Chef job advert tips you can use today! Currently chefs are in short supply and high demand. As anyone who’s recently tried to hire will tell you, getting replies to a chef job ad in number and quality is difficult at the moment – which is why you need to make sure that the job ad you post hits the mark and immediately appeals to candidates.
This isn’t necessarily easy. Writing a job advert which appeals to the reader and motivates them to apply for your chef job requires knowledge and experience. It’s not necessarily a skill that can be learnt overnight, and specialist recruiters can spend years perfecting their job ad writing skills.
But let’s be honest, you probably need a chef right now, so we’re going to share three of job ad tips that will boost your ads and help you attract the best chef talent.
Chef job advert tip 1: Always, always, always publish the salary
Sounds obvious doesn’t it? There are lots of companies out there that, for whatever reason, do not list salaries in their job adverts.
Put yourself in a jobseeker’s shoes – would you apply for a role without a salary? Maybe you would for a large, reputable restaurant brand, but would you for a local neighbourhood restaurant?
Common reasons for not listing salaries centre mainly on internal politics and sensitivity towards the pay of current incumbents in certain positions. But apply lateral thinking. Recruitment consultants get around this problem by anonymising the advert, maybe initially you could try that too.
The evidence is overwhelming. Popular job websites say that jobs posted on their site with a salary perform on average 32% better than those without. Candidates are generally pretty cynical about the real value that will be applied to a job which doesn’t have salary information attached.
Application behaviour shows that candidates want to know all the details of the job that they’re about to apply for. Salary and benefits information is an important detail to include. Ignore it at your peril. Not publishing a salary is the number one cause of a job ad to be instantly brushed aside by current chef job seekers.
Chef job advert tip 2: Write for the reader
This is standard practice across the recruitment agency industry, but how many of us who post job ads follow this approach? Not many.
A common mistake people make is to copy-and-paste an internal job specification into their recruitment advert. Consequently, the advert ends up being a long list of bullet points which the reader has to trawl through. End result? Very few applications. Job specs are internal documents. They should stay that way.
Another very common mistake is to mention far too little and leave your reader knowing hardly anything about the position. End result? You guessed it. Very few applications.
Instead start by imagining you’re the chef whose looking for a role when they’re reading your ad, when you write it. What would they like to see in the ad? What would make them specifically apply for your role?
Your advert needs to be succinct and to the point, getting the core messages across. You don’t need endless bullet points. Be selective with the details you include in your ad copy as you only have a limited amount of time (77 seconds) to grab someone’s attention and get them to apply. Engage and entice is the way forward.
Structure your advert in the following way, and don’t also assume that all bullet points are bad.The role: explain the key responsibilities the person will be expected to undertake.
The candidate: describe what the ideal candidate looks like.
The company: your chance to make your business shine, explain about why your business is THE place to work.
The package: Re-emphasise the salary and any benefits. If you’ve got a particular benefit you’re proud of, shout about it.
Ultimately the advert has to flow and read clearly and easily. Check your grammar and spelling, then send it to a colleague and see what they think, before you go live.
The finished advert should aim to leave a suitable candidate without a reason not to apply.
Chef job advert tip 3: Use some contextual keywords
To get your chef job advert working well, it needs to rank highly on a job board’s search engine. At the time of writing this post, the algorithms that govern them aren’t as sophisticated as Google’s which means that (to a degree) it’s pretty simple to optimise your advert to maximise the exposure it will receive.
The best way to do that is to place some keywords into your advert, contextually across the copy. Which keywords should you pick? The simplest and easiest is the job title of your vacancy.
Once you’ve researched which job title is the most effective for your role (by doing your own job site searches), that’s the keyword you want to focus on. Once you’re decided on this, you need to mention your chosen job title throughout your advert:
“We’re looking for a [pastry chef] to work for…”
“The ideal candidate for the [pastry chef] position…”
“In the [pastry chef] role, you’ll be expected to…”
One huge word of warning: Whilst the search engines that power job boards aren’t as sophisticated as Google, they’re not stupid. Don’t stuff your ad with loads of your chosen keywords as you’ll just end up getting your ad sent to the bottom of the list.
The trick is to mention your phrase 3 to 5 times throughout the copy and no more, contextually and in a way that makes sense to the reader.
Summary
There’s a science to writing job ads that perform well. How they perform is governed by the content and the structure you’ve used to build them. Recruitment Consultants (good ones anyway) instinctively know how to do this and are experienced at writing copy that is designed to engage and attract applications from relevant jobseekers.
However, take these three easy-to-implement steps and you’ll see a spike in applications to your next chef job ad.
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And finally..
The industry has changed, but has your approach to hiring chefs?
A smaller chef talent pool and much more competition means it’s vital for every employer regardless of size to utilise the most effective recruitment tools in the market to engage the talent they need.
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