June 9, 2015 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Whether you work at a small nonprofit looking for entry-level program staff or at a major international charity seeking a new leader, finding top talent is a high priority.
And to find those people, experts say, job postings should be engaging, clean, and concise.
“People will sometimes look at hundreds of job ads each day, so make sure yours is clear and easy to evaluate,” says Matt Cifaldi, a community manager at Idealist, a website that offers, among other things, a searchable database of nonprofit jobs.
Below are some tips to follow to help you write great job advertisements that generate interest and avoid turning off potential candidates.
Ads should include four main components — not necessarily in this order:
1. A solid job description. Organizations must have a clear idea of what the position entails internally before presenting it to candidates. Once the description is complete, pull out the most important aspects of the job to include in the advertisement.
“It’s better to just give a sense of the kinds of projects the person will be working on — the key buckets — although those things may be open to change,” says Katie Radford, who oversees hiring and recruiting at the youth volunteerism organization DoSomething.org.
When recruiting for executive positions, start with information about the job opportunity instead of the organizational summary, says Divina Gamble, who oversees the global nonprofit practice at recruiting firm Korn Ferry.
“Put things from the perspective of the executive — why they might be looking and what might grab their attention,” she says. “You want it to be enticing or sexy. We’re trying to present why an opportunity could be really intriguing for somebody.”
2. An overview of your organization. In contrast to Ms. Gamble’s approach for executive job ads, Nadine Coleman, director of talent acquisition at City Year, a young-adult service organization, says she likes to have the organization’s “elevator pitch” at the top of the post.
“Talk about the organization — what you’re looking for, where you’re going — to get people jazzed and excited,” she says.
Wherever you include it, be sure to write at least a few sentences about your organization’s mission and what the organization does. “Be aware that people are often coming to the job from an outside site, so they’re not necessarily looking first at your organization and then clicking on the job,” says Mr. Cifaldi.
3. The required and preferred candidate qualities. When listing job responsibilities, be very clear about what is required and what is preferred. You can see how City Year does that here.
Take the example of language, says Mr. Cifaldi. “If you really want someone to speak Spanish, you don’t say ‘Spanish speaking preferred,’ you say ‘Must be a Spanish speaker,’” he says.
Being precise will help narrow down the pool of applicants.
“You want to target the right people,” says Ms. Gamble. “It’s not about just getting volume.”
That means making sure the position criteria have some parameters while still being wide enough that people don’t rule themselves out, she says. Requiring a certain level of education or requiring that candidates have raised a certain amount of money may help narrow your search.
4. Instructions on how to apply. Let candidates know what you expect them to include in their application and how and where to send it. That advice may sound obvious, but occasionally people forget to put the email or postal address they want applicants to use, or they misspell the address, says Mr. Cifaldi.
Nonprofit recruiters and human-resources experts offered some additional tips:
Include what you can about salary and benefits. If you’re able to provide salary information, do it, says Ms. Radford. “You don’t want someone above or below that salary applying, because they’re probably not going to be interested in the job,” she says.
For jobs where the salary is flexible, consider including other information about benefits — “even little things, like free lunch every Wednesday, or this many vacation days,” Ms. Radford says. “Anything the position offers in the form of non-monetary compensation, in a competitive market, might make the job more appealing to someone.”
Try to convey your organization’s culture. The tone of your job ad should help tell the potential applicant what your organization’s about. “Whatever your office or your organization’s feeling is, whatever tone you take in day-to-day work, try to have that come through in your job posting,” says Mr. Cifaldi. DoSomething, for example, hopes to appeal to a younger demographic, and it makes that clear with an irreverent tone in its job postings.
Ask for more information than standard. Beyond the standard resume and cover letter, consider asking a few additional questions — for instance, ask applicants to briefly explain exactly why this cause is important to them.
DoSomething, for example, will often ask applicants to complete a questionnaire. “It gives us a better sense of how they’re thinking and if they really understand who we are and the kind of work that we do,” Ms. Radford says.
For a director of business development and partnerships position at TMI, the nonprofit’s consulting agency, one of the questions was “Who would be a dream client for TMI? And what would we do for them?”
When people don’t answer the optional questions, that’s a signal as well: “If people don’t want to take five extra minutes to fill out that questionnaire to send in a really great application, it probably means that they’re not dying to work here,” she says.
Remember that less is more. You don’t want to have a very long job advertisement unless it’s absolutely necessary. In particular, if you’re looking for a top executive, keep in mind that these people are extremely busy, says Ms. Gamble.
“Touch on the main points in different sections,” she says, “Make it engaging enough that somebody wants to know more and could then go to a full description or connect with a hiring manager or a recruiter.”
Post in several media. Ms. Gamble says that more and more of her nonprofit clients are mindful of cost and want to post their job advertisements online. “They feel that the executives they want are technologically savvy and would be looking online as opposed to in print,” she says.
But print publications have their advantages as well. People who are not actively job-hunting may come across the ad while reading a magazine or newspaper relevant to their field.
Include the right people in drafting the advertisement. Who will write the job description and advertisement depends on the size of your organization.
When Ms. Gamble is doing an executive search, she often speaks with board members and staff to solicit input on what’s needed to help her craft the description.
If your organization has its own human-resources specialist, he or she should be involved. A communications staff member (or someone else who’s familiar with writing copy) and a manager from the team that is hiring should also participate.
Misspellings and other mistakes in job advertisements can be a red flag for job applicants, says Mr. Cifaldi. Doublecheck everything, he urges. Having someone else review the advertisement is always wise. The more people who review the ad before it’s posted, the better.
