Are You Guilty of Recruitment Badvertising?

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Although the channels and methods have changed over the years, advertising continues to play a major role in recruitment. Recently, I saw a tweet about “badvertising” (in the context of being a play on words referring to poorly planned advertising, although the ad may not be intentionally misleading) and it got me thinking about the ways recruiters badvertise their jobs and miss out on candidates that could have been great fits because of it.

So, what does this type of badvertising look like in recruitment? And what can recruiters and employers do to avoid it?



Recruitment Badvertising casts a wide net, but catches the wrong fish. (Click to tweet)

Think about it. Do you really want to hire someone who saw a generic job benin phone number list posting and thought, “I have no idea what I’d be doing, or if I’d even be interested, but it looks like I meet the requirements, so if they pay more, I’ll try it out”? Even amidst the War for Talent, that thought process is still more common than we'd like to acknowledge.

There is nothing wrong with saving some key points about the job until you speak with the candidate. Saving the perks, salary, and benefits until later the interview process can be effective when closing a candidate who may be considering other options until you swayed their decision with new information. but take care to avoid being too generic when advertising the position.

From a targeting standpoint, posting specialist positions to general job boards can fall into this category as well. It depends on the position and industry, but it's a safe bet that a data scientist is spending more time on Dice during their job search than CareerBuilder.



Recruitment Badvertising teaches the wrong message. (Click to tweet)

Like Oprah says, “You teach people how to treat you.” When you advertise as a recruiter, you are teaching candidates how to treat you--or your client--as a potential employer. If you sell too hard and post pixelated images because you didn’t have an appropriately sized logo on hand, then you run the risk of candidates treating your business like a scam and not taking the job seriously as a result. Posting lengthy job descriptions could peg you as an employer with out-of-date business practices. Bombarding candidates’ emails with job alerts for positions they are clearly not a good match for could earn your business an eternal place in their spam folder.