How To Write A Great Job Ad

When looking for staff, the first interaction you’ll have with a candidate is often via your job ad. As ever, first impressions count.

For our part, HealthyPeople works to ensure consistent branding of your business with good looking and spell-checked ads. We also ensure that interactions we have with your potential candidates are professional. And where required (or requested) we provide recommendations on ad content to help deliver the best possible result.
Our advice on ad content usually consists of the following suggestions:

The purpose of the job ad is to sell the role, not fill it

Obviously, we’re trying to fill a role. But no one is going to be given a job offer from their application alone. The purpose of a job ad, therefore, is to sell the role to suitable candidates.

Tip: Your job ad must be short, to the point and clearly highlight the benefits to the candidate.

Following are a few general points to keep in mind

You’re not just competing with other facilities for good staff. You’re also competing with other industries.

Keep in mind how your ad is likely to be viewed. That is, the majority of candidates browse job ads on their phones.

Ads are often viewed in transit or in-between other activities, so it’s important your job ad is easily skimmable^. Formatting goes a long way towards achieving this, so make sure you keep the content grouped under clear sections and keep the copy short and use short bullet points where possible.

Here’s how we recommend you structure your job ad

About us

About your business and what you do as it relates to the candidate – DO NOT just copy and paste your pitch to members/clients.

About the role

Outline what’s on offer. For a candidate to figure out if they are suitable for the role (and in turn, if the role is suitable for them) they need a few key details.

• Full-time/part-time/casual/rental?

• What kind of hours? How many? Split shifts? Flexible?

• 1 on 1 sessions only? Sales required? Group Classes?

What we offer

• Use dot points

• What kind of training and development do you offer?

• Are there career progression opportunities? What are they?

• What is the team/culture like? (social events, regular meetings, etc)

• Paid hours available? Flexible hours?

• Do you provide leads?

• Any special equipment, types of clients or another point of difference?

It helps to try and answer the question ‘Why would a great candidate want this role at your gym versus the one down the road?’  This is especially relevant for rental trainer roles.

Requirements

Keep this to core requirements. The ‘must haves.’ If your bullet list is longer than a few points, you may want to revisit what is actually a must-have for the initial expression of interest.

Remember, this isn’t the be all end all, you can still screen for certain skills and qualities later in the recruitment process but listing too many here could put a good candidate off.

Apply today!

Be clear who they are applying to and how.  e.g Please submit your cover letter and CV to our Club Manager, Dennis, via the APPLY button.

Tip: Ask your current team what they think should be under each section, you may be surprised by what you learn.

By its very nature, job advertising works on the principle that the right candidate(s) are looking for (or open to) an opportunity with you, in the four week period that you happen to be advertising. While no one can guarantee the success of every ad on every occasion, for those employers that choose to follow the above tips, the likelihood of success will be far greater. 

^ Sure, some employers would say they only want to talk to candidates that go through everything in detail. By all means, include hurdles to clear, but as with any writing, we want to ensure the relevance and benefit to good candidates is immediately obvious.
* Bullet points should not be more than 1-line long. This defeats the purpose.