Jolene Timmons

Are You Ready to Take the Plunge?

Posting for the social network savvy passive, or even active, job seeker takes a little more than pasting a job description online or linking to your company’s career site. As recruiters, we need to use the right hook to attract the right candidates. Our unique career opportunity needs to speak to the potential candidate while getting them to respond, or “virally” share it with their professional network. The practice of creating snappy, position appropriate “ad copy” will pay off in richer pools of candidates as we post, source & network for top talent.

THINK JOUNALISM 101 – Five Ws and the H

Much like a well written feature story, our headline (Job Title), lead paragraph (details) and kicker (how you want them to follow up) need to interest our potential candidate enough to click through to get more details. Breaking your posting down into the essential who, what, where, when, why & how ensures that you are sharing enough information. Get creative with the copy if appropriate to the audience. Isn’t the following more enticing than a job description outline?

Award-winning creative theatrical agency is on the hunt for an all-star Executive Creative Director to provide inspired leadership, strategic direction and creative excellence. Creative is driven out of our Los Angeles headquarters and our office in New York; we are flexible with locating this dynamic executive in either office. Our ideal candidate is an idea person who quickly zeroes in on marketing opportunities and generates compelling concepts based on consumer insight. She or he is passionate about direct and interactive marketing, savvy in all direct marketing media including social and mobile, and has a stellar portfolio showcasing award-winning integrated campaigns to prove it. They will show a progressive career path and successfully helped attain and grow a variety of clients across multiple platforms, specifically with expertise in the Theatrical, Home Entertainment or Video Game industries.

I am suggesting that the savvy recruiter think like the savvy candidate. When we began pasting our blah, blah, blah internal job descriptions to save time and make posting more automated, we took the dynamic edge out of attracting candidates. If we want vibrant, successful hires, we need to put a little time and energy into getting their attention and motivating them to jump into the candidate pool.

NEXT UP: Get the Word Out: targeting passive candidates and your referral network