I Used To Write Job Ads
Posted by Mitch on 8th October 2014
Back in the day, just before and during the early days of the Internet, I used to write job copy. I generated about 90% of my fees by selling this to my clients.
I produced pretty good display ads. Probably not always as great as what they’d get from a decent creative ad agency, but miles better than anything produced by any other recruitment agency.
But mine were free – paid for out of the retained fee the client would always pay to use the ad as the spearhead of the recruitment campaign they’d give me.
Years later, as fame spread about my copywriting prowess (amongst about 5 of my friends), I’d occasionally get asked to write a job ad – often for as little money as to make driving to Margate for a job interview flipping burgers on minimum wage sound appealing.
Here’s one such phone conversation, as best as I can remember it, with a friend that we’ll call ‘John’:
John: “Mitch, we need an ad. We’re looking for some new recruiters to join our team. Can you do us something?”
Me: “Maybe. Have you got some kind of job description?”
John: “No, that’s partly why we want you to write the ad for us.”
Me: “But I don’t know what it’s like to be a recruiter at your company?”
John: “It doesn’t matter, all recruiter jobs are the same anyway.”
Me: “True. But I need to find out more about your business if I’m going to find a way of selling you to the right people.”
John: “Everything you need to know is on our website. Can you get something over this afternoon?”
Me: “Sure, no problem. All I have to do is hit ‘F5’ on my computer to get this done anyway.”
John: “Are you being sarcastic?”
Me: “No, not at all. Producing good job ads from fuck-all information is really easy. I am just a job ad jukebox afterall.”
John: * click *
I used to write job ads.
If you really do want to attract better candidates for a particularly important job, hire a copywriter.
And pay them what they ask for.
Comments
By Jon on Wednesday, 15 October 2014That there is the problem I see all over the place. Recruitment Companies who can’t write a job description, don’t really know who they are or what they want apart from the biggest biller from the competition down the road. Give em a desk, they’ll make money eh? They can never provide a compelling reason to join beyond a 2k hike in base salary, the carrot of big bonus (that seems to disappear fairly quickly) We get employee engagement, the fact the MD once flew the team to Spain for a boozy weekend when the company employed only 5 staff four years ago is not employee engagement………..Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Use an r2r who knows what they are doing or hire a person to recruit for you. We make all the same mistakes we tell our clients not to make. That should tell you how seriously a company takes the recruitment of their own staff.
Bit of a rant, sorry.
Jon (not that John)
By Mitch on Thursday, 11 December 2014
Lovely sign-off, Jon.
:)
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