The following article is the first part of three articles on – How to Post a Job Online. This first article concentrates solely on the Job Title.
Job Title
Job Title is the most important part of your job description. Why? Job title is the first part that the job seeker will see of your job advertisement. In half of the different displays that is also the only part of the job description a job seeker will see. If your Job Title is not catchy, you will lose the attention of a job seeker and he will go to apply for a job better presented by its title.
Besides the visual presentation, the Job Title has the extreme importance in driving the traffic to the web site where the job is advertised. Why? Best job sites are designed so that the Job Title from your job advertisement actually generates dynamically the most important web page elements on the page the job is displayed. Your job title will also become a web page title, a link title, and will display itself on huge number of the places on the web site where the job is published. The result is that the search engine will drive traffic to the page where you have advertised your job – and the traffic will be related to the job title you have chosen for your job.
Choose a wrong job title, and you have missed the opportunity to drive interested job seekers to your job.
So what should a Job Title be on a job site?
In most cases you have some predefined title already. It is usually a name of the role the position will be working on in the company. It is something like Welder, Project Manager, Quality Assurance Specialist, etc.
Now let’s think like a job seeker for a second, and try to imagine what will a job seeker be searching for in the search engines? He might logically start looking for the role name (like Project Manager). If the results are not close enough, the job seeker will include the location. The search phrase will look like Project Manager Dublin. If that does not return what he is looking for, he will filter further with a skill he possesses. So the search phrase comes to Program Manager Dublin Six Sigma.
Now let’s go back to your job advertisement, and look at the ways to attract that candidate. Why him? Well he knows exactly what role, where and with what skills applied is his desired role. People who do not look for a job in Dublin are not potting the word Dublin in the search phrase. It’s a natural filtering process, and the perfect candidate is the one who comes to your job advertised with a search phrase that is a good representation (or the exact match?!) of your job and therefore your job title.
The average quality of the job applications for the position advertised as just a role (Program Manager) is really low compared to the job advertised with a Job Title constructed as a role + location + skill.
Furthermore your jobs page with your job advertised as a simple job role name most likely has a greater competition, meaning many other sites have a page like this, and it will be extremely hard to get the job hunter to your page from the search engine. The more complex your job title is – the less competition for that phrase exists in the search engines, Jour job is more likely to get there on top of the search result and drive the traffic to your job page the page your job is advertised.
Next: Job Tags & Keywords