The key here is to start thinking about applicants as people. Not applicants. Candidates are customers, and treat them as such.

1. Write better job ads 

We’ve been over this before. A job post is an advertisement. Its your job to sell candidates on the opportunity, not scare away top talent with a laundry list of requirements. Put yourself in the shoes of who you want to hire, and write your ad accordingly. Here are some basic tips.

2. Set-up an auto-responder 

Any applicant that applies should get a quick thank you for applying note. They just spent their valuable time applying to your company, you should at least do them the courtesy of a response

3. Follow up quickly 

Don’t let hot candidates get cold. The best people will only be on the market for so long, make sure to keep them updated in the hiring process and don’t lose the best folks due to unresponsiveness.

4. Use streamlined screening tools 

Interview process not working? Use assessment tools like video interviews or psychometrics to streamline the process. We’re firm believers in making it easy as possible for the best folks to apply, and that the best applicants aren’t going to jump through a ton of hoops. However, if you make the process efficient and communicate the whole time, you can use these tools to really speed things up.

5. Send out a rejection email 

Even if you’ve passed on a candidate, let them know that the ad has been filled. A personal email to the top applicants is always a good touch, and candidates even appreciate a templated rejection email. We’ve even been thanked for it. Only 25% of candidates hear back from companies after applying, don’t be one of them.

The one thing I’d take away from this post is to treat candidates like customers. And don’t forget that customers are people.

Alex Chuang, the program director at Launch Academy,  created a gorgeous job ad in less than 15 minutes using KarmaHire. By adding pictures of the office, work environment, and team, he painted a compelling picture of the opportunity. He then tweeted out the opportunity, and the job ad took off.

How a job ad goes viral

The first step to getting people to share your job postings? Make your job postings amazing. We truly believe that creating content worth sharing is the key to driving effective referrals and social media hiring. People are more than willing to spread the word about an opening – even excited to – if you present your opportunity in the right way.

Pictures say more than words (as we believe at KarmaHire), and here are some stats on how the job ad went from zero to hero.

The bottom graph shows traffic from various social media channels. As you can see, Facebook was the main driver of traffic, followed closely by Twitter and LinkedIn. After just two days, the stats were astounding:

• Total Views: 910
• Twitter: 17 Tweets
• Facebook: 56 Likes
• LinkedIn: 18 Shares
• Applications: 35

And one happy hire.

2 Key lessons learned:

1. Create content that people want to share. 
2. Leverage your networks

Social media is a powerful source of quality applicants who might not be looking on the traditional job boards. By leveraging tools like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can increase your exposure to passive applicants and hire great people. 

Looking to hire the best? Try KarmaHire today.

Not sure where to start? Here are some creative job descriptions we love.

1. Woot.com

The Czars of creative copywriting, Woot.com brings those skills to their job posting world.  Their recent advertisement for an executive assistant role is highly engaging.

You’re so bright, people mistake you for the greek god Apollo. You’re so multitasking, you’re reading this while juggling. You’re so self-motivated, your application is half-submitted and you haven’t even gotten to the requirements yet! You love detail, you crush deadlines, you organize like a Trapper Keeper and switch gears like Steve McQueen at Le Mans. Discrete like Bond, professional like Jobs, and the kind of humor that means you understand why a job description should be fun to read.

That’s you, and you’ll be showing off your ability to complete complex tasks and projects quickly with little to no guidance by reacting with appropriate urgency to situations that require a quick turnaround, and taking effective action without having to know the total picture. Sound fun? Sound challenging? Want to bring donuts for the staff each morning? Okay, fine, that last one’s not required, but you can’t blame us for taking a shot.

2. LowerCase Capital

Chris Sacca from Lowercase capital was looking for a Cowpoke. Here an excerpt from the awesomely honest job description he posted.

You’ve had a tipping job, or dug ditches, or dug ditches for tips. You’ve traveled extensively abroad and can say “What is your Wi-Fi password?” in over 10 languages. You have a hobby or an interest that has likely put you on a government watchlist, and you’ve responded by putting the government on your watchlist. You play sports more than you watch sports on TV (partly because you think TVs are quaint anachronisms), and you likely grew up somewhere that when you mention it to others you have to follow it up with, “No. Really.” You wish the Dos Equis guy would post his 23andMe results with you to see if you really are related.

3. 37 Signals

Jason Fried is a master copywriter, and his job descriptions are par for the course. Here’s a posting for a “personal IOS prototyper.

This is a perfect position for someone who knows how to work fast and smart. You know where the rabbit holes are and you’re good about avoiding them early on. You know which details make all the difference, and which ones don’t make any difference. You know the difference between spending time wisely and wasting time.

4. AirBnb

Sultans of storytelling, AirBnB’s Careers page is the best we’ve seen. Their job descriptions are simple, but effective. Note the first aspect of the job description for a mobile engineer. Why is mobile important at AirBnb? Great people are looking for impact and challenge. Let them know how they’ll do so in your job description.

5. Stripe

Fast building one of the greatest engineering teams on the planet, Stripe takes similar pride in their job descriptions. Its not about the 10+ years of experience, but what you’ve built and will be building. Their reliability engineer position is  good example.

Reliability engineers make Stripe work. Whether it’s deploying and maintaining server clusters, building tools to automate a deployment pipeline, or designing and implementing a new piece of our request pipeline, reliabliity engineers make sure that Stripe is as fast and reliable as possible.

We’ve also seen some pretty awesome job ads on KarmaHire recently. Strutta is a great example that starts with the impact and the story. What are your favorite job descriptions?

They’re few and far between.  Walls of text. Laundry lists of requirements. Impossible criteria (5+ years experience in node.js anyone?). Setting the bar high is fine, but if you want to attract people are above the bar it takes more than a few bullet points and a Craigslist Ad.

What do people care about? They care about your mission. The work environment. Hard problems to solve. The team. The office. Its not about you or them. Its not about meeting requirements. Its about awesome people meeting awesome jobs and creating beautiful productivity babies. Inspired people do better work, so create job descriptions that inspire to attract the right folks.

How do you write a compelling job description? 

Like any good marketer, put yourself in the shoes of your ideal candidate. 75% of job seekers say the look and feel of a job ad influences their decision to apply. Here’s how to make yours better, starting today.

1. Focus on the why of your job. Why does your work matter?
2. Create an advertisement, don’t post a job
3. Tell a story about who you are as a company, what you value, and why you’re different.
4. Answer the key questions top job seekers ask
• What is the work environment like?
• What will I be working on?
• Will my work have an impact?
• Will it be challenging?
• Will it be fun?
• Who’s on the team?
• What’s the culture like?
5. Keep the bullet points to a minimum. Pick the top 5 requirements and responsibilities that really matter.
6. Use visuals to convey your company culture, brand, and engage job seekers

Stay tuned for some examples of  job descriptions that are driving results.

“Exceptional customer service skills”
“Experience with Microsoft word and Powerpoint”
“Organized and hardworking.”

Albeit, some companies are beginning to shake things up by getting more lively with the job description. Here are  two creative job descriptions we love (from companies we also love).

Shopify writes some killer job descriptions, injecting humour into a oft-too humourless world.

So what is a Shopify Guru, exactly? Gurus are store-building wizards who help Shopify’s customers get their online shops up and running. Every new Shopify store owner is assigned a special Guru who they can go to for support. With close to 40,000+ Shopify stores worldwide, and 2,000 being launched every month, we need Gurus, stat!

Here’s a short list of the mandatory requirements for “Guruland.” If you answer yes to all three of these, this could be the job for you:

You’re comfortable on phones and can type like a mad-man. You have had a customer service job you loved and are all about helping people. You have a sense of humour. The Gurus are a fun bunch and we’ve promised them we wouldn’t hire anyone boring.

Woot.com is also a master of the creative job description.

In this role, you will apply a healthy balance of qualitative and quantitative analysis to those long, moonlight nights by the ocean, analyze historical data and industry trends while stealing the heart of a mysterious Parisian cat burglar who just can’t say no to a dare, and collect first-hand industry insights from existing Woot and Amazon buyers who are experts in their field, a field you might soon find yourself picnicking in if the Governor’s eldest has her way Synthesizing these inputs, you will recommend optimal deal opportunities to ensure the best customer and vendor experience, possibly while wearing a leather jacket over your shirtless torso and staring into the wind.

ZeFrank has a few gems as well.

Ideally you should know what the following acronyms stand for and be able to use any one of them to fix a leaky pipe in my bathroom: CSS, HTML5, PHP, AS (AS3, AS2), C++ (for mobile), and all sorts of APIs. You should know by experience that whatever you don’t understand you can learn quickly. You should be awesome at making JavaScript do things it wasn’t designed to do.

But despite the creative writing exercise, there’s still a glaring problem here. Job postings are advertisements. Advertisements that you pay for. As ads, they fail. People connect with images, style, and brand. Not just text. This has been proven by the advertising industry. And while  copywriting is key, design and visual content is just as important. Adding visuals to your job post increases engagement and gives candidates more reasons to apply.

Hubspot gives  19 reasons why you should include visual content in your marketing materials.

The top 2:

1) 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (Sources: 3M Corporation and Zabisco)

2) 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text. (Source: Zabisco)

These are some crazy numbers, but how many companies do you see with visuals in their job postings? We’re starting to see companies use visuals like infographics, video, and full blown landing pages in their recruiting efforts to stand out and attract the right folks. 75% of current job seekers are employed, and by getting creative you’ll have a better chance at converting those window shoppers into new hires.

They turn the AWESOME up to ELEVEN: Companies large and small still believe listing “competitive salary”, “great team” and “health benefits” over bland backgrounds after a laundry list of requirements on random job boards amongst thousands of other faceless companies are enough to attract the best. This flies against what Facebook, Valve, Google and a slew of notable recruitment branding superstars are currently doing. These companies understand the energy of youth and the importance of life experiences. They do their best to provide a hip environment and space to let people socialize, play, eat learn and learn.  It comes as no surprise that these companies with their high school inspired interior furnishings, open work spaces, arcade cabinets and five star hotel inspired services have a workforce that is constantly full of fresh ideas.

The proof is in the pictures…..or videos….: While reading a line of text describing work environment can get the message across, it pales to pictures and videos when it comes to giving prospects a glimpse of what work life is like. Valve, Facebook and Dropbox utilized “What most schools don’t teach” to showcase their own work environment. Although there was  footage of company workspace, the more important element was showing interactions between company employees. This firstly demonstrates that the work environment is friendly and employees are open to the idea of collaboration to achieve a common goal and secondly that the interactions are genuine and none of it was a staged corporate event.

Be Social: Showcasing work environment has never been easier with the advent of social media. The ability to upload pictures and videos of workplace to be shared on the web is a boon for recruitment marketing. Stale job boards are quickly becoming the thing of the past as more and more forward thinking companies such as Addepar are quickly adopting social career pages that showcase their work environment and can be shared between friends and colleagues alike.

Get social and share the love
Sharing jobs has never been easier.
KarmaHire job ads are designed to share. Over 20% of hires come from referrals, and we want to amplify that process. KarmaHire job ads now come fully baked with easy sharing buttons to top social networks. Make it pretty and share the love.

Go mobile
Beautiful job ads that work on every device
15% of job browsing traffic is on mobile, and at KarmaHire we like to stay on trend. We’re proud to release our mobile theme. You won’t see it in the dashboard, but if you visit your job ad on a mobile device, it automagically appears.

More job boards, more traffic
10+ job boards now integrated, now including Glassdoor.com
We’re adding sources of candidate traffic as demand keeps growing. KarmaHire now publishes to over 10 job boards (and of course the social web).

Indeed.com: The world’s largest job board and driver of 40% of external hires.

SimplyHired.com: SimplyHired is the world’s second largest job search engine, with over 16 million monthly pageviews.

Glassdoor.com is a career social networking site for top candidates to get an inside look into companies. Coming soon!

Three ways to apply.
Making it a breeze to get started with KarmaHire.
We’ve taken your feedback, and made it easy for KarmaHire to fit into any recruiting process (its just good Karma). With 3 options to accept applications, there’s no excuse not to create a gorgeous job ad with KarmaHire.

The KarmaHire TRM: A lightweight and streamlined way for candidates to apply, and for you to easily manage them, all through the KarmaHire platform. Perfect for companies without an applicant tracking system.

Email: Kick it old school and get applications right to your inbox!

ATS Integration: Simply link to your existing application forms and publish away. We’ll still track your conversion rates, and keep things looking pretty. More in-depth integration needed? Please email us.

Thanks again, and please reply to us anytime with questions, feedback, and good Karma.

In the Recruiting Intelligence blog, Dr. John Sullivan lists 18 high impact strategic recruiting metrics that will wow executives. He cautions against using HR metrics for measuring past years, because reporting what happened “yesterday” has little value. The best metrics are the ones that cover your current time period.

The Employer Branding Review lists 25 HR metric mistakes. The story these HR metrics tell is irrelevant to your company’s measurement efforts.

Sajjad Masud on Business Insider lists 5 core HR metrics, which also include employee referral rates.  Referrals through employees are one of the best sources of top candidates, and referrals through social media are an increasing trend.

HR and Talent feels that the 2 most important measures of recruitment are Quality of Hire and Recruiter Service Delivery.  The measure should be taken during the new hire’s first 6 months to 1 year to see if he met, exceeded or failed his targets. Recruiter Service Deliver should measure how effective the recruiter was in delivering the recruitment service to his manager.

KarmaHire revolutionizes the 9B recruitment advertising market. It is an optimized hiring platform for fast growing companies to create high converting recruiting pages in minutes, attract better talents, and increase their ROI.

ePACT is the emergency network that connects families, organizations and entire communities via web and mobile access to critical information, communication and support in any crisis.

Procurify is a spend management solution for organization of all sizes. It is an online software that is easy-to-use, secure, and cost effective.

Spacelist is the MLS for commercial real estate. With over 16 million square feet of available space, businesses can clearly see all their options, setup a tour and move into a great space with less stress and less confusion than ever before.

Nanu Interactive develops applications that add sharing and magic to family activities. We want to enrich the things you do by using technology to make them magical.

OOHLALA is the must have collage app that helps you connect with your campus life.

Will Pwn 4 Food makes fast-action 3D games that you can play on their website, anytime, anywhere for actual cash and prizes!