8 x Tips Improve Your Recruitment Copy

It was a landmark for Brainfood Live last week, as we simultaneously live streamed on three different channels - on Crowdcast (feel free to follow), in the Recruiting Brainfood Private Facebook Group (newsletter subscribers welcome to apply to join) and for the first time, on LinkedIn Live. Over 3,000 of you tuned in across those channels and it was great to have you all along with us.

And what a great show it was with the inimitable Katrina Kibben and Mitch Sullivan giving their top tips on how recruiters can improve our copy. Here are 8 x tips from the experts

1. Believe In Your Own Voice

'Write as you speak' is the way of writing compelling copy for today's internet. In order to do this, it is essential that recruiters build confidence in writing in their own voice, says Katrina Kibben, who correctly pointed out that as recruiters rarely receive training on copy writing, we often start from a position of low confidence in our ability. This directly leads to an over reliance on adapting existing templates and over production of bland 'copy pasta' job description which few candidates have a wish to read. Believing in your own voice is a critical first step to take!

2. Be Prepared to Break the Rules

There seem to be a lot of rules or unnecessary guidelines in place with job descriptions. The traditional job description has a fixed structure which most of the industry follows. And yet it is and should be open to challenge. There is no reason why your copy should follow the 'about us-your responsibilities-your background-our benefits' structure. Breaking from this structure can be the start of the creative process of writing a uniquely compelling job description. As Katrina emphasised - there are no rules - other than the ones we assume are there, so go ahead and break them!

3. How to Handle Templates

That said, many corporates will have templates for recruitment copy which constrain creativity. Here Katrina advises some real politik in figuring out which parts are negotiable and which parts are not. Three ideas emerged from our chat which recruiters can keep in mind when forced to use a corporate template

• Apply the 70/30 model – let your core communications team write 60-70% of the core content - which they are going to do anyway - but you decide which parts that are most important to own. These are:
• The first paragraph – this is first and often last chance to get the attention of the reader. Insist you get to write this. Make it intriguing, human and non-jargon based. As Mitch also supported, the purpose of the first line is to encourage the reader to commit to reading further. Let the corporate comms department do the ‘About Us’ section but make sure the all important first paragraph is yours. A great example to use in this is I help (blank) do (blank) by (blanking). It tells you immediately what the job is.
• Own the bullet points – this should not be a list of requirements. Deviate from the norm but making the bullet points a list of experiences the prospective candidate can imagine if they were in the role.

4. Differentiate Between Job Ad vs Job Description

Mitch and I actually had a long debate about this on LinkedIn prior to the Brainfood Live, and many of the same points were raised during the conversation. Understand clearly what type of document you are actually writing - is it a job ad or a job description? A job ad is an external document designed to be read by the candidate; a job description is an internal document designed to be read by the hiring manager / hired candidate. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking one piece of copy works in all situations. Too often we’ll use the bones of a job description as an advert, or maybe we’re not using engaging enough copy in the ad so in reality it becomes an announcement. Keep in mind what you want the copy to do and design it to achieve that result.

5. Write for the Reader

The most common mistake of copywriting, especially in recruitment, is that locate the copy on the writer - we wax lyrical about the hiring company, about employer brand, about the benefits of the job. By doing this we ignore the essential self interest every job candidate has - what's in it for them? Mitch was clear that you need to start your copy from the readers point of view - what is the primary interest of my desired candidate, and how can we succinctly communicate value to that candidate. This is the essence of 'You' writing - use lots of ‘you’ language as opposed to ‘me’ or ‘we’ language in your copy

6. Develop Reader Persona's

In order to 'write for the reader', you will have to do work to understand who that reader really is. Marketers will intuitively understand what market segmentation and persona development is all about - recruiters will need to adopt the same techniques to build a profile of a candidate that they wish to write for. This is an exercise both of research (identify traits, behaviours, backgrounds of archetypal candidates) and imagination (project how this archetype behaves, reacts, reads). Building the readers persona first, writing the copy for that persona second is Mitch's recommended method.

7. Get the Raw Material from Hiring Managers

Writing great recruiting copy for job descriptions is a collaborative endeavour; and whilst the recruiter / writer might be the one creating the document, the raw material of the content has got to come from the hiring manager. Without strong HM support and contribution, no amount of copy writing effort is going to be rewarded with strong applicant flow.

Both Katrina and Mitch gave some great guidance on how to extract content gold for your job advert or job description from the hiring manager, with these 4 questions.

• (from Mitch) Is the desired person employed or unemployed?
• (from Mitch) If the person is employed, why specifically would they leave a comparable job to come and work for you?
• (from Katrina) What does a good day for this person look like? 
• (from Katrina) Tell me about a time you were really proud of someone doing this job?

8. Calibrate your Copy Writing Efforts to the Challenge of the Hire

Both Katrina and Mitch noted that all of the above effort is necessary but only for hard to hire roles. Universal application of increased copy writing effort won't make sense as some jobs are easier to fill with basic job ad copy. There is nothing wrong with using an established template which gets results. However, if a job is known to be difficult or challenging to hire, it pays to put more time and effort in writing a banging job description or job ad - it will increase your chances of getting the right person to apply.

A massive thanks to Katrina and Mitch for sharing their wisdom, it was like a masterclass in copy writing training. Let us know what changes you make using the tips above and the results it generates.

If you missed the full live show – you can watch again here. 

Remember to sign up for the next live show on Friday 14th February 12pm PST / 3pm ET / 8pm GMT, where we will be looking at Recruitment Advertising at the technical end - with Appcast CEO Christian Forman on Recruitment Advertising Benchmarks 2020.

Don't forget also to subscribe to the Recruiting Brainfood Newsletter, if you have not already done so

Hung Lee is the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, the weekly newsletter for the recruiting industry. Trusted by 19,000+ recruiters & HR professionals worldwide. Make sure to sign up to award winning newsletter here and register for the next Brainfood Live on Friday 14th Feb 12PM PST / 3PM ET/ 8PM GMT: Recruitment Advertising State of the Union 2020 with AppCast CEO Christian Forman

Show notes produced in association with Green Umbrella Marketing.