Recruitment ad bloopers

Many organisations produce content for their own recruitment ads – some are good at it, but many fail to press the hot buttons. There are golden rules to writing effective copy which many people are blissfully unaware of. One serious problem with inexperienced ‘copy writers’ is that they fail to recognise that some of the copy they write can be offensive and breach anti-discrimination laws.

A survey by Kelly Services provided insight to how serious this can be. When asked to consider a job ad which had a choice of copy content, 105 of the 220 respondents failed to identify material that is considered offensive. 22% of the 105 were human resources professionals. Some of the more obvious terms bound to offend were ‘office junior’, ‘saleswoman’ and ‘six years’ experience’.

Apart from the risk of using inappropriate and offensive language in ads, we are constantly amazed at the dreary and uninspiring copy that features in many recruitment ads. They fail in some very obvious areas:

> not aligned with their target audience
> use mundane and uninspired language
> don’t compel the reader to respond
> hierarchy of information is ill considered
> poorly describe the position, its importance and its potential
> leave out key details on what is required of the applicant
> copy and design don’t complement each other
> are inconsistent with the ‘tone of voice’ adopted by the organisation’s brand

How confident are you when faced with the task of writing compelling and inoffensive ad copy? Placing ads is an expensive exercise. If the ad is to attract a key player in your organisation for a salary of say $100,000 or $200,000, you want to make sure that it is going to get a good result that doesn’t attract complaints. Perhaps the copy writing is best left to the professionals?

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and co-founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au
www.brandsynergy.com.sg