Finding the perfect employee is hard at the best of times, finding one for a startup might be even harder. You should therefore try and spend more than five minutes writing your job ad to avoid people looking at it once and moving on.
This is all written from examples and experiences from ads on our own platform. The following guidelines aren’t set in stone, but something to take into consideration if you feel completely clueless.
Job Title
Keep the title as short and simple as possible while keeping it precise. The more detailed your job title is the more likely it is to catch the eye of someone qualified. Relevancy is also key, you ideally want your ad to match the likely search terms a candidate would type into a search box.
Don’t: Developer
Do: Senior Back-End Developer
In the early phases of a startup it’s not unusual for people to have multiple roles or a very wide range of responsibilities if that is the case try and indicate that in the title as well.
Company description
Explain what your company does what your product is, and if you have one what your mission statement is. The key is to keep it informative and interesting without dragging it out.
Tell your potential next employee what makes your company
different, what you are looking to achieve. Help them identify with your
company and being able to imagine themselves working for you. Make it easy for
them to choose you over your competitor.
Joining a startup can sometimes feel like a risk so try to reduce the feeling of
risk and inspire confidence in you and your product.
Job summary
Avoid just listing keywords with no context, it gives the candidate limited information.
List out the main objectives of the job and if you can explain a bit how they will be achieved and who you will be working with.
For example: You will be working directly with the Marketing manager to improve our social media following. To achieve this, you will be expected to create content for our social media channels as well as using paid ads.
This helps the candidates figure out how qualified they are for the job and makes it easier to understand how their days would be spent.
Required experience
Write down the minimum knowledge, experience and education
that is required for this position.
It’s understandable that you want the best possible person for the job, but at
the same time it’s important to be realistic. Speak to an experienced person in
a similar role and get to know what suitable requirements for the role are.
Don’t be one of those people asking for 5-year experience and a master’s degree for a junior role.
Experience/Attributes that gives advantages
Those are the skills that give you an advantage in some way
but aren’t mandatory. This can be both typical skills such as knowing more programming
languages or random life skills that you deem valuable.
Knowing more hard skills might mean the candidate requires less training, while
having been an athlete might have taught a person something you are looking
for.
Perks
What are the perks of working for you? List them all, this is where you can really differentiate your company from others.
- Vacation days
- Hardware you provide for the job
- Self-improvement programs/budget
- Gym deals
- Cycle to work scheme
- Work from home (in non covid times)
- Social events
- Equity
The options are endless.
How to apply
What do you want from your candidates – a CV and cover letter? Only a CV? CV and their LinkedIn profile. Make it clear what you want, it saves you time and effort not having to message people asking for additional information.