Time and time again early childhood education and care professionals tell us the biggest challenge they face is attracting and retaining high quality staff.

With the well acknowledged staff shortages facing the sector and the pressure on services to recruit qualified staff in time for the 2014 ratio changes it seems timely to offer some suggestions on what your service can do to attract the best and brightest through writing appealing and effective job advertisements.

The techniques offered below were written by Alan Chapman who runs the Business Balls website a learning and development resource for people and organisations.

The best techniques for writing effective job advertisements are the same as for other forms of advertising. The job is your product; the readers of the job advert are your potential customers. The aim of the job advert is to attract interest, communicate quickly and clearly the essential (appealing and relevant) points, and to provide a clear response process and mechanism.

Design should concentrate on clarity or text, layout, and on conveying a professional image. Branding should be present but not overbearing, and must not dominate the job advert itself. The information must be communicated effectively one way or another to the target audience.

Job adverts and recruitment processes should follow the classical AIDA selling format: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

This means that good job advertisements must first attract attention (from appropriate job-seekers); attract relevant interest (by establishing relevance in the minds of the ideal candidates); create desire (to pursue what looks like a great opportunity), and finally provide a clear instruction for the next action or response.

There is a good chance that job adverts which don't follow these vital principles will fail to attract job applicants of quality in quantity.

First up some some common pitfalls for writing and designing job adverts, try and avoid these errors when writing your ads.

Job Advert No-Nos

• over-designed graphics (distracts and slows reading)
• extravagantly presented layouts and words (distracts and slows reading)
• lay out which is difficult to read quickly for any reason
• font (type-style) which is too small or too large
• unnecessary use of capital-letters
• lots of words in italics - they are a lot more difficult to read quickly
• strange-looking or fancy fonts
• use of strange colours
• clever or obscure headlines
• too much technical detail about the job or the company
• too many words - they are a real turn-off - keep it simple
• uninspiring, boring descriptions of roles and ideal candidates
• too much emphasis on the job and not enough on the person
• weird advert box shapes, for example wide and flat or tall and thin

Now that you know what not to do here are the things you do need to do to ensure your ad stands out from the crowd and attracts a good number of high quality candidates.

Writing an Effective Ad
Use one simple headline, and make the job advert headline relevant and clear. Normally the logical headline is the job title itself - this is after all what people will be looking for.

An effective alternative main headline is to describe (very succinctly - and in an inspirational manner) the main purpose of the role, which can then be used with the job title and organisation's name serving as secondary headings.

If the organisation is known and has a good reputation among the targeted readers then show the organisation or brand name prominently, as a second heading or main heading with the job title, or incorporated in the job advert frame design, or in one of the corners of the space, in proper logo-style format.

Make the advert easy to read. Use simple language, avoid complicated words and keep enough space around the text to attract attention to it. Less is more. Giving text some space is a very powerful way of attracting the eye, and also a way of ensuring you write efficiently. Remember, efficient writing enables efficient reading.

Use language that your reader uses. If you want clues as to what this might be imagine the newspaper/websites they read, and limit your vocabulary to what you think would be found in those papers/websites.

Use short sentences. More than fifteen words in a sentence reduces the clarity of the meaning.

Use bullet points and short bite-sized paragraphs. A lot of words in one big paragraph is very off-putting to the reader and will probably not be read.

Use simple type-styles: Arial, Tahoma, Times, etc, or your house-style equivalents or variations. Serif fonts (like Times) are more traditional and more readable. Sans serif (like Arial and Tahoma) are more modern-looking, but are less easy to read especially for a lot of text.

Use 12-20ish point-size for headings and subheadings. Try to avoid capital letters even in headings, it's much slower to read. Increase prominence by use of a larger point-size, and if necessary bold typing.

Use ten, eleven or twelve point-size for the main text; smaller or larger are more difficult to read and therefore less likely to be read. Avoid capitals in the main body of the text.

Avoid italics, shadows, light colours reversed out of dark and weird and wonderful colours as these all reduce readability. Use simple black (or dark coloured) text on a white (or light coloured) background for maximum readability.

Try and involve the reader. Refer to the reader as ‘you' and use the second person (‘you', ‘your' and ‘yours' etc) in the description of the requirements and expectations of the candidate and the job role. This helps people to visualise themselves in the role.

Try to incorporate something new, innovative, exciting, challenging - people are attracted to new things - either in the company or the role.

Stress what is unique about the role. You must try to emphasise what makes your job and organisation special. People want to work for special employers and are generally not motivated to seek work with boring, run-of-the-mill, ordinary, unadventurous organisations.

Job advert statements and descriptions must be credible. Employers or jobs that sound too good to be true will only attract the gullible and the dreamers.

Remember AIDA:
The Attention part is the banner or headline that makes an impressive benefit promise. Interest builds information in an interesting way, usually meaning that this must relate closely to the way that the reader thinks about the issues concerned.

Since job advertisements aim to produce a response you must then create Desire, which relates job appeal and rewards to the reader so that they will aspire to them and want them.

Finally you must prompt an Action, which may be to call a telephone number or to send a CV or to download an application form from a website address. Your job advert should follow this step-by-step format to be effective.

Your main heading, strapline and main message must be prominent. Headlines do not have to be at the top of the frame - your eye is naturally drawn to a point between two-thirds and three-quarters up in the framed area, which means you have room above the headline for some subtle branding, or some blank space.

People often assume that big adverts produce a big response - they don't unless they are good. A good moderately sized advert will produce just as good a response as a good massive advert.

Checklist
Having seen the layout and design rules above, here are the items to include in an effective job advert. The bold items are those which would normally be essential; the others are optional. The list is loosely in order.

• job title
• employer
• job base location
• description of business/organization and market position and aims
• who the position reports to - or other indication of where the role is in the structure
• outline of job role and purpose - expressed in the second-person (you, your, etc)
• indication of scale, size, responsibility, timescale, and territory of role
• outline of ideal candidate profile - expressed in second-person
• qualifications and experience required (could be included in candidate profile)
• salary or salary guide
• whether the role is full-time or permanent or a short-term contract (if not clear elsewhere in the advert)
• other package details
• explanation of recruitment process
• response and application instructions
• contact details as necessary, for example, contact person address, phone, email
• job and or advert reference (can help you analyse results from different ads for same job)
• website address
• corporate branding
• quality accreditations
• equal opportunities statement

Remember you need to write your ads from the viewpoint of the job hunter; instead of focusing on what you need in a new recruit you need to carefully consider what your ideal candidate would want in the role and focus on highlighting those points in your advertising campaigns.

Showcasing the unique selling points of your organisation and why it is a great place to work as well as any interesting aspects of the job will be the best ways of attracting a good number of high quality candidates to apply.