What Is A Job Advert?

This is a pretty basic question, with a basic answer so I’ll approach this in a more complex fashion and assume you’re a recruitment agency owner, experienced consultant or a recruitment marketer looking for an answer with a bit more flesh to it. I’ve written thousands of job adverts in my time for a whole range of roles. I even spent the best part of 2 weeks once crafting a job description template when I worked in-house for a major media owner! 

A well-crafted job advert is your first opportunity to attract and engage top talent and make a lasting impression. But what exactly is a job advert, and how can you create one that stands out from the competition?

There are more qualified people who can weigh in on this but we’re going to talk about the intricacies of job adverts, exploring their purpose, key components, and best practices for writing compelling and effective postings that resonate with your target audience. Whether you're a seasoned recruiter, agency owner, recruitment marketer or just starting in the industry, this article will equip you with the knowledge and insights needed to create job adverts that capture attention, generate interest, and ultimately lead to successful hires.

Defining a Job Advert

A job advert, also referred to as a job posting, job vacancy, or job advertisement, is a written, or audio visual post that informs potential candidates about an open position within a company. It serves as a crucial tool for attracting qualified applicants and showcasing the unique opportunities and benefits your company offers. Think of it as your company's sales pitch to potential employees.

Job Advertisement Synonyms

I’ll always call a job advert a job advert but that’s probably down to when I first moved into the recruitment sector (2006) and the industry I used to recruit for (media & advertising). Different industries and geographical regions will  refer to with different names: 

Career Opportunity

Employment Ad

Employment Advert

Employment Advertisement 

Employment Opportunity

Hiring Ad

Hiring Advert

Hiring Advertisement 

Hiring Announcement

Job announcement

Job Listing

Job Posting

Job Vacancy

Job Ad

Job Advert

Job Advertisement 

Job Offer

Job Posting

Open Position

Open Role

Position Opening

Recruitment Ad

Recruitment Advert

Recruitment Advertisement 

Recruitment Notice

Staff Requisition

Vacancy Announcement

The Purpose of a Job Advert

Job adverts serve several essential purposes in the recruitment process and bear these in mind when you're researching before writing one, while you’re writing it and as you’re posting it:

• Attract qualified candidates: A well-written job advert should clearly outline the role's responsibilities, requirements, and benefits, enticing individuals with the right skills and experience to apply. You need to show why suitable candidates should apply for your role over the hundreds of others out there. 
• Showcase your company culture: Use your job advert to highlight your company's values, mission, and work environment, attracting candidates who align with your organisational culture. Be authentic and avoid cliches, paint a picture with words and be truthful. 
• Filter out unsuitable applicants: By providing specific details about the role and its requirements, your job advert can help deter unqualified candidates from applying, saving you time and resources during the screening process. In my opinion this is one of the most important parts of a job advert. Of course it should attract the right people but it also needs to deter the wrong people. Job adverts are receiving hundreds of applications and it’s a huge time saver if you can deter unsuitable applicants. 
• Enhance your employer brand: A compelling job advert can reinforce your company's reputation as an attractive employer, boosting your brand image and attracting top talent.

Understand Your Audience

I assume you’ve been recruiting or working within your niche for a while so you’ll have a good understanding of your markets, candidates, clients, the language, their typical backgrounds, the major job boards and so on. Before you start researching and writing, it’s essential to understand who you are targeting. Tailor your job advert to specifically resonate with them - who they are and what they’re looking for. 

Key Components of a Job Advert

While the specific structure and content of a job advert may vary depending on the industry and role, several key components should be included:

• Job platform: Your job advert is nothing unless it’s posted on a relevant platform, whether that’s digital, in print, outdoor, ambient or whatever it may be. If people can’t find it, read it and respond to it then it’s pretty pointless. Choose a platform that is relevant to your audience. Make sure the job board you select serves your niche and your audience uses that platform. And don’t forget to explore free platforms too such as your website, social channels and so on. 
• Job title: Use a clear and concise job title that accurately reflects the position and is easily searchable by candidates. Avoid using job titles that are used exclusively within your organisation. Aim to use a job title that is reflective of the role and understood across the industry. 
• Job location:Even if your role is 100% remote you’ll still need to add a company address / city so applicants know you’re a legitimate company and see how far any commute would be for any occasional meetings / social outings. 
• Company overview: Provide a brief introduction to your company, highlighting its mission, values, size, when it was established and any notable achievements or awards.
• Job description: Clearly outline the key responsibilities and duties associated with the role, using action verbs and specific examples. Expand beyond the typical, most experienced candidates will roughly know what the role involves. Talk more about the finer details, the specific projects they’ll be working on, the team they’d be joining, etc. 
• Requirements and qualifications: Specify the essential and desired skills, experience, and education levels required for the position. Try to avoid bias and look to add to your company culture with a diverse range of people, rather than just adhering to it. I’d further break this down into must haves and nice to haves.
• Essential Skills: Everything that you believe is integral to the role, the absolute minimum. So for example if you’re hiring for a Midwife then I would presume a degree in nursing would be absolutely required.  
• Desired Skills: These are the nice to haves. The skills that are not strictly required, but would be ideal in the perfect candidate. Maybe if you’re recruiting for a Digital Marketing Executive a degree would be a nice to have but you’d happily look at people with a couple years more experience in lieu of a degree. Or maybe you’d like to see a candidate with 5 years' experience but you’d look at an amazing candidate with 3 years' experience too. 
• Salary & Benefits: Include information about the salary range or hourly rate, as well as any additional benefits or perks offered by your company. I’m a big fan of salary transparency. State the full salary bracket and be realistic with this - it should be a relatively close bracket as in £30,000 - £35,000 rather than £20,000 - £60,000. And it should be reflective of industry averages.  
• Expected Start Date: This will obviously be dependent on the notice period of the candidate you end up choosing but it doesn’t hurt signalling to candidates how urgent this role is. 
• Manager: Who the employee will report to. You may or may not want to include this on a job advert and maybe reserve it for the more formal job description. I could quite easily see a hiring manager being swamped with calls from recruiters if you add it to the job advert. 
• Full-time / Part-time: Whether the role is part-time or full-time. I imagine most roles will be full time but in the world of flexible work it’s best to specify. 
• Contract Type: Is the role permanent, temporary, fixed term, etc.
• Location Type: Where is the role based? Is it totally remote, 100% in the office or hybrid? 
• Call to action: Encourage interested candidates to apply by providing clear instructions on how to submit their application and any required documents. Should they visit your website? Should they apply for your job page or via the platforms application process? Where can they find out more information about the company & the role? 
• Company contact information: Include relevant contact details, such as an email address or phone number, in case candidates have questions about the role or application process.

Legal & Compliance

Bear in mind what you can and can’t include in your job advert, which may vary depending on your industry and geographical region. I remember when I first got into recruitment back in 2007 there was a person who would look for job adverts with discriminatory phrases, apply to those roles and when rejected would look to take the agency to court and always settle outside of court for an undisclosed amount. Apparently he made a very good living out of this for a number of years. 

You cannot include any discriminatory language and avoid any wording that could be construed as discriminatory based on the following protected characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion or belief  
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

Also look to avoid indirect discrimination, so avoid seemingly neutral requirements that could disproportionately disadvantage certain groups. For example, requiring all applicants to have a driving licence could indirectly discriminate against people with disabilities but you’d be fine to mention this if an integral part of the role was driving such as an HGV driver role.  

Ideally look to avoid making assumptions about availability. So do not make assumptions about a candidate's availability based on their protected characteristics. For example, avoid phrases like "must be available to work weekends" as it could indirectly discriminate against those with childcare or religious commitments.

Writing a Compelling Job Advert: Best Practices

To create a job advert that truly stands out, consider these best practices:

• Use clear and concise language: Avoid jargon and overly complex sentences, ensuring your advert is easy to understand for a wide range of candidates. Keep it simple, minimal, to the point like the adverts you come across in your day to day life, online, outdoor, on the radio or on TV. 
• Focus on benefits, not just features: Highlight the advantages of working for your company, such as flexible working hours, professional development opportunities, comprehensive benefits package, higher than average salaries, unbeatable commission structures, or a supportive work environment. Go back to your basic recruitment & sales training - FAB, AIDA, DIPADA, etc. 
• Incorporate keywords: Use relevant keywords throughout your job advert to improve its visibility in search engine results and attract organic traffic. Focus on one keyword for your job advert and use it 2-3 times throughout the job advert, in the job title, synopsis and wherever next. 
• Showcase your company culture: Use language and imagery that reflects your company's personality and values, giving candidates a glimpse into what it's like to work for you. Be honest & authentic with your language. 
• Proofread carefully: Ensure your job advert is free of spelling and grammatical errors, as these can reflect poorly on your company's professionalism. There’s nothing worse than reading a job advert full of spelling or grammatical errors - it’s a guarantee that qualified candidates will be put off. 

Job Advert Writing Tools 

Back in my day we had to do this all by hand and if we were lucky the office manager might help you out if she liked you. These days there are so many job advert writing tools out there that can make the job quicker and more efficient but don’t overly rely on them and sacrifice quality for short term time saved. I’d rather spend an extra 10 minutes writing a job advert if I think it’s going to attract more quality candidates. Get it right the first time around and you’ll be able to roll that template for a lot of that particular client's roles anyway. 

AI Writing Assistants:

• Grammarly: Ideal for catching spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, ensuring your job advert is polished and professional.
• Claude: I haven’t tried Claude yet but it’s supposed to be amazing. Another great tool that can help with rewriting sentences or paragraphs to make them more concise, clear, and engaging.
• Chat-GPT: The one we all know, the “original” mainstream AI. It offers suggestions for improving sentence structure and flow, and can even help generate creative job titles or introductory paragraphs.
• Gemini: I tend to use Gemini a lot, as my tech stack is Google focused and it's pretty good for written content. It helps enhance your writing style and avoid repetition, ensuring your advert is easy to read and understand.

AI Job Description Optimisers:

• Textio: I came across Textio back in 2018 and thought it was amazing. It was completely ground breaking at the time but of course competitors have emerged since then. It analyses your language for gender bias, ageism, and other potential discriminatory undertones, helping you create inclusive and equitable job adverts.
• Ongig: Uses AI to identify and eliminate jargon and complex language, making your adverts accessible to a broader audience.
• Adhook's AdBuilder: Offers a guided approach to writing job adverts, including templates and suggestions for language and structure.

Specialised Job Advert Tools:

• Workable's Job Description Generator: Creates tailored job descriptions based on your input, saving time and ensuring consistency.
• Recruitment CRM: Most of the major recruitment CRMs will offer in-built AI / ML tools to optimise job adverts for specific platforms like LinkedIn, maximising your reach and engagement.

The best tool for you will depend on your specific needs and budget. Consider experimenting with a few different options to find what works best for your recruitment process. Remember, the ultimate goal is to create job adverts that accurately reflect the role, attract qualified candidates, and comply with legal requirements. By leveraging the right tools and strategies, you can streamline your recruitment process and build a strong, diverse team but don’t sacrifice quality for time saved!

Example of a Job Advert

I’m going to throw my hat into the ring on this and by all means this isn’t perfect but it’s a good foundation at the least. I’m sure more qualified people will weigh in with their opinion. 

Job Title: Digital Marketing Specialist

Company Overview:

We are a web design agency, based in central London, specialising in creating stunning websites for recruitment agencies across the UK & Ireland. A lot of recruitment websites are really bad. It sounds cheesy but we’re really passionate about helping our clients to be different from their staid competitors by designing & developing the most technically proficient and most eye-catching sites in their niche. There are some great web design agencies out there but we think we’re one of the best so let us explain and see what you think. 

Job Description:

You’re a digital marketing specialist already. You’ve been doing it for a few years - you know what the job involves. As a Digital Marketing Specialist, you will be specifically working on our medium tier accounts, recruitment agencies that are around 10-50 people in size. 

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Working in a team of 4, 3 experienced marketing specialists, with one apprentice who is learning the ropes with us. 
• Managing the social media presence of our clients across typical channels such as LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube creating engaging content, and running targeted advertising campaigns.
• Optimising the website’s of our clients for search engines and YouTube, improving organic rankings, long and short tail keyword research, writing content and driving traffic.
• Developing and implementing email marketing campaigns to nurture leads and convert them into clients. Also using a selection of email marketing, lead generation and scraping tools. 
• Analysing marketing data and providing insights to improve campaign performance.

Requirements and Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Public Relations, Communications, or a related field.
• Proven experience in digital marketing, with a strong understanding of SEO, social media, content writing and email marketing.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.  

Salary and Benefits:

• £30,000 - £40,000 but get in touch if this doesn’t quite fit as we’re always open to a conversation. 
• Comprehensive benefits package, including private health insurance, private dental, 28 days holiday per annum, professional development stipend of £1,000 per annum for training courses, conferences, books, 8% pension contribution and so much more.
• Flexible working hours, hybrid working (2 days in the office) and a supportive work environment.

We really can’t do justice to how good it is to work here just on this job advert so get in touch with us and ask anything & everything you want! And come and join us and help us write better job ads! 

Website: abstractionlabs.co.uk 

Phone: 020 7205 4515

And that was my stab at one!

Job Platforms 

As we mentioned if you’re not posting your job advert anywhere then it’s really just pointless and a complete waste of time! People need to find it, read it and apply to it! 

I suggest you work closely with your recruitment marketer or recruitment marketing agency to determine the best platforms for you depending on the nature of the job, the industry, and the level of expertise you're seeking:

• Generalist Online Job Boards: There are so many job boards out there so do your research. Of course, look at the big boys like Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, Reed and TotalJobs but there are so many smaller generalist job boards too! 
• Industry Specific Job Boards: No matter the niche you’re working in I can guarantee there’s at least 10 niche job boards servicing your sector. Do a little digging as I’m sure it will be worth it. Applicants numbers will be lower, saving you time, they will be more relevant and they will be more engaged. 
• LinkedIn: Goes without saying and it’s of course a great platform for white collar roles. Purchase a job credit, post your job advert to your company and your personal channel and send your job advert to relevant profiles. Also draw up a list of 20 or so industry specific groups and post your job to those too. 
• Company Website: I would say pretty much all live roles should be posted to your company website. I wouldn’t post c-suite and senior director roles there and would use a more targeted approach for those specific positions but everything else should be on there. And don’t forget it should be Google for Jobs compatible too. 
• Social Media: Most social media platforms have paid services and of course allow you to post your jobs free of charge to your personal channel. 
• Local and National Newspapers: A lot less used these days but when I first moved into recruitment in 2007 we would post an advert in the print version of the media supplement in The Guardian and it really did work! We would have a huge number of incoming calls on a Thursday and Friday, telling me they’d seen the ad in The Guardian. For certain roles, traditional newspaper job ads can still be effective, particularly for reaching local candidates or older demographics.
• Universities and Colleges: A great option if you specialise in entry level or graduate roles. A lot of universities are continually looking for recruitment partners to speak to their final year students and also have free to post job boards too. 
• Professional Associations: Many fields have professional associations that offer job posting services on their websites or in their publications. For example RICS (chartered surveyors) have a range of publications and the ICAEW (chartered accountants) offer a range of job posting services across print & digital.
• Recruitment Agency Partnerships: For specialised roles outside of your niche, consider partnering with other agencies.
• Referral Programs: If you’re hiring internally then your current employees should be a great source. Ask them to post job adverts to their social channels and pass on job descriptions to ex-colleagues or theirs and friends. 
• Online Communities and Forums: Places like Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn groups or specific professional forums related to your niche are great places to post job adverts and source new and relevant applicants. 
• Job Fairs and Networking Events: Participating in job fairs and professional networking events are brilliant ways of getting your vacancies out there. I always think face to face events are of course labour intensive but see the best engagement and conversion rates. 

I would never rely solely on one particular platform and instead take an omni-channel approach when it comes to sourcing candidates for your live roles. Use your experience to determine what works best for your agency, in your industry. 

Conclusion

A job advert is more than just a list of requirements and responsibilities; it's an opportunity to showcase your company's unique value proposition and attract the best talent in the market. By following the best practices outlined in this guide and crafting compelling job adverts, you can significantly improve your recruitment efforts and build a team that drives your company's success. Remember, a well-written job advert is an investment in your company's future.