Top 7 Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Advertising Open Positions

This guest post is by Thomas Torresson, courtesy of Recruiting Blogswap.

There are plenty of reasons a particular job ad may not work well. Sometimes these mistakes are tough to recognize and even harder to learn to avoid.

Here are seven mistakes that can cause an ad to provide less bang for the buck than desired:

Not writing good ad copy

The key to writing good ad copy is to grab the job seeker’s attention, give enough details about the position to make it clear what the candidate will be doing, keep job requirements brief, outline what makes the position and/or company special, make sure the ad is keyword rich, and make the application process simple.
Putting all your eggs in one basket

Why would you use just one advertising vehicle — and always the same one? Monster & CareerBuilder are both great sites, but neither is ideal for all positions. Too often companies pick one job board and that is all they use — regardless of the position.

Bad idea, for many reasons. Often the position would receive a much better, more qualified response on a niche board. Or the position is such that a lot less money spent on a regional board would have gotten an equally good response.
Not tracking ROI

What’s working? What’s not? You don’t need the latest applicant tracking system to track where responses are coming from.

A simple job code, unique to each position and advertising medium, will allow you to track the source.
Recruiting reactively instead of proactively

Waiting for an employee to quit is the worst time to start an advertising and recruiting plan.
Developing a comprehensive recruitment strategy before the need is urgent is the best way to effectively source and evaluate various avenues.
Not knowing your target audience

Where are they looking for jobs — or are they even looking for jobs at all?

This is an important question to answer in evaluating what advertising sites and/or publications make the most sense, as well as in deciding whether the extent to which a particular campaign should be focused on active or passive job seekers.

(The term “passive job seeker” is an oxymoron — it refers to a person who is not a job seeker, but could be persuaded to consider making a change.)
Not using the selected medium properly

Job boards want you to be happy with the responses to your postings and hope you make good hires. They want your money, so they want you to use them again.

The major sites are constantly offering new products or enhancements. This presents a problem, as you need to keep up your knowledge of how they work to use them most effectively.

For example, on CareerBuilder you are allowed up to three job classifications. If three are relevant, use them. Hotjobs uses a "short description" field that, when used properly, greatly enhances the search results placement of a posting, getting it in front of more eyes. Monster now offers auto-refresh postings to better increase the number of people that will see an ad.
Having a “set it and forget it” attitude

With an online posting, you have the ability to evaluate the early applications and massage the wording of the ad to better attract qualified candidates.
Don’t wait until the posting has expired and then say, “that didn’t work.” Figure out why something is not working early on in the process and adjust the ad copy accordingly.