World's Best Coffee!
The clichés that stop people applying to your adverts
Today I’m writing about the classic cliches that appear in many job adverts.
Those that appear harmless yet can turn good candidates off, while encouraging the careless reader to apply even when they are not suitable.
First let’s think about that scene in Elf, where Will Farrell is blown away by walking past a coffee shop proclaiming “World’s Best Cup of Coffee”. He’s convinced it must be true, the naïve ingenue!
Of course, it’s funny because we know it isn’t, so overused is that line.
And if you were to go into that coffee shop it’s not down to that promise.
Indeed, you’ll probably expect it to be hours old, stewed, and pretty nasty - because of that very lie taking any credibility that venue might otherwise have had.
That’s the problem with clichés in job adverts – one of expectation and assumption.
While you may feel the following makes you an ‘exciting place to work’, imagine what a potential candidate feels when they see exactly the same… in every job advert.
Let’s play a game of buzzword bingo with your own job adverts
Award-winning
Fast-paced
Progressive
Innovative
Passionate
Vibrant
Dynamic
Due to growth
Market leading
Hit the ground running
Communicate at all levels
Cutting edge
Team player who can work well on your own
Guru / ninja / jedi
How many did you spot?
The problem here is that most job adverts are threaded with these, and then added to a shopping list of job ingredients (if you remember last week’s analogy).
And when you’ve had a bad experience in one “fast-paced, dynamic” business, it’s easy to extrapolate those same words in another advert as a red flag.
While some people might read “award-winning” and wonder… how much did you pay?
What can you do?
Three things.
1/ don’t use these words. Explain what you mean by giving examples.
2/ give context to these words.
3/ think about how you would describe your vacancy in person to a friend or peer and write that instead
“We won best SME Employer at the Cambridge Business Awards - showing how we invest in our people and their careers, and more importantly what they think of us”
Improve your adverts and you’ll receive better quality applications, and fewer unsuitable applications.
That’s the end of this edition of YMMV.
The next newsletter is on vetting your agency suppliers to make sure they fulfil their promises. Spoilers: one way is to check out their job adverts.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Greg
p.s. If you’re still here, like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack the time to invest in it, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:
- recruitment of key hires in commercial, operational and technical leadership disciplines
- manage part or all of your recruitment on an annualised service basis (Cognate)
- recruitment coaching and mentoring (if you need a periodic steer in the right direction)
- recruitment strategy setting (for single vacancies through to programmes of work)
- outplacement support
Just hit reply if you want to check if my approach is right for you.