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6 Tips to Craft Effective Job Titles That Attract Top Candidates

Hiring the right talent starts with writing better job post titles. Today, attracting top talent is more like an employment marketing process. You should write a great job title, job description, and advertise it so well that it reaches and attracts targeted candidates. However, the first thing that candidates notice is the job title. The more attractive your job title is, the more applications you receive.

The job title is one of the essential factors for the job post. It is the first thing that attracts candidates to apply for the job. However, crafting a great job title is not as simple as it seems. It can lose you applications if not done perfectly. In contrast, a great job title can be the enchantment to lure the best talent. You need to impress job seekers, hiring managers, and search engines for different reasons. This article walks you through how to create the best job titles that bring you the right talent.

6 Effective Tips to Write The Best Job Titles

1. Keep It Simple & Precise

Great job titles are precise and straightforward. After all, the job title should communicate what the actual job is and nothing more necessarily.

Keep the title simple, clear, and precise. Say, if you are sourcing candidates for a manager role, make sure you target managers and not every higher-level professional under the sun.

Writing a generic job post title may seem easy, but it may bring you several irrelevant applications. So, be clear with your job title and make sure it perfectly aligns with the job description.

2. Include Keywords

It may be tempting for you to write creative and flashy titles, but be careful. Your online job posting must reach the potential candidates first before it impresses them. So, make your job title searchable by using standard terms. For example, using “chief happiness officer” in the job post title when looking for an HR manager or VP role doesn’t benefit you. You need to use keywords that describe the role of both job seekers and search engines.

Recruiting is hard. It's just finding the needles in the haystack. - Steve Jobs

The right and relevant keywords in your job post title and description make the process easier by targeting only qualified candidates.

3. Be Informative

The purpose of your job post title is to reach matching candidates and attract them. So, make sure you provide clear information of who you are hiring in the title. You can’t keep the information for the job descriptions and invite unqualified applications or lose potential candidates.

Additionally, avoid using your company-specific terms such as “Accountant level II” or “Associate level I,” which confuses candidates of whether or not to apply. You need to remember that you’re speaking to an outsider, not the insider.

4. Keep Job Seekers At The Center

Although you need to keep search engines, your hiring managers, and other stakeholders in mind while writing a job description, remember your aim is to get applications from potential candidates. So, make sure you’ve put job seekers at the center of the process when you’re writing the job titles.

5. Boring Titles Are Okay

When crafting job posts, bland titles are acceptable if they are clear and straightforward. You can get creative and show your impressive vocabulary skills in the job description. As discussed above, avoid using modifiers, jargon industry words, etc., that may mislead potential candidates. After all, don’t let your candidates ignore your post for your creativity.

6. Be Cautious With Abbreviations

Your job post titles should be short and precise. But that doesn’t mean you can use abbreviations and leave your candidates in guessing mode. For example, avoid using abbreviations such as “mgr” for “manager,” “exe” for “executive,” etc. Job seekers may find it difficult to understand these terms, and hence you may lose some really qualified candidates.

Let us also look at other ways to make job titles that benefit your employees and your business.

How To Make Job Titles That Benefit Your Employees And Your Business

  1. Provide job titles that reflect primary roles and responsibilities.
  2. Understand that employees want the same responsibilities as their co-workers with the same job titles.
  3. Make sure all your employees with the same job titles feel equal responsibility.
  4. Give job titles after you decide on job roles and expectations.
  5. Make job titles sound accurate and effective.
Why Should You Start Writing Effective Job Titles?

Attracting the right talent is every business’ aim, and unfortunately, it is also the most challenging task. As posting the job is one of the first steps to attracting talent, creating better job titles is crucial. Moreover, the competition in the job market is only soaring. Hence, if you’re reaching out to potential candidates with bad titles, you’re only losing them for your competitors.

Hope the above tips will help you create better job titles and help you fill the open positions with highly qualified candidates faster.

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