What’s the first thing potential employees see when they find a listing for one of your open positions?
Answer: the title. That’s also what makes them decide whether or not they want to read more about the opportunity.
But still, many companies stick with boring titles for their ads, or worse yet, identify the job with a confusing abbreviation.
Even when most people in the field can identify a title like, say, “info sys mgr,” it’s unlikely that any candidates are searching for jobs with abbreviations.
What should recruiters do instead? Try to:
- Use as many keywords as possible in the title. Including the full title as well as any common abbreviations will maximize the chance that your ad pops up on a search engine.
- Go with something interesting. For example, in the book Finding Keepers, Steve Pogorzleski recommends replacing “Legal Assistant needed” as an ad title with something like “Need Legal Eagle with a Legal Eye.” Applicants scan through dozens of postings at a time — an interesting title will help yours stand out.
