Believe it or not, recruitment and copywriting go together like cheese and crackers. 😋 Fundamentally, they both aim to sell something to an audience through communications and creating an experience. Marketing sells products and services to consumers while recruiting is trying to sell a role to a candidate. However, asking a recruiter to grasp the art of writing high-quality content is a major challenge. The writing must stand out against the crowd whilst attracting the same candidates as the competition. You must sell the role but be very concise and factually accurate. In this blog, we explore the four key elements of recruitment copywriting to ensure your job ads, descriptions and communications hit the spot.

What is Recruitment Copywriting?

If you didn’t know already, copywriting is a profession that creates and produces written content for marketing and advertising purposes. It’s widely regarded as one of the most crucial elements of any campaign. Now, throw this in with recruitment, and you will get job ads, social media posts, careers blogs, website content, and candidate communications. In recruitment, copywriting impacts the way candidates respond to your job ads and can influence their decision to accept an offer or not. To successfully marry recruitment and copywriting, you must consider the tone, the audience, the me and the structure. Let’s explore these in more detail below.

Copywriting for Recruiter Tips ✍️

💡 The Tone

The key to all good content is using the right tone of voice. You must be willing to wear many hats and adapt the way you address each candidate, depending on the job role, the industry and the type of communication. For instance, adopting a creative and playful style for a senior role at a financial organisation will make the employer you’re representing look unprofessional.
Similarly, if you keep things formal and use long, heavy sentences for a role at a fun and vibrant agency, you’ll instantly sap the life out of the brand. Think about your audience and address them in a way that will resonate.

💡 The Audience

Knowing your audience is an integral part of recruitment copywriting. Sure, you might know what type of professional your client is after, but do you know what makes them tick? What are their behaviours? How do they like to be addressed? Once you establish this deeper understanding, you’ll be able to adapt the tone and personalise the message. Ask yourself this, do you prefer it when a candidate submits a personalised CV and cover letter for a role? Or do you like a templated version? The truth is personalisation works both ways. No, you can’t include a candidate’s first name in a job ad. However, you can think about:

• What will your ideal candidate be looking for in a role?
• What benefits are important for them?
• What search terms will they be typing into Google?

The next step is to invest in modern automation tools, such as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Solutions like this enable you to log candidate data and send relevant nurture emails accurately. It’s the perfect way to keep your agency top of mind and entice passive candidates to take a leap of faith.

💡 The “Me”

Whether you’re selling a product or a role, people will always think about what’s in it for them. In today’s digital world, we’re inundated with content and job adverts. That’s why it’s vital to create content that appeals to skim readers. Most proactive candidates will look through dozens and dozens of jobs every day. So, they don’t have the time to read every ad, word for word. The key to recruitment copywriting success is to always lead with your employee value proposition (EVP). In other words, the content and visuals highlight the value a candidate can expect from a role. Ideally, you want your target audience to know why other candidates decide to work for your client’s business, what makes them stay, and what makes the said business different from its competitors.

💡 The Structure

When it comes to writing a job advert or any other form of recruitment content, the structure doesn’t always spring to mind. Nevertheless, research recently revealed that the average human attention span has dropped to eight seconds. For context, that’s a 25% decrease in the space of a few years! The solution?

• Keep your paragraphs between two and three lines.
• Use bullet points to break up bigger sections.
• Include headings to split up job ad text.

Outsource all Recruitment Copywriting 🤙

If you’re still not feeling confident about recruitment copywriting, you can always outsource the process. The good news is with AdBuilder is that you can create fully optimised job advert content in less than ten minutes! Just fill out a few basic details, and this innovative SaaS platform will provide job ad content in four different styles. It’s consistent, automated and effective.
To learn more, go to our website.