Top Tip 3: How to Write a Job Advert That Actually Attracts the Right People

Foxgroves Recruitment Confessions blog has been hijacked by our Employer Top Tips Mini Series! Over the next six weeks, we're sharing practical, no-nonsense tips to help you hire smarter, retain better, and stop making the same recruitment mistakes everyone else is making.

Top Tip 3: How to Write a Job Advert That Actually Attracts the Right People

Let me start with the single biggest mistake I see in recruitment, and it happens before a single CV has even been received.

Most employers think a job description is the same as a job advert.

It isn't. Not even close.

Think of it like selling a house. The job description is the home inventory. It's the technical document that lists every room, every fixture, every measurement. It's necessary, it's accurate, and absolutely nobody chooses a house based on it. The job advert is the listing. It's the glossy photos, the warm description, the reasons someone might fall in love with the place. It tells a story. It sells.

If you wouldn't expect to sell your house with the inventory document, you shouldn't expect to attract great candidates by posting your job description.

And yet I cannot tell you how often clients ask me, "do you have a standard job description template for a [whatever role]?" No. I don't. Because there's no such thing. Every business is different. Every team is different. Every role is different. I also know that they will often try and use this "said" job description as their advert!

Writing the advert deserves your time. Let's talk about why this matters and how to do it properly.

The Job Description Is Not the Advert

Here's what usually happens. Hiring manager gets sign-off for a vacancy. They open the most recent job description (often years old, often inaccurate), copy and paste it into the recruitment system, hit publish. Job done.

Except job not done. What's now sitting on Indeed, LinkedIn, and the company careers page is a 600-word document of internal jargon, key responsibilities, and "essential criteria." Its boring. It tells a candidate nothing about why they would ever want to work for you.

I see it constantly. Adverts that open with "the post-holder will be responsible for..." Adverts that list 14 essential criteria and 8 desirable. Adverts that mention "demonstrable experience of stakeholder management" and "commitment to the company's values" without ever saying what those values actually are. Adverts that read like a tax return.

A job description is a useful internal document. It's for performance reviews, salary banding, and probation conversations. It is not a marketing document, and it is absolutely not what should be appearing in front of the people you're trying to hire.

What an Advert Is Actually For

The advert has one job. To make the right person stop scrolling, read it, and want to apply.

That's it. Not to list every possible duty. Not to repeat the company's mission statement. Not to demonstrate that the role has been properly evaluated and scoped. To stop the right person scrolling.

To do that, your advert needs to answer four questions, in roughly this order:

What's the opportunity? Why would I be excited about this? What does the company actually do, and what's it like to work there? What's in it for me? Salary, benefits, flexibility, career path. What do you need from me, and how do I apply?

Notice what's at the top. It's not the requirements. It's not the qualifications. It's the hook. Because if you don't have somebody's attention by the second sentence, the rest doesn't matter.

The Salary Conversation

I've written about this before and I'll write about it again. If your advert doesn't include a salary or salary range, you are losing candidates before they've even read it.

I know all the reasons employers give for not listing pay. We don't want competitors to know. We're flexible on package. It depends on experience. We're worried about upsetting existing staff. I've heard them all.

Here's the reality. Candidates are scrolling through dozens of adverts. The ones with salaries get clicked. The ones without get skipped. You're not protecting your privacy, you're just removing yourself from the consideration set.

If you genuinely have a wide range, put a wide range. £35,000 to £45,000 depending on experience. That's still useful information. It still tells me whether to keep reading. "Competitive salary" tells me nothing, except that you probably aren't very competitive at all.

The Unicorn Problem

The other classic mistake. Adverts that demand the entire moon for a fraction of the budget. Five years of sector-specific experience, three professional qualifications, fluency in two languages, advanced Excel, project management certification, and the ability to work occasional weekends. Salary: £28,000.

This person doesn't exist. And if they did, they're not working for you for £28,000.

Be brutally honest about what you actually need versus what you'd love to have. Most "essential" criteria aren't essential. They're aspirational. And every aspirational requirement you bolt on cuts your applicant pool in half. Five aspirational requirements and you're advertising to nobody.

Ask yourself two questions about every line of essential criteria. Could the right person learn this in three months? And have we hired anyone in this role before who didn't have it? If the answer is yes to either, it's not essential.

The Cumbria Reality Check

A regional point worth mentioning. "Must hold a full UK driving licence" is a perfectly reasonable requirement in Cumbria when the job genuinely involves travel between sites, visiting clients, or working from a rural base with no public transport. It's a deal-breaker requirement and that's fine.

But I see the same line on adverts for desk-based admin roles in city centre offices. It rules out a slice of perfectly capable candidates for no good reason. If they can get to your office on the bus, they don't need to drive.

Write Like a Human

The single biggest improvement most adverts could make is to read like they were written by an actual person who works at the company. Not by HR. Not by the legal team. Not by AI.

Read your advert out loud. If you wouldn't say those words to someone you'd just met at a networking event, don't put them in the advert. "The successful candidate will be expected to liaise cross-functionally with internal stakeholders" is not how anyone talks. Why would you write it?

Tell people what they'd actually be doing day to day. Tell them who they'd be working with. Tell them what's brilliant about your business, and be specific. Not "we have a great culture." That means nothing. Try "we eat lunch together most days, we've a whole raft f family friendly policies and a buy and sell holiday scheme."

The specifics are what makes someone think, "yes, this sounds like my kind of place."

Take This Further

To help you tighten up your next advert, I've put together the third resource in the Foxgroves Employer Toolkit: The Job Advert Audit Checklist. It walks you through everything that should be in a great advert and everything that shouldn't. Use it on your next vacancy and you'll see the difference in the quality of applications.

What This Means in Practice

If you're not getting the right applicants, the first place to look is your advert. Not your salary. Not the market. Not your sector. Your advert.

Pull up the last vacancy you advertised. Read it as if you were a candidate. Would you click apply? Would you even finish reading? Be honest.

If your advert is just your job description with a salary line at the top, you've got work to do. And the good news is that fixing it costs nothing, takes about an hour, and will completely change the calibre of applications you get.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your next advert before you publish it, drop me a message. I do this all day, every day, and a small tweak in the right place can make a big difference.

Until next Sunday,

Lyndsey