Hi guys.
Today is a bit different. Today we're talking about a specific, and confusing, morning I had when scouring the job boards. Confusing is a new experience for me in the job searching market. It's a pretty straight forward, step by step process normally, but this morning was strange.
The Story
I can't remember when I first came across this specific job ad, it mustn't have been too long ago as I still remember the wording of the advert, the unusually succinct description of the role and person specification. Clearly I thought nothing of it - succinct isn't a problem - and I assume I applied that first time.
Since then, I'm sure I've come across it once or twice, but with the amount of adverts I look at in a day, I guess I thought nothing of the similarities. A lot of adverts use the same language or are after the same skills, why would it mean anything?
But this morning, as I perused LinkedIn for copywriting jobs as usual, I couldn't help but notice that every few I clicked on weren't just similar but exact copies of each other. Once I'd clocked this, I started saving the job every time I came across the same advert. And before anyone tries telling me it's probably the same job on different ad boards, these jobs were all for different companies. Different companies which I googled to make sure they actually existed.
Want to know how many I found in a 1.5 hour search?
12
And I wasn't even trying, I was just doing my usual searches. Now, not every single advert was word for word the same, but it was evident that they had been copied - a bit like when you ask to copy somebody's homework and they say yes but only if you change it a bit, so you switch round a couple of sentences as if that makes it all okay.
Who is doing this?
I get that not every company has a HR team or a member of staff that can dedicate all of their time to recruitment. I also get that not everybody likes to or is good at writing. Obviously the easy solution is go online and see what other people have written for a job description or skill requirements - I'm not having a go at people for making their own lives easier. But some advice to the people writing these adverts: make them stand out by being unique.
This easy copy and paste method might save you time, but the biggest problem is that it could end up looking like a fake advert. Having repeatedly come across the same thing, I was starting to question if it was worth applying because part of me didn't think it was even a real ad anymore.
On top of this, it appears lazy, which is kind of off-putting. When I see the same words on repeat, I'm not exactly inclined to open it up, keep reading, personalise a cover letter etc., etc. It takes time and energy to do these things: two things the company posting the ad doesn't appear to have.
All I'm saying...
Is the same thing I've said before, if the people posting the advert don't put the energy in, why should the applicants? Our time is no less valuable than yours, and whilst reading hundreds of CVs is just as boring as reading hundreds of job ads, if you want to bring in a more exciting candidate, make your job advert more exciting and unique.
As ever, Good Luck with the job search guys
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