You post the role. The applications come in. And then you spend an afternoon clicking through CVs that have nothing to do with what you actually need.
Sound familiar?
The problem, more often than not, isn’t the market. It isn’t that good candidates don’t exist. It’s that the advert you’ve written is talking to the wrong people or not really talking to anyone at all.
The best job adverts are the ones speaking directly to the person you’re trying to hire, not just describing a vacancy.
This is a small distinction that makes an enormous difference to who applies.
What most job adverts actually look like
The typical job advert follows a familiar pattern:
- A job title
- A list of responsibilities
- A list of requirements
- Maybe a short paragraph about the company
- A line at the end about being an equal opportunities employer
It reads like a contract clause, not a conversation…
The candidate scrolling through job boards at 9pm (the one who’s good at what they do, not desperate to leave, but quietly open to something better) reads that advert and feels nothing. No pull. No recognition. Nothing that makes them think, ‘yes – that’s the job for me.’
So, they keep scrolling.
The people who do apply are often those with the lowest threshold for doing so: anyone who meets the minimum criteria and needs a job.
The difference between describing a role and attracting a person
Here’s the same role written two different ways.
Version one – describing the role:
We are looking for an experienced Account Manager to join our growing team. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing a portfolio of existing clients, identifying new business opportunities, and achieving monthly sales targets. You will have a minimum of three years’ experience in a similar role and a proven track record of hitting KPIs.
This tells a candidate what the job involves. It tells them almost nothing about why they’d want it, what success actually looks like, or who fits in well here.
Version two – attracting the person:
Our account managers own their client relationships properly – no handover to an account exec, no chasing internal teams for answers. You’ll know your clients well enough to spot an opportunity before they’ve mentioned it, and you’ll have the support and autonomy to act on it. If you’re good at building trust over the long term and find the “just hit the number” approach to sales frustrating, you’ll probably enjoy it here.
Same role. But building a vision of what the role really looks like.
The second version does something the first one doesn’t: it filters. It attracts the candidate who genuinely values autonomy and relationships, and it quietly puts off the candidate who just wants a target to chase. Both of those things are useful.
Why adverts end up the way they do
Most hiring managers aren’t poor writers, they’re just busy.
The job advert gets written quickly, often from a previous version that was written quickly too, because there’s a vacancy to fill and other things to do.
The brief internal conversation about the role – what the person actually needs to be like, what the team dynamic is, what would make someone brilliant at this – ends up being brief and none of the good bits (the little details like team dynamics, quirks of the role) make it into the advert.
What gets published is a sanitised, risk-averse version of the job, written to cover requirements rather than to attract the right person.
There’s also a tendency to write for the most qualified candidate rather than the right one:
- Long lists of requirements that rule out strong candidates who could grow into the role.
- Salary ranges deliberately left vague to “keep options open.”
- Corporate language that makes a good culture sound like every other company’s good culture.
None of it helps.
What a better advert actually does
A well-written job advert does three things:
- It creates recognition
The right candidate reads it and thinks “that’s me” not just “I meet the criteria”; a genuine sense that this role fits where they are and where they want to go. That recognition is what turns passive interest into a decent application.
- It sets honest expectations
Good candidates hate surprises. If the role involves a lot of phone-based sales, say so. If the team is small and everyone covers everything, say so. Candidates who join with an accurate picture of the job stay longer and perform better. The advert is where that picture starts.
- It reflects the company as it actually is
If your culture is collaborative and low hierarchy, the advert should feel that way. If pace and delivery matter, that should come through. Candidates read between the lines. An advert full of corporate clichés signals a company full of corporate clichés, whether that’s true or not.
The questions worth asking before you write
Before you open a blank document, it’s worth spending ten minutes answering these honestly:
- What does the person who does this job brilliantly actually look like? Not their CV, their mindset, their approach, the way they work.
- What would make someone love this role? What’s genuinely good about it: the team, the autonomy, the problems to solve, the growth opportunity?
- What would make someone leave within six months? Knowing this helps you be honest in the advert – which protects everyone’s time.
- Who are we not looking for? Being clear about what doesn’t fit helps you write something that filters well.
The answers to those questions are the advert. Everything else is just structure around them.
A note on job titles and requirements
Two things that consistently undermine otherwise good adverts:
- Job titles that mean nothing outside your organisation
If you’re advertising for a “People Experience Partner” when the market calls it an “HR Manager,” you’re invisible to the candidates searching for the role. Use the title candidates recognise, even if your internal title is different.
- Requirements lists that have grown over time without anyone questioning them
Every requirement you add narrows your pool. Some of them will be genuinely non-negotiable. Many of them won’t be. Be honest about which is which and remember that candidates (particularly women, research consistently shows) are more likely to self-select out of roles where they don’t meet every listed criterion.
A shorter, more considered list of requirements nearly always outperforms a long, exhaustive one.
The advert is just the start
It’s worth being clear about one thing: a better advert brings in better applicants, but it doesn’t replace what happens next.
Screening those applicants properly, briefing them thoroughly, running a structured interview process – all of that still matters.
But if the advert doesn’t attract the right people in the first place, the rest of the process is working with whatever it’s given.
Getting the advert right is the lowest-cost, highest-impact thing most businesses can do to improve their hiring results.
It costs nothing except the time to think carefully before you write.
At Impact Recruitment, we spend time on the brief before we go anywhere near a job advert because who you’re looking for shapes everything that follows. If you’ve got a role to fill and want to talk it through, we’re happy to help.
