How and where to advertise jobs

Now that you’ve decided it’s time to add some new faces to your team, you’re probably itching to get going.

You’re probably also full of questions, wondering about the best places to advertise, how long should you keep your ads up, and whether there are any particular ways to present your roles that will really make them stand out and attract lots of applicants.

In this section, we’ll be providing answers to all of these questions, as well as giving you a few tips on how to make the advertising process a bit more straightforward.

But before we get into that, there’s one other point that we need to touch upon: whether or not you should outsource the job of advertising your roles to a third party...

Should you work with a recruitment agency?

Time, as they say, is money. Even if you feel that you’re quite capable of advertising roles and handling the entire recruitment process yourself, you may still decide to use a recruiter purely so that you can remain focused on the day-to-day running of your business.

The kind of services recruiters typically offer include:

• Writing and posting job adverts. Your recruiter should know the best places to advertise your role, and will write, or help you write, an eyecatching job ad.
• Searching for and reaching out to potential candidates. Rather than simply waiting for people to apply for jobs, many recruiters will take your job directly to them, reaching out to people they think would be a good fit for the role via job sites and social networks.
• Screening and presenting applicants. Before presenting candidates to you, most recruitment agencies will get in touch with the most promising applicants to learn a bit more about them, and double-check on their credentials, saving you lots of time.
• Arranging interviews. Let your recruiter know when you ideally want to meet with your candidates and they’ll take care of the admin part, calling them up and booking them in for interview at a time that suits you.

All of this can save you, the business owner, an inordinate amount of time and energy.

There are, however, a number of caveats to using a recruitment agency to find your next member of staff.

First of all, you immediately lose a degree of control when you involve a third party in the recruitment process.

This isn't always a problem; better recruiters will work with you to ascertain exactly what you’re looking for in a member of staff, the key skills they require, and the type of environment they’ll ultimately be working in. They’ll also spend some time learning about your company culture to ensure that they present your business in a manner that’s in keeping with your core values and branding.

Sadly, not all recruiters are this thorough.

Recruitment agencies make their money by filling roles, so it stands to reason that they’ll aim to reach out to as many people as they can, as quickly as they can. This means that, while you might have focused on ensuring that you present your company in a particular light and engaging with a particular type of person, recruiters might not be as cautious.

And then, of course, there’s the matter of cost.

These firms do not come cheap, often charging anywhere between 10–20% of the annual salary of the role you're hiring for in exchange for their services. That’s a lot of money to part with, so unless you’re really struggling for time or have a role that’s particularly difficult to fill, it might be worth hanging on to your cash and doing the legwork yourself.

If you’re still unsure whether a recruitment agency is the right way to go, check out this in-depth article, which explores the pros and cons in more detail.

For now, we'll show you how to handle the recruitment process by yourself, without the need for a recruiter.

Where to advertise jobs

Your recruitment process could be failing before it even gets going if the best candidates don't even see your ads.

You've plenty of options available to you, both offline and online. Let's look at some of the most popular choices.

Local papers and magazines

Print may be 'dead', but newspaper job listings are still a perfectly viable way to find new employees, especially if it's part-time roles you're recruiting for.

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Online job boards

The majority of today’s job seekers turn to job listing sites, or ‘job boards’, as their first port of call when looking for work. Sites like Indeed, Reed, and Monster have a variety of free and paid options available to business owners who wish to advertise roles. Furthermore, it’s possible to categorise jobs in various ways to make them easily discoverable.

Finally, LinkedIn is now practically a job board in its own right, with many companies using it to advertise jobs instead of, or as well as, other online job boards.

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Social media

No longer just a place to advertise your wares and shout about your achievements, social media is rapidly becoming one of the most common places for employers to advertise roles.

It’s not just ‘professional’ social network LinkedIn where this is happening, either — sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even photo-focused Instagram are now regularly used to find new talent.

Pros:

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Your network

Sometimes, it’s not what you know, but who you know...

Reach out to your professional networks via email, phone, and social media, and let them know you’re hiring. Tell them a little about the position and the type or person you’re looking for. More often than not, they’ll know someone — or someone who knows someone — who’s a good fit for the role.

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Once you’ve decided on where you’d like to place your job advert, it’s time to get down to the important business of writing it...

Tips for writing a job advert

The aim of any advert is to get noticed. That’s never truer, however, than when you’re the owner of a small business and putting your ad amongst those of more established or well-known companies.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. As a small business, you may not offer the same benefits and perks as a huge company, but there’s plenty in your favour.

The trick is to celebrate what makes your business a unique, interesting place to work while making it clear what kind of person you’re looking to add to your team. Keep the following five points in mind when writing your job advert to ensure that you’re playing to your strengths:

1. Choose your words carefully

The tone of your ad shouldn’t just aim to impress — it should appeal to the exact kind of person you want working for you. If you’re recruiting for front-of-house staff, for example, then choose words that reflect that role (‘professional,’ ‘courteous’, and ‘energetic’ spring to mind) rather than just throwing out generic terms like ‘team player’ or ‘committed’. The description of your business, too, should reflect kind of environment you’re hoping to build.

2. Provide context

If you want people to get excited about the role you’re advertising, they need to know not just what they’d be doing from day to day, but what your business is trying to become. Talk a little about what you’ve achieved so far, why you’re recruiting now, and how they’ll help you grow — you want someone who’s excited to be a part of your business specifically, not just pay their bills.

3. Be realistic

You might need someone who possesses certain skills or qualifications, but try not to get too bogged down in requirements when writing your job ad. Every skill that you list as ‘essential’ will narrow the field of applicants by several degrees, so think long and hard about what your must-haves are before potentially putting off dozens of people.

4. Use keywords

There’s no point putting an ad online if job seekers have to scroll through dozens of similar adverts to find it. Be sure to use plenty of relevant keywords in both the body of your advert and its title — that way they’ll be picked up on by search engines like Google and job sites’ internal search functions and your ad will get plenty of views.

5. Know your audience

Don’t make the mistake of using the exact same advert in multiple places — the ad you write for a newspaper or shop window won’t work anywhere near as well online. Even if you’re posting on a couple of different online job boards, be sure to consider how each presents its ads, and tweak yours to maximise its impact.

For more info, check out our detailed article on how to write a job advert that gets results.

Grab a job advert template below:

Hit or Miss?

Once your ads have gone live, it’s important that you keep track of which are and aren’t working, and to what degree.

It’s easy to forget about this step once you start getting a handful of applications, but this information will prove very useful in the months and years to come when you find yourself looking to add even more people to your team.

Here's how to measure success...

If you're using online job boards: Sites like Indeed and Reed provide business owners with a variety of stats, such as the number of times their ad appeared in searches, and the number of clicks, views and actual applications received.

For social media-based adverts: All the major social networks give business accounts access to detailed stats about the posts they share. If you pay to sponsor or 'boost' your post, you'll see even more useful information about how your posts perform.

Newspaper and other offline ads: It's obviously trickier to monitor the success of offline ads, but by making a habit of asking your applicants where they first heard about the position, you'll be able to build up a picture of which of your print ads are working.

Summary

There's a lot to consider when it comes to advertising your roles, so don’t take this step lightly. The places and way in which you present the position you’re hoping to fill will inevitably have an effect on the type of people you attract, and will form the foundations of your working relationship going forward.