on different product areas across Google, with your web content
taking center stage in product launches, events, and marketing campaigns. You will partner with Product,
UX, and your team to build front-end web experiences. You will use your experience to drive medium to
large-sized tasks and projects while exercising considerable independent judgment and discretion.

You will be responsible for the creation of high quality, world-class web content for desktop and mobile
devices. You will engineer front-end components that will present information in new, innovative, and
creative ways. Your work will require a focus on compatibility, accessibility, and internationalization.

Your components should be modular, reusable, and well documented to the benefit of the greater team.
You will experiment with emerging technologies and discuss their merits with fellow team members.

At Google, were always trying to provide our users with the fastest services possible. Google Fiber
works to go the very last mile, providing fiber-optic Internet connections directly to users homes. Were
building one of the fastest networks in America so that users can experience the future of broadband
because we know that your Internet connection can never be too fast.

Responsibilities

Architect, develop, and maintain an innovative, engaging, and informative web site

Collaborate with Marketing, Product, and Engineering partners

Be able to multitask while meeting tight deadlines

Challenge established thinking and discover new ways of approaching and solving a problem

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

BA/BS degree or equivalent practical experience.

4 years of experience developing mobile websites and applications.

HTML5, CSS3, OO JavaScript and Python development experience

Experience with content management systems. Experience using templating language (e.g., Jinja
or Django)
Preferred qualifications:

BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent

Experience with JavaScript libraries (e.g., Closure, AngularJS)

Experience with Google App Engine, Google Custom Search, and Google Analytics

Fluency in Canvas/CSS animation

Fluency in one or more of: Python, Java, C/C++

Strong consistency and attention to detail