Your tone of the voice can make or break your recruitment copy.

The tone of voice you use in your recruitment copy needs to be chosen carefully to make your audience feel or think a certain way about the message you are trying to get across to them. With the tone of voice, you are trying to change the way your company or you feel toward the reader.

There is a common belief that the way you talk and write is two different things. But this is a common misconception. There is a connection between the two, and you need to take advantage of it.

There are many ways to apply the tone of voice in your recruitment copy. For example, it can make a statement, convince your candidate, describe a company, product, or service, etc.

The tone of the voice is how to bring emotions to life and bring your company's personality to life.

And this is very similar to branding personality, and it should be involved in your organization's branding guidelines.

So today, I will not write about how to find out your company's personality, but I will write about what I have learned from UX professionals from NNgroup.com about the tone of voice your brand should write.

So, when we talk about the tone of the voice, we talk about how it sounds. This is something that we talk about a lot. We use these kinds of words to describe how the tone feels or sounds. As a result, we can have a little warm or a little cool tone. Or we can be happy and joyful, playful, respectful, silly, or even severe or mocking.

For example, the tone of voice of a huge corporation would not work for people looking for startup job opportunities.

The tone of voice affects how people think of someone as friendly, trustworthy, and desirable. But don't forget to think about how it might affect people from other countries.

For example, most of the time, some Dutch people's tone of voice can be perceived as rude tone that not all people can understand. Therefore, it's crucial that you carefully choose the tone of voice that fits your audience in your writing.

Based on research, in general, a causal tone works best.

Based on NNgroup.com, a website's tone of voice communicates how an organization feels about its message. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions:

1. funny vs. serious
2. formal vs. casual
3. respectful vs. irreverent
4. enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact

Once you've defined your tone dimension, refine your tone strategy by matching it with the tone of the voice words selected from this NNgroup list. Remember that the words provided should match your tone-chosen dimensions.

Following, here you can see the dimension of the tone of the voice in practice:

1. "An error has occurred; your application was not submitted."
2. "We apologize, but we are experiencing a problem. Therefore your application was not submitted."
3. "Oops! We're sorry, but we are experiencing a problem on our end, and your application was not submitted."
4. "Your CV broke our ATS! Just Kidding. We are experiencing a problem on our end, and your application was not submitted."

What tone of voice did you choose for your writing?

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the tone of voice in your copywriting is essential in increasing your conversion rate. It can be a powerful tool for your business. So, if you don't know how to use it properly, you're in for a rude awakening.

The more you use these tone words, the more you will be able to convey the message in your copy. Once familiar with them, you can easily create a document with a clear and consistent tone.

Remember that you can always add your own tone of words. Remember that tone words should describe how your organization feels about the topic.

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PS: Do you want to learn more about copywriting in recruitment > check out our visual e-book