For a lot of people, job-hunting is one of the most stressful and challenging aspects of the working world. However, if you’ve ever been on the other side of the equation–the person recruiting for a job–you know it can be equally, if not more, challenging. You have to make sure that your posting accurately describes the position and lists the appropriate skills necessary to thrive with that specific workload. Sure, a lot of people could probably do a mediocre job at anything, but it’s your job to find someone who will be exceptionally good at this particular position, as well as someone who would fit well into your company culture.
So how do recruiters accomplish such a feat? SimpleTexting, an SMS marketing platform, recently performed a study on job postings, analyzing over 30,000 different postings. They found that a lot of recruiters add similar content to their job postings and discovered some other trends as well.
For starters, most job postings in the fields of accounting, graphic design, marketing, sales, and software development (5 common fields used to narrow down the findings) include starting salary and are between 400 and 450 words. Jobs within the same field had additional similarities such as the top skill desired. For a sales position, for example, they not surprisingly were often seeking someone with sales experience. Marketing was a little more diverse and the most frequently desired skills were customer service, sales experience, and teamwork. Accounting showed even more diversity with 5 skills being highly sought after CRM (customer relationship management), customer service, sales experience, teamwork and communication skills.
Feel like you need more than a bachelor’s degree to work in certain fields? Turns out you may not. According to the study, for each of the 5 fields looked into, between 83-87% of jobs require only a bachelor’s degree, with only 3-5% requiring something higher than that. In fact, looking at major US hiring hubs, only 28-41% of jobs overall required a bachelor’s degree or higher, with Los Angeles and Dallas making up the low and high of this statistic respectively.
Benefits are another thing commonly included in job listings. Across the 5 fields primarily observed in the study, the benefits included were pretty consistent across each. The most common benefit was health insurance, is included on 58% of job postings for each field. Following that was a retirement plan, dental insurance, and life insurance, leaving paid vacation and paid holidays as the least frequently included benefits. While having paid time off is highly desired, many would likely agree that insurance is the most important benefit to them.
By understanding the challenge that recruiters often face when looking for someone to fill a job position and the tendencies often found in job listings, it is easier to understand how to position yourself to be a desirable candidate. It also gives you the ability to be more empathetic with the recruiter, which, in turn, can help you make a better connection.