IT Jobs: How to increase your return on investment with online advertising

With predictions that the UK will be the first economy to spend more money on the Internet than on TV advertising, writing effective copy for your IT job positions is something that will separate you from your competition.

With over 60,000 IT jobs advertised daily, online job advertising has now become the main technique for recruiting new employees. Nearly every candidate looking for IT positions look on the Internet first, so getting it right has never been more important.

To ensure you get a return on your investment, there are four main areas of concentration: understanding how sites offering IT jobs work, understanding your audience, effective copy writing for IT positions and effectively monitoring/tracking your IT jobs positions.

1. Understanding how IT jobs boards work:

It’s fair to say that technically most sites offering IT jobs function in the same way. A candidate inserts their search criteria into a search box and retrieves a list of results ordered by keyword relevance.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that an advert with the most instances of a keyword will come top. The calculation is likely to be based on keyword ‘density’; the number of times a keyword appears in comparison to the length of the advert. This is why you will often see recruitment consultancies writing particularly short but keyword heavy adverts.

2. Understanding your IT audience

There are certain trends that all job seekers display regardless of the sector they are interested in but the online IT job market is practically fully developed now. It is important to understand their needs and to attempt to think like a job seeker sifting through masses of IT positions when composing your IT adverts.


3. Effective copy writing for IT positions

Getting the right balance of information when writing the adverts for your IT job positions are a key element to consider when writing an advert. Too little information will not give the candidate the confidence to apply for the role whereas too much information will swamp the candidate or potentially intimidate them.

Splitting your advert into 4 distinct sections provides a brilliant structure for any advert:

 Company description: candidates want to know whom they are sending their CV to. This is also your opportunity to sell your company as a great place to work.

 Job description: The three most important facts to include are overall responsibilities, day to day activities, working environment - this should include the size and experience level of the team.


 Skills & experience required: ideally this should be in bullet point or in a list detailing the key functions and skills that are essential for the role.

 Benefits offered: you want the best candidates so use this to sell to them. Remember, always think back to what would interest you in you were looking for IT jobs.


4. Effectively monitoring/tracking your IT job positions

The main advantage that online recruitment has given to employers are; speed and measurability. You are now able to get your IT jobs published and receive response quicker than any other media and edit and change the content of your IT adverts if they are not generating enough or the right response.