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The Official Rules for Writing Creative Ads

By Lou Adler, November 14, 2007

Don't overlook online advertising as a means to find top talent. As described in an earlier section ("Understanding Top Talent"), it was made clear that top people look online for new career opportunities whenever they experience a "job dissatisfaction moment." While these online excursions are short – ranging from 30-90 minutes at a time – a well-positioned and compelling ad can often snare a few top performers. In this section we'll cover some of the tactics you can use to implement a targeted ad campaign strategy to attract this group of top performers.

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing

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Some of The Official Rules for Online Advertising

Done properly, online Internet advertising can be an effective low-cost means to find top people. The following rules are based on commonsense consumer and Internet marketing concepts.

1. Don't post the job description.
2. Use search engine optimization techniques (SEO) to position your ad to be found. Just like with real estate and billboards, location is everything. Great response depends on how easy it is to find your posting. SEO techniques are used to ensure that people who use a search engine to find jobs, or use a search tool on a job board, can find your ad. Work with your web person to understand these concepts. They relate to the URL title, the key of keywords, Meta tags, and the ad copy itself. If your ad can't be found, the other rules will have limited value.
3. Reverse engineer your ads. To get started using SEO, just Google your job using search terms a likely candidate would use (e.g., title, location, the word "jobs," and some skills). Then post your ad on some of the boards that show up high on your search. You'll need to tweak your ad until it not only shows up on the best boards, but also high on the listings.
4. Expand keyword utilization. Job boards have different methods to position their ads. Make sure you understand these rules. One technique that usually works is to expand the number of keywords used in the ad so that more candidates will find it. This could be in the copy itself or in a keyword field. Regardless, go out of your way to develop multiple words to describe your job including words that someone in a related job might use. For example, a sales person might look under rep or agent and an engineer might search on words like developer, designer, geek, techie, analyst, test, quality, or CAD.
5. Use niche boards and aggregators. Ask people who have recently been hired what boards they used most frequently. Also check out trade group and association boards. Some new boards will be uncovered using the reverse engineering exercise described above as well as aggregators like simplyhired.com and indeed.com. These job board-like sites scrape your company career site and repost the ads in order for them to be more easily found by people using search engines to find new opportunities.
6. Seek top billing. Discriminating candidates with limited time will not search through page after page of job listings. That's why it's critical your ad is listed in the top dozen on the first page. The reverse engineering and SEO techniques described earlier will help put your ad in this coveted category. This listing is called organic search results. In parallel you should put your ad in the pay-per-click results. Consider less commonly used terms here to minimize the cost. Buying the terms "alternative energy" and "construction management" helped us push candidates directly to an ad we were running for a project manager and controller in the wind energy business.
7. Use indirect pay-per-click to find passive candidates. Consider the types of information candidates might look for naturally during the course of their job. Done properly a well-positioned job ad just might attract the person's attention. For example, if a marketing manager is looking for techniques to calculate the risk of a new marketing campaign, you might want to purchase the terms "product launch" and "stage-gate analysis." Your great ad for a marketing manager alongside the organic results is likely to be the only job listing.
8. Incorporate attention grabbing titles. Your title must stand out to be noticed. Boring titles are like "me too" boxes on a shelf at the supermarket. Long titles are especially helpful here. Outrageous titles are even better. For example, a major financial institution filled 20 part-time teller positions with the title "Are You a Desperate Housewife?" appealing to moms who wanted to work while the kids were in school. Our ad for a not-for-profit CEO had the tag line "Back to the Future" in the title. This was a lead-in to the copy which was in the form of a thank you note written five years in the future from the people the CEO helped.
9. Don't use internal titles. The worst titles of all are those that don't mean anything to anyone other than those who work in your company. As a minimum change these to something generic. A "Q-port Regional Agent" will mean nothing to someone looking for a field service technician engineering position. However, a title like "Field X-Ray Laser Wonks: Keep our nation's hospitals running 24/7" might actually attract someone more for the impact to be made rather than the job itself.
10.  Focus on the first two lines. Any direct marketing piece – email, flyer, newspaper insert – needs to capture the prospects' attention in the first 10 seconds. A great title is the way to start, but what you say next will determine if the candidate will actually read the entire ad. Make sure the first two lines of the ad compel the reader to action or entice the person to click through. The first two lines are also critical since in most search results all the candidate is likely to see are the ad title, possibly the company name, and these two lines. So make them memorable. Something like "Jumpstart the entire accounting and reporting for our newly formed international distribution unit" will attract more attention than "Req # AB1007-3: must have CPA w/10 years of experience in international distribution and min of 5 years SOX…"
11.  Eliminate the disqualifier mentality. Too many job descriptions are filled with skills, qualifications, and "must haves." They're typically written in a style that discourages those with comparable skills to apply. Worse, they turn off the best people who are reading the ad to determine if the job is better than the one they now have. This demeaning approach needs to be discarded in favor of ads that emphasize what's in it for the candidates, not what's in it for the company. Describe what people will do with the skills, rather than the skills themselves. For example, an ad that says "Use your knowledge of SAP and eCommerce to lead the building of a B-to-B website offering real-time order status" will get more response than "Must have at least 5 yrs SAP/ERP with their OE sales and distribution module implementation experience."
12.  Use job branding to increase the importance of the job. Tie the job to a major company initiative to make it bigger than itself. This concept is referred to as job branding. "We're expanding our world-class sales team to handle our new award-winning logistics service direct to the F100" elevates the importance of the job. A similar impact can be made by describing what the person can learn and become by taking the job. A major insurance company advertises the three-week extensive training and a chance to gain important security licenses as a means to attract high school grads for entry-level call center positions.

Well-positioned and compelling advertising should be an important part of any sourcing program. Most companies don't take full advantage of the online opportunities represented by niche boards and search engine optimization techniques. Start by making sure your ads can be easily found by those whom you want to hire. When found, make them stand out and be irresistible. This one-two punch is the key to finding those great people who do go online when jobs start becoming less satisfying. Since this describes nearly everyone now and then, you need to take advantage of it.