10 Reasons Why Your Job Adverts Aren’t Performing

Your job adverts can either attract or repel your ideal candidates and are arguably the most important element of your recruitment marketing. In a tough market, it’s vital that you get your job adverts right, striking the perfect balance between being informative and engaging, detailed yet succinct. They should speak to the wants and needs of your target candidates whilst positioning your organisation as an employer of choice, and most importantly, they need to drive action.

There are many reasons why your job adverts might not be performing as well as you expected, and not all of them will be in your control. However, most factors affecting this performance are in your control and should be reviewed and improved on a regular basis.

In this article, we look at 10 of the most common reasons why your adverts might not be performing, providing actionable insights for you to turn things around and improve your hiring success.

You’re Relying too Heavily on Your Careers Site

Even leading global pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Roche and more utilise external platforms to advertise their roles. It’s not enough to publish your roles on your careers site and hope that your target candidates will discover them. You need to be proactive in your recruitment marketing and adopt an omnichannel approach to broaden your audience, promote your employer brand, and improve your chances of attracting the perfect candidate.

You’re Not Posting on the Right Platforms

As important as it is to utilise multiple other platforms to advertise your roles, it’s more important to make sure you’re choosing the right platforms. Especially if you have a budget that’s on the lower end of the scale, investing your resources into the right channels is key.

Platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed might seem like obvious choices and can certainly broaden your reach, but niche industry platforms such as PharmiWeb.Jobs can provide more targeted results. For instance, a 2022 Jobvite report found that niche job boards can improve candidate quality by as much as 25% over general job boards, helping you to maximise your potential return on investment.

To help you choose the right platforms, you need to know where your target audience is. Leverage tools such as LinkedIn Analytics as well as both internal and external research to understand the behaviour of potential candidates, and ensure your marketing is in line with that behaviour.

Your Adverts Are All About You

Hiring is ultimately about you; it’s about helping your company bring in the talent it needs to propel its growth and stay ahead of competitors. But when it comes to your job adverts, you the onus needs to be on what you can do for candidates, and not what they should do for you.

With each advert you write, the following question needs to be at the forefront of your mind: ‘What’s in it for them?’

Instead of an endless list of requirements and responsibilities, highlight the opportunities that the role and company would create. Use language that addresses your candidate’s pain points and aspirations, and really shines a light on the benefits of applying for the role. Whilst responsibilities and requirements are important for filtering out irrelevant or underqualified applications, you won’t create any excitement around your opportunity if that’s all your advert is.

Your Adverts Aren’t the Right Length

A job advert that’s too long will overwhelm candidates, whilst one that’s too short might prevent them from making an informed decision about whether to apply. Striking the right balance is essential for keeping candidates engaged whilst also conveying essential information. According to numerous studies, job adverts between 300 and 800 words perform best, receiving 30% more applications than longer or shorter ads.

Your Job Title Isn’t Quite Right

Your job title is the first thing candidates will search for and see and will significantly impact their decision to click on your advert to find out more. A 2020 LinkedIn study found that 45% of professionals wouldn’t apply to a job with a title they don’t understand, with vague or overly specific titles leading to fewer applications or attracting the wrong candidates.

Stick to job titles that are clear, direct, and easily searchable. Use industry-standard terminology that reflects the role accurately whilst ensuring its understandable to a broad audience.

You’re Using Exclusionary Language

Using gender-biased, ageist, or otherwise exclusionary language can deter highly qualified candidates from applying. As an example, research from Harvard Business Review shows that job adverts with gendered language can reduce the number of applications from women by 10-15%.

Stick to neutral, inclusive language, avoiding terms that might signal a preference for a particular gender or age group. You can use tools such as Textio and Gender Decoder, or even ChatGPT, to scan your adverts for biased language and optimise them for inclusivity.

You Haven’t Included a Salary

Failing to include salary information can be a major deterrent for jobseekers, and depending on where you’re hiring, can also be against the law. For example, California’s salary transparency law requires employers with 15 or more employees to include a pay range in their job postings. The EU are also following suit with the EU Pay Transparency Directive which may require organisations to provide information on pay as part of the recruitment process, such as by adding pay ranges to job adverts or sharing salary information with applicants.

As well as helping to reduce the gender pay gap by promoting equal, fair pay, salary transparency also helps jobseekers to determine if your job can reasonably support them and their lifestyle. Whether or not you include a salary can also signal messages about your employer brand and can impact a jobseeker’s first impression of your organisation. Transparency really does go a long way!

You Haven’t Included Enough Information About Your Company

Candidates need to feel connected to your company, and this can’t happen if your job advert is solely about the role and its responsibilities. According to research, 88% of jobseekers consider a company’s employer brand when applying for a job, and companies that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire. Whilst jobseekers will inevitably go off and do their own research, your job adverts are the perfect place to showcase your employer brand and capture their interest.

Need help building your employer brand? Find out how we can help here.

You’re Not Optimising for SEO

Optimising your job adverts for SEO is crucial in ensuring they rank high on job boards and search engines. Without the right keywords, your advert might get lost in search results, leading to fewer clicks and applications. This is especially true for large job boards and platforms like LinkedIn which may have thousands of other jobs just like yours advertised. It will be near impossible to make your advert stand out if you’re not investing time into making it as searchable as possible.

You’re Not Tracking Your Metrics

The only way to truly tell if your job adverts are performing, and to refine your recruitment advertising, is to track your metrics. Knowing which platforms work best as well as the style, format, tone, structure, and length of your job adverts is key in refining and improving them, generating as much engagement with your roles as possible. Whether you use trackable links or do A/B testing on your adverts (or both!), find a way of consistently tracking the performance of your adverts and reviewing them regularly.

Here are 21 recruitment metrics that you should consider measuring.

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Looking for new ways to attract and engage top life sciences talent? Find out more about how we can help here, or get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] – we’d love to hear from you!