New Survey: Job Postings Are The Doorway To Your Employer Brand

co-authored by Candace Kim

Research suggests that if you care about your employer brand, aka what people think working at your company is like, you should really care about your job postings.

Particularly the ones on LinkedIn.

A new survey by LinkedIn found that 75 percent of professionals use LinkedIn to find a new position when they are considering switching jobs. And the most common way those people first interact with a company is through a job posting.

That means your job postings are your doorways to your employer brand, as only after a candidate sees the posting will they research the rest of your company. The illustration below shows the typical journey a candidate takes, with the job posting coming first:

What this means to talent professionals

We all know first impressions matter and, for many candidates, the job posting will be your only chance to make an impression on them. That means two things:

• You want to make your job postings as visible as possible, so it’s seen by as many people as possible
• You want your job postings to truly reflect your employer brand, instead of just being a list of requirements

How do you do that?

Making your job posting as visible as possible

No matter how great your employer brand is, it’s worthless if people don’t know about it. So, yes, your job posting should reflect your employer brand, but first you need to get people to see it.

One thing that makes this easier is that LinkedIn automatically builds your applicant pool when you post a job. That said, you can help reach more people by following these best practices:

• Use a searchable job title (those recommended in our drop-down) over a flashy one. For example, people are much more likely to search “Sales Manager” than “Head of Relationship Builders.”
• When posting your job, you have the option to select up to three different industries your job applies to. To get the most amount of applicants, select the maximum of three. For example, if you are an online media company looking for an editor, you could select “online media”, “internet” and “newspapers.”
• Same goes for job function. Again, you can select up to three job functions, so to get the most applicants, select three. Using the same example as before, you could put the job function as “writing/editing,” “art/creative” and “advertising.”
• Of course, the best way for your job to be seen by a lot of people is to build a strong following on LinkedIn. Here’s advice on how to do that. If you don’t have a strong following, you can always further advertise it using sponsored updates.

How to write a great job description

Okay, so if you followed the tips outlined above, you’ll likely draw a decent amount of people to your job post. The next step is to build a job posting that’s compelling and reflects your employer brand.

Specifically, your job posting should not be a list of requirements and some buzzwords that describe the generalities of what the job entails. Instead, it should describe three things:

• The type of person you’re looking for. Not just their experience or education, but what the person is like. A perfect example is in this position for Marvel comics, where they are searching for ““a walking Wiki of Marvel lore”.
• Why the job matters. What will the person accomplish at your company? A great example is Adobe’s job descriptions, which lay out the challenge the advertised jobs take on and why it’s so important to conquer it.
• What it’s like to work at your company. A good example of this is Nike, which lays out how it’s a place people “obliterate boundaries and explore potential” throughout it’s entire career page, including in its job postings.

Looking for more examples to inspire you? Well, here are four good ones, and here’s another three that stand out. As you can see, all seven are creative and give the candidate a sense of what your company’s like, as opposed to being the stiff, boring job postings most people are used to.

Parting wisdom

The fact your job postings are the entryway for most candidates into your employer brand is a critical piece of knowledge that presents a great opportunity for you as a recruiter. After all, 99 percent of job descriptions are the boring list of requirements we’re all used to, so if you do something unique you can really stand out.

So take your time and make them as creative and as findable as you can, particularly if you care about your employer brand. Because, ultimately, that’s generally a candidate’s first – and often only – view into how your company is as an employer.

Best make it count.

* image by Christopher Michel

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