Back From A Nice Week In Devon, Doing Nothing Except Walk On The Moors And Lazing About. Couple Of Calls To The Office Anything Good Happening? Well, Its Good You Arent Here And Thats About It. Didnt Even Bother To Travel 30 Miles To Take Up The Offer Of A Free Lunch At Cornwalls Most Famous Seafood Restaurant Though, As This Was Compensation For A Lunch I Had There Last Year That Pole Axed Me For Three Days With Food Poisoning, My Non-attendance Wasnt 100 Sloth Related. Arrived To Find An Article - How To Write A Job Ad Left Open On My Desk (rather Pointedly, I Thought) Which Was Vaguely Thought Provoking, Though Things Like Most Are Full Of Corporate Puff And Management-speakfail To Give Detailed Informationgenerally Dont Get The People You Want Were A Bit Too Sweeping For Me (and I Hate All Sweeping Statements). Copy Can Be Quite Emotive, Not Least Because Its The One Area Of Advertising That Anyone Can Do We Dont All Know The Media, We Cant All Design, But We Can All Write So We All Bring Our Own Opinionspet Hates To It. For Example, Theres Lots Of Things I Dont Like; From Previous Experience (isnt All Experience In The Past Or Previous?), Staff As Opposed To Employees (I Use A Staff To Round Up Sheep. Well, I Would If I Had Sheep. And If I Had A Staff), Meticulous Attention To Detail (you Either Have Attention To Detail Or You Dont). None Of These Are Likely To Alter The Response To An Ad (which Probably Should Be The Test Of Whether Any Copy Change Is Necessary In An Ideal World) But I Will Still Try And Amend Any Of These, Every Chance I Get, So The Ad Is Done My Way. To Be Honest, I Can Get A Bit Precious About My Personal Copy Conventions (aka Hes Off On One Again), So Much So That We Actually Have A Little List Of Them That We Refer To Hey, At Least It Ensures Consistency. Though I Like To Think Some Of Them Achieve More Than That Isnt Attractive Salary A Better Sell Than The Rather Dull Competitive, Isnt You Rather More Personal Than The Successful Candidate, Isnt We Thank All Candidates In Advance For Their Interest And Would Appreciate All Replies By Xxx Warmer Than Closing Date Xxx? Anyway, Back To The Article Where, After The Ritual Slaughter Of Almost The Entire Industrys Copy (banal Was Another Description Used), The Authors Laid Out Their Modestly Titled Seven Golden Rules, Based On Psychological Research, To Get To The People You Want Who Are So Busy Being Successful In Their Current Job That They Dont Have The Time Or Inclination To Read The Recruitment Section. Ignoring The Fatal Flaw In This Argument (if These Successful People Are Too Busy To Read The Recruitment Section You Could Write An Ad That Could Outsell The Entire Harry Potter Phenomenon And It Still Wouldnt Work, Would It?), Their Rules Were: 1. Be Bold About Job Title, Salary And Location 2. Spell Out What You Want 3. Describe The Job In Detail 4. Use Questions 5. Tell A Story About Why You Are Advertising The Job But Keep It Real 6. Make Applying Easy 7. Fly Your Flag - Put Your Logo In The Ad. On The Face Of It Nothing Much New There, Although It Was A Shame That Their Own Example Of Good Copy For A Sales Position Youll Be Called In To Clients When The Door Of Opportunity Has Been Opened, To Provide The Technical Detail To Close The Deal Seemed To Include The Type Of Management-type Speak They Abhor And Was Too Wordy - The One Thing All Clients Dislike Because, For Example, Youll Use Your Technical Knowledge To Turn Qualified Leads Into Sales Says Pretty Much The Same. In Over 50 Less Words. The Idea Of Using Questions (4) And Telling Stories, While Keeping It Real (5) Are Well Known Advertising Techniques Which, Research Shows, Do Boost Response (questions Involve The Reader And Make The Process Two Way, While People Do Read Stories). But I Cant Think Of Many Examples Where Questions Can Be, Or Are, Used Meaningfully In Recruitment (interestingly, The Authors Dont Provide Any Examples) Apart From The Ubiquitous Interested? Just Before The Response Details. Which, Incidentally, Is Another Of My Pet Hates Because If They Arent Interested, Id Like To Know What They Are Doing Reading The Ad Through To The End. Perhaps Ploughing Through Ads Of No Interest Is Their Sad Hobby Or Something? As For Telling Stories About Why You Are Advertising The Job, I Have Two Issues. One, Im Not Entirely Sure That, If Candidates See Jobs Advertised That They Really Want, They Give A Fig Why Its Become Available. And Two, As A Golden Rule, It Has The Severe Limitation That Jobs Only Become Available For A Very Limited Number Of Publishable Reasons Mainly Growth Or Replacement (and, With The Latter, You Cant, For Example, Advertise That You Need A New FD Because The Last One Was A Total Twonk), So Im Not Sure How Ad After Ad Repeating One Version Or Another Of These Reasons Enhances Response To Any Of Them. Their Other Point About Telling Stories Is That Recruitment Sections Read As If Failure Never Happens So You Should Stand Out Of The Crowd By Talking About Your Failures As Well As Your Success. Hmmm. I Cant Recall The Worlds Number One Brand Coca Cola Advertising Much About The Effects Of All That Sugar On Your Teeth (If Any, Of Course Legal Editor). Im All For Truth (or Tooth. Ho! Ho!) In Advertising But, In Recruitment, Think This Should Be Limited To Facts Which Id Have As A Golden Rule And A Description Of The Challenges Or Opportunities. Talking About Your Problems Because Chances Are, You Want People Who Can Handle Problems. And Good People Want A Job They Can Get Their Teeth (whats This New Dental Fixation?) Into, Not One Where The Problems Are All Solved Isnt Particularly Logical Or Realistic; Id Be Interested To See If The Authors Could Sell This Warts N All Approach To Any Client, Anywhere. From My Point Of View, A Recruitment Ad Is A Little Bit Like Riding Down A Few Floors In An A Elevator With Your Candidate You Only Have A Few Seconds To Make A Favourable Impression - So Tone (friendly, Personable), Facts (turnover Details, Number Of Employees Rather Than One Of The Largest) And Having A Real Selling Point For The Job Are Far More Important Than Whittering On About The Issues You Face, Asking Questions And Telling Stories. Im Not That Keen On Their Rule About Describing The Job In Great Detail Either - A Marketing Manager Knows What A Marketing Manager Does Most Of The Time Without Having Every Single Detail Spelled Out As If For The Hard-of-thinking. Basically Im Still A Big Fan Of The Price Waterhouse 1990s Research Into Recruitment Advertising, Just About The Only Objective Work Of This Kind Of Which Im Aware. This Found That Candidates Want Straightforward Adverts, Giving Facts, Cutting Out Excessive Jargon And Glossy Adjectives. That Candidates Get Irritated By The Over-use Of Words Like Dynamic, Pro-active, Forward Thinking, Visionary Etc. That They Get Tired Of Motherhood Statements That Tell Us Nothing. That Many Simply Find The Text Of Advertisements Hard To Believe. And That Popular Stocking Fillers Like Growing, Challenges, Exciting Opportunities Are Not The Winners Any Cursory Glance At Any Recruitment Section Would Have You Believe. Quite The Opposite. Theyre In Fact Seen As Evidence Of Mass Corporate Delusion. Whoops.
