Data-Driven Tips to Boost Your Apply Rate with a Better Job Description

Your perfect candidate is out there somewhere, scrolling through countless job listings, until they finally happen to click on yours. When they glance at your job description, will their eyes grow wide with interest — or will their eyes glaze over? 

The job description is your first (and, if you’re not careful, your only) chance to get the candidate truly excited about your opportunity. In short, it’s a pivotal make-or-break moment in your hiring funnel.

That’s why many recruiting professionals spend so much energy optimizing their job posts, with a particular focus on the view-to-apply ratio also known as the “conversion rate.” That’s the percentage of people who, after viewing your job post, decide to take the leap and apply. 

And as with any conversion rate, there’s always room to improve. LinkedIn data has previously revealed how focusing on skills, talking about well-being, and providing pay transparency can boost the conversion rate of your job posts. 

Today’s new insights are drawn from millions of paid job posts in the U.S. over the last six months; we then compare the job posts that performed well against those that didn’t, with the goal of finding simple tweaks you can make to improve your job post performance. 

For instance, LinkedIn’s latest data found that less is more: High-performing job posts (those with higher conversion rates) tend to be 7% shorter than low-performing job posts. This echoes a similar insight we found that shorter InMails tend to get higher response rates.

Read on as we break down three key sections of any job description — the responsibilities, the qualifications, and the benefits — and highlight the most impactful tweaks you can make in each segment to improve your conversation rates. 

1. Responsibilities are crucial, but less is more

Responsibilities may be the single most important section of your job description. A recent survey found that it’s the No. 1 thing candidates look for in a job post, with 90% saying it’s one of the key things that help them decide whether to apply or not. 

And to their credit, recruiting professionals appreciate that — our data shows they’re dedicating nearly half (45%) of the job description to the responsibilities section, in terms of character count. 

But paying more attention to the responsibilities section doesn’t mean it should be an exhaustive laundry list. As the often misattributed quote says: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” LinkedIn data suggests it’s worth spending more time to get your responsibilities short and sweet: The responsibilities segment of high-performing posts were 9% shorter than posts that performed worse.

The takeaway for recruiting professionals is simple: When it comes to responsibilities, keep it concise and cut the fluff. 

2. Qualifications should stick to specific skills, not pedigree

Up to this point, our new findings have concerned the length of the job post. As we move on to the next key sections of your job description — the qualifications and the benefits — this analysis will now consider the content discussed in these sections in order to find which approach tends to drive higher application rates. 

To that end, we grouped the job descriptions by their main focus and compared them against each other. For instance, our text analysis finds that the qualifications section tends to focus on hard skills (also called technical skills), soft skills (more interpersonal and strategic skills), or pedigree (requirements regarding education, achievement, and experience).

Those that focused primarily on pedigree saw significantly lower apply rates. Focusing instead on hard skills was associated with a 56% uplift in apply rates, while focusing on soft skills provided a similar 47% lift. 

That insight aligns with another recent finding from LinkedIn data: Degree requirements are increasingly disappearing from paid job posts. The reason behind both insights is likely the fact that degree requirements can exclude and push away qualified candidates who actually have all the skills required for the job, even if they didn’t acquire those skills via secondary education. 

While some roles (for example, registered nurses and attorneys) clearly do require certain degrees or licenses, in many other cases degrees are simply used as a poor proxy for skills. Instead, start with a skills-first approach by removing unnecessary degree requirements. 

3. Pay transparency can boost your benefits section

Every candidate scans the benefits section with keen eyes. It’s where they gauge whether a company aligns with their needs and expectations, from monetary incentives to health coverage. 

Our data suggests that when the benefits section doesn’t adequately address these key concerns, job seekers might scroll right past your post, no matter how attractive the role itself might be. But just how much of a difference does it really make?

When job posts highlight direct compensation figures, like specific salary numbers ending in “000,” they tend to attract more applicants. Posts emphasizing health-related benefits like dental or vision coverage also fare well. The more generic terms, however, appear to have a lower appeal.

Candidates clearly appreciate a direct approach. It tells them that the company respects their time and knows what it offers. While generic terms might give you more wiggle room in negotiations, they don’t certainly communicate value as effectively. 

If you want your conversion rate to climb, be up front about salaries and specific health benefits. Avoid diluting these crucial points with vague terminology that could confuse or turn off potential hires.

Final thoughts

Whether you’re writing your job descriptions from scratch or using generative AI to help you get started, there’s always room for improvement. 

By optimizing your job descriptions, especially focusing on key sections like responsibilities, qualifications, and benefits, you’re increasing the odds that candidates’ eyes will light up with genuine interest rather than gloss over with indifference. A snappier, skills-first, and transparent approach to job descriptions helps candidates get excited about the role and encourages them to apply. 

Methodology

This analysis considers the job descriptions from millions of paid job posts in the U.S. during the six-month period between April 1, 2023 and September 30, 2023. We use a text classification model to identify the main segments of a job description, of which responsibilities, qualifications, and benefits were the most salient. Then the text of each job description section is preprocessed for data cleaning, before the frequency and rarity of each word is analyzed using nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) to identify a select number of mutually exclusive topics or approaches; for example, a given benefits section can only be categorized as focusing primarily on hard skills, soft skills, or pedigree — it can’t be grouped into more than one approach. Finally, job application rates (the percentage of job viewers who went on to apply) are compared across these approaches to identify which are associated with higher application rates.