We live in a time of incredible competition when it comes to finding quality talent. In order to have your company and open positions stand out, it is crucial that you have a job listing that is compelling and attractive. Without it, you will fail to grab the attention and interest of job seekers that are qualified.

In the end, you will find yourself inundated with irrelevant resumes, creating more work and worse results.

The age-old conundrum of having to wade through the “noise” is something that increasingly affects hiring managers and HR professionals. With the ever-growing workforce and propagation of job listing options, hiring professionals face challenges like never before. In order to find the right candidates for the right positions, without having to spend countless hours reading through irrelevant resumes, creating a solid job description is a crucial step.

What are the key elements to a successful job listing?

In order to craft an effective job listing, there are 5 main areas to focus on. Taken from a recent eBook covering the same topic, these key elements will help guide you in crafting your best job listings.

  • Job Title

A job title is the very first thing a candidate sees when your job listing pops up, and it’s so much more than a title. It’s important to grab candidates’ interest — and get plenty of quality applications — by giving your open job the right name.

When deciding on a job title, it’s important to focus on clarity, relevance, honesty, and research.

  • Company Description

99% of company descriptions fail to do one important thing: Sell your company to the candidate.

This section is a chance for you to sell someone not just on the job itself, but on the workplace culture and environment that they’re going to experience every day. And you should do it in two to three sentences, max — an overly wordy description will lose their attention.

  • Job Responsibilities

There are three characteristics of a job responsibility section that should be followed:

  • The intended outcome or result
  • A description of the task(s)
  • An active verb

List all of the essential functions of the position, which should include around 5 responsibilities. Start each responsibility with a present tense, action verb and remember to be honest about how often a task will be performed or what percentage of the employee’s time will be spent with each task.

This will help applicants form an idea of what a typical day may look like.

  • Required Skills/Qualifications

The required skills section is where you take the responsibilities for the job.

In this section, it is important to clearly state, in bullet point form, the skills, experiences, and qualifications required.

  • Mobile Friendliness

We live in a mobile world and job listings should reflect that reality. There are 7 steps to making a job listing mobile friendly.

  1. Keep job titles short
  2. Delete extraneous text
  3. Break up paragraphs
  4. Watch out for bullets, numbered lists, and symbols
  5. Use listings sites that offer clean mobile design
  6. Make sure candidates can take action in the moment
  7. Do quality control from your phone