When you are looking to take on new team members, particularly in areas such as tech development and design, there are many reasons why you need to pay careful attention to the preparation of your advertisement and job description. Before you even start the process, you need to crystallise your requirements in your own mind so you know exactly what you need rather than having just a rough idea and hoping to muddle through.

The most obvious one is the effect your ad will have on potential candidates. Every business wants to attract the best talent from the pool and you have a better chance of beating the competition if your advert gives a clear, coherent and comprehensible description of duties, expectations, requirements, opportunities and rewards. You’re asking people to buy into your company, to entrust their career and their prospects to you and to make your business a major part of their life. If candidates detect anything in the substance or between the lines that gives them pause then you are immediately doing yourself a disservice.

At the same time, you want to be as clear about what you are not looking for as what you are: a thorough description will enable the under-qualified or insufficiently motivated to rule themselves out and save both of you wasted time. You need people with the highest-level skills to meet the demands of the role.

Another reason to get it right is the incidental but important matter of protecting your company brand. Job adverts can be seen by anyone and, as such, they play a part in maintaining your profile and reputation. A poorly constructed ad will reflect badly on your managerial standards.

There can be heavier consequences of a poor advertisement. If you present a muddled picture of the job spec or give signs of a lack of professionalism or if the ad is simply unclear, then a proportion of the applicants you attract are likely to be unsuitable. Worse still, if the advertisement is based on a less than coherent description you will be hampered in your ability to see the distinction between average and exceptional.

The danger of this is that you end up making the wrong hiring decision. There’s no guarantee that even the best recruitment process will inevitably yield optimal results, but you are shooting yourself in the foot at the start of the journey if you can’t be clear about your parameters and requirements. Hiring the wrong person is deeply unhelpful in itself but it also represents a waste of resources in the recruitment process itself, jeopardises productivity and may damage morale amongst the entire team.

Composing an effective, comprehensive job advertisement uncluttered with jargon, irrelevancies or uncertainty is a skill that doesn’t always come naturally but with the advice and input of experienced recruitment professionals, it can be learnt or contracted out, which is where RMG Digital comes in.

Not only do you need to talk loudly and clearly about what the role demands, but you also need to sell them your brand narrative, explain your company culture and values, express your vision and impress on them a real sense of what it would be like to work in your business environment.

Clarity of requirements is the easy part. Composing in your own genuine voice is harder and may require redrafting and revision to produce something that communicates in human tones rather than corporate-speak. Experiment with innovative ideas to make an impact and don’t feel hidebound by a sense of what you think of as the right way of doing things. The right way for others may not work for you.

Take care to pitch the vacancy appropriately. Underselling translates into undervaluing whereas overselling sounds like special pleading. Avoid tired phrases such as ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘out of the box’ and ‘results-orientated’ because they add nothing but a sense of an employer going rather wearily through the motions.

At RMG Digital, we have years of experience in successful recruitment through effective communication. Call us today on 020 3800 1118 and find out how we can help you achieve success in all your recruitment projects.