In presenting Small Business Victoria's "Getting the right staff" workshop, one of the subjects that I cover is that of writing good position advertisements.
Why is this important? Because you are trying to find the best person that you can for your business in a very competitive labour market and you need to quickly get their attention - like lots of things in business and life, first impressions count.
To do this effectively, you need to be clear about your value proposition as an employer and communicate that simply and clearly in your ads so that you answer the question:
"Why would I want to work for you?"
Is it your culture, your products, your brand, your development opportunities, your location, your swish offices, the variety of work?
An exercise you might do to explore this further is to:
- Go onto one of the on-line job services like SEEK
- Pretend that you are looking for a job in your industry or occupation
- Scroll through the job listings ticking the ones which appeal to you
- Write down what it is that appeals to you about these as compared to the ones that you dismissed
- Open the selected ads and read the full content
- Decide which of these you would apply for and why
- Review your job ads to see whether you are giving your business the best chance of finding the right person and what you need to change to make this happen.
Have a look at this vodcast on "How to develop and advertise a position" for more ideas.
If you would like assistance in defining and articulating your value proposition as an employer, contact us.
