Most tech job markets have been in the same situation for a long period. There are more open positions than enough potential candidates to fill.
Since they are regularly overwhelmed with demanding hiring plans, hiring managers often express their frustrations with low-performing job ads. Sometimes it is justifiable, sometimes not, but it’s expected that your job ads aren’t working.
It might be correct to assume that if your job ads aren’t working, there is always another option to try, but at the same time, it could be misleading. The good thing is that there is always another option to try.
Underperforming factors
If job ads aren’t working, they usually underperform due to certain factors:
- The job title is unclear
- Job offering isn’t competitive enough
- The company brand isn’t visible enough
- The job ad is difficult to read
- Too many buzzwords included
- The job ad isn’t appealing
- The job ad doesn’t offer enough details
- Job ad fails to roadmap the application process
- No alignment between the job ad and what the hiring manager is looking for
- The small talent pool for the requested tech stack
- The job ad posted on a generic job board
Besides these factors, hiring managers avoid placing themselves inside the job role by thinking, ‘what is in it for me as a candidate,’ sufficient to say that this approach makes job ads more inspirational, engaging, and better performing.
Plan B - The job ad checklist
If your job ads aren’t getting results, there is always another option to try, and you should start analyzing things from a different angle. Analysis demands knowing why your hiring tool is broken, and it might reveal that using job ads isn’t the right approach for your company. Or let’s simplify it, job ads can’t sublime all the important aspects of your company even when done right from the point of job ad composition.
In addition, understanding your company’s overall attractiveness and visibility will help you better understand what tools to use when hiring software engineers. The following checklist might get handy when the job ads are a primary recruiting tool but not giving satisfactory results.
If the answer to any previous questions is negative, your company must combine job ads with additional recruiting services to consider a more comprehensive approach.
Suppose the checklist doesn’t provide enough information for an immediate conclusion. In that case, you can go through additional questions to diagnose a wider set of potential obstructions to why your job ads aren’t working:
- Does my company plan to grow in the coming year or two?
- Do I only need engineers now or also in the future?
In case of an affirmative answer, your company needs to invest in ongoing visibility within the tech community using specialized toolkits such as the Membership.
If anything mentioned above doesn’t suit your company at the current moment because it has no plans to grow due to economic downturn or layoffs, think of strengthening your employer’s brand presence within communities as an opportunity for future hiring activities.
You don't open a bottle of wine with a beer opener. Yet many companies would use a tool that doesn't fit their hiring need.
Using a Membership toolkit provides access to the software engineers community through high-performing job ads and events that can be a great way to stay connected with the talent pool. The membership toolkit offers you direct access to all aspects of the tech community. You can build relationships by being present at events, address developers by sharing breakthroughs in tech discovered inside your company, or sponsor career development opportunities for its members. Going directly with an approach based only on hiring intentions will lead to the least amount of success. Instead, positioning yourself as a value giver will be noted and evaluated positively by software engineers.
Overcoming job ads that aren’t working
The sooner you understand if your job ads aren’t working, you should know that this isn’t just the only tool for accessing and interacting with the tech community. It will only work if the company does its pre-work around visibility, attractiveness, the definition of employee value proposition, and other dependencies. Consider other factors that aren’t dependent on your company when looking at how to make your approach to the tech community (i.e., unattractive location, job positions, etc.). If limiting factors occur, you shouldn’t continue posting job ads and waiting. Instead, use a whole membership toolkit for attracting software developers. Many companies fail to understand that the job ad, in its essence, is a sales pitch. But for some companies, it can’t sublime all they want to say when forming a position to obtain the pitching process. It’s right to consider taking a different approach when overcoming job ads that aren’t working, as you can’t simply control all the variables in the hiring process. Remember, there is always another option to try.
