With candidates viewing a job ad for less than a minute on average, recruiters can’t waste time with these common mistakes.

Picture this. It’s Friday morning. You’re ready for another great day of recruiting, a steaming coffee sits on the desk next to you. This is your zen place.

You fire up your laptop, ready to write a stellar job ad, when it hits you – this seemingly simple copy is actually super important! You can’t just write a ‘whatever’  job ad. This post will be the first point of contact for candidates to the open role, and maybe even your company.

You start downing your coffee and typing furiously. ‘This ad has to be perfect!’ you think. ‘Unless I want to have as much impact as a fly has on a windshield.’

Well, not to alarm you further, but according to a recent study, most job seekers spend a measly 49.7 seconds reviewing a job ad before clicking away.

So, it’s clear the stakes are high, but let’s return to our calm place… put down the coffee, give your keyboard a break, and let’s go over the hallmarks of a successful job ad, and the terrible, no-good, please-don’t-do-thats to avoid at all costs.

1. Sugar-Coating the Company Culture

When writing a job posting, you want to reflect your organization’s culture and connect back to your core values. Now, what you don’t want to do is sugarcoat things and mention values your company doesn’t actually live.  Make sure you are being upfront in your job ads to attract top talent with the right mix of hard and soft skills that would make a great cultural fit.

Why?

If you say your company is ‘all about work-life balance’ when really you expect workers to pull long nights and be reachable at all times, the charade will be up once the new hire starts. Ultimately, the reality will hit them that they were sold a false bill of goods. When that happens, be prepared to see them leave and don’t be surprised when the negative Glassdoor review follows.

Here’s an example of how to be real about your company culture:

We are looking for a Social Media Marketing Specialist who thrives on teamwork and accountability. If you are not OK with hard startup culture, this place might not be a good fit for you…

2. Staying Silent on Benefits and Perks

Lean on your strengths. If your company has great benefits or perks be sure to flaunt them — remote work options, dog-friendly environment, stellar dental plan, public transit passes, whatever it is, candidates will be interested.

Why?

Having selling points in your job ads that showcase how different you are, sets you apart from the competition. Creating these positive differentiators is important, especially if your brand is relatively unknown.

Here is an example of how to showcase benefits:

If you join our team, you won’t have to leave your furry friend alone at home all day, here at our company we have a dog-friendly office. Speaking of friendly, we are also eco-friendly, we encourage our employees to make use of public transit by offering free monthly passes.

3. Using Meaningless Buzzwords

We all want to hire someone who is: A laser-focused self-starter who can hit the ground running with a blue sky thinking to join our team.

So while you might think that cramming your job advert with buzzwords and fancy wording can make you sound more knowledgeable, it actually comes off as vague and lazy; it may even negatively affect your application rate.

Why?

Did you know that 64 percent of job seekers will not apply for a position if they do not understand what it is about? So, make sure to use specific and simple language that actually resonates with your audience. (If you don’t know who your audience is, this article can help you define your candidate persona.)

Here’s an example of a job ad with specific language:

“The ideal candidate is a product manager with a deep understanding of programmatic advertising and machine learning algorithms as they relate to job boards, advertising, and overall job distribution.” – SmartRecruiters, Product Manager Job Post.

4. Not Going Mobile Friendly

Here is some food for thought: Only 42 percent of recruitment sites are mobile friendly, yet 50 percent of candidates use their smartphones to look for and apply to jobs.

Why?

Mobile search is easy! People scroll through ads while watching TV, or maybe even at work. If you manage to tick the mobile box, you will be able to tap into a much larger candidate pool.

Here’s an easy checklist:

• Under 700 words
• Optimized for one-click apply
• Formatted to fit mobile screens

(Check out common mistakes of mobile recruiting!)

Final Thoughts

Often, the best candidates are already employed aka ‘passive talent’, but that shouldn’t dissuade your recruiting efforts. In fact, 51percent of those who do have jobs are searching for new ones or watching for openings. So, your job ad still counts!

If you manage to avoid these job advertisement writing pitfalls, you will max out the odds of sourcing your next Elon Musk.

That makes no sense. But as companies scrap the paid-time-off quota, this eye-popping perk ends up doing more for bottom lines than tan lines.

“The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation days and paid holidays,” says John Schmitt, senior economist and co-author of a recent Center for Economic and Policy Research study. The US also lacks legislation defining a work week’s maximum length, has no paid sick leave requirements, and no laws to guarantee maternity or paternity leave.

Without a legally mandated number of paid holidays, workers presume to appear less dedicated—or more, replaceable—if they take a proper vacation, and every year, the majority of US workers leave several paid days unredeemed. And the American state of vacay shows little sign of improvement.

In response—and hoping to seem altruistic—some organizations have implemented unlimited paid time off (PTO), touting the policy as the ultimate work perk. Unlimited vacation? Well, yes. But while attractive in theory, these policies often end up serving company interests more than employees.

As far back as 1983, Americans averaged 20 days off a year. According to Project:Time Off, that number had dropped to 16 days by 2014. Only in the last year has it slightly increased to 17 days. In 2017, 52 percent of American workers did not take any time off, a national tally of 705 million unused days, up from 662 million days the year before. On top of this, 85.8 percent of men and 66.5 percent of women reported working more than 40 hours per week.

Conversely, the European Union guarantees minimum 20 paid days per year, excluding bank holidays, with many specific countries offering even more generous time-off policies.

John Schmitt’s CEPR study found the current number of paid vacation days for US workers, on average, is 10 days.

Is the American work ethic to blame for such discrepancy, or is it our self-inflicted culture of overwork, and making ourselves constantly available for work? France recently implemented a “right to disconnect” law, which, as of January 2017, prohibits staff from sending or answering emails outside of set work hours. Meanwhile, according to Project:Time Off, job issues had the most influence on why Americans weren’t traveling, be it heavy workloads, lack of colleague support, or fear of being replaced.

Aiming to adopt a more European attitude, organizations like Netflix and LinkedIn implemented unlimited PTO, and they’ve made for happier and healthier employees. At Nav, a business credit management firm, CEO Levi King did so because, “even if it’s just symbolic, it reinforces the fact that we hired you because you seem like the type of person who can handle a little freedom.”

King argues that unlimited PTO “translates into more gratitude for the job and an even stronger, deeper commitment to the company.” However, “unlimited PTO only works if you’ve hired smart, hardworking people who’ve bought into the vision, mission and values of your company.”

Still, 40 percent of employees report being unsure their company wants them to use all the vacation time they earn. Workplace optics precede the beach for many US workers.

To solve this, you need the kind of company culture building nurtured at giants like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Tech’s big four, known collectively as FANG, have built employer brands that attract talent almost as fast as they generate profit. Not many companies outside Silicon Valley maintain culture where unlimited PTO wouldn’t be seen as antithetical, even blasphemous. Portland, maybe. But with a collective worth valued at more than $1.5 trillion—about the same as the Russian economy—the FANGs are well positioned to reward hard-working employees with these kinds of perks.

But who says unlimited PTO’s a perk, anyway? One of the strongest arguments against is that companies benefit more than employees.

What?

Yep. By nixing holiday totals, businesses are no longer required to pay out unused vacation hours otherwise accrued through traditional policies, saving organizations considerable costs during times of employee turnover.

Last year, Americans forfeited 212 million days, equivalent to $62.2 billion in lost benefits. This means employees effectively donated an individual average of $561 in work time to their employers. That’s not exactly a worker perk.

The solution? Shorter work weeks. New Zealand trust and estate management firm, Perpetual Guardian, experimented with 32-hour work weeks during March and April 2018, while continuing to pay their 240 employees their regular salary. Two researchers studied the effects of this experiment and found that:

• Employees reported a 24 percent improvement in work-life balance.
• Meetings were reduced from two hours to 30 minutes.
• Employees created “do not disturb” signals to notify their colleagues they needed to work without distraction.

Above all, employees remained productive their whole time in the office.

Jarrod Haar, an HR professor at the Auckland University of Technology, and one of the researchers who worked on this project, told the New York Times, “Their actual job performance didn’t change when doing it over four days instead of five … supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks.”

A similar experiment took place in Gothenburg in 2016, when Swedish nursing home Svartedalens mandated a six-hour day without pay cut. City officials saw employees sharply reduce absenteeism, improve health, and complete the same amount of work—or even more.

So far, no US firms have gone in for shorter work-days or -weeks, but both businesses and employees stand to gain from more generous time-off policies.

“Companies encouraging vacation may realize it is a competitive advantage,” Schmitt claims. “Employees who feel supported in taking vacation are happier with their job, company, relationships, and health, allowing them to bring their best selves to the job when they are on the clock.”