Author: Nithin Sreeraj

When you are looking for work, every second matters. Why? Because just like you, other candidates are out looking for new opportunities. The earlier you find an opportunity the better it is.  

With hundreds of websites out there, where do you even start? By the time you find a handful of job boards that offer WordPress work, the opportunities will be bagged by others and for you, the waiting game starts all over again.

This is why knowing the best job boards for finding WordPress work is important. We will share the top sites that will help find many WordPress opportunities.

The Best Job Boards to Help You Find WordPress Work

Since there are a lot of job boards out there, covering all of them is nearly impossible. We have handpicked the best and have grouped them into two categories. The ones in the first category are completely for WordPress and the second category is more generalized, meaning it showcases jobs outside the WordPress ecosystem also.

WordPress Exclusive Job Boards

1. Codeable

If you are looking to work with the best agencies on some exciting and challenging WordPress projects, then head over to Codeable and see if you can be in their top 2 percent. Codeable connects WordPress freelancers with employers to work on a variety of projects. Everything from theme and plugin development, design, integrations, custom website development, and many more opportunities can be found here.

Since Codeable carefully selects the list of applicants after multiple interview rounds, if you make it to their list, you get to work with the best group of companies. Kisnta, WPengine, WooCommerce, and many more recommend Codeable.

2. WPhired

WPhired launched way back in 2010, provides WordPress work of all sorts. Whether full-time, part-time, or freelance, you will find work that suits your needs. One can find works in the field of WordPress related to design, development, and even writing. One can also sign up for their alerts so you never miss out on the latest job listings.

3. Jobs.WordPress.net

The next job board on our list is from WordPress itself. Jobs.WordPress.net is hosted on the official website and the opportunities you see here will be the best. This covers everything from design, writing, migration, development, and many more.

One can find opportunities from all around the globe and it can be either full-time or part-time. Compared to the other job boards on the list, the number of jobs here will be a bit low.

4. WordPress Job Board by Post Status

Post Status is very well known in the WordPress community, and they also have a job board that helps individuals like you find the best opportunities at the right time. They focus on positions that are full-time and remote for the most part.

The team at Post Status verifies all the jobs before they list them and one thing they really focus on is conveying as much information about the open position as possible. The job listings you find here will be limited, but the ones you find are from organizations that create a wave of revolution.

If you feel like WordPress needs more exclusive job boards, then creating one is not that hard. With our job board plugin, WP Job Openings creating an uncomplicated platform for both recruiters and applicants is an easy task.

General Job Boards

5. LinkedIn

Find new opportunities and at the same time establish new connections on the way – this is what LinkedIn offers to its users. Here on this platform, apart from applying to new WordPress job opportunities, you can also directly strike up conversations with hiring managers and other employees. By establishing connections with other employees, in the long run, they can refer you or even alert you about open positions.

Also, you can essentially highlight your certifications and achievements, join groups, write an article, and add links to the best works on your profile to stand out from the rest. If you signup for their premium plan, you can also spot who viewed your profile and take the necessary action.

6. Indeed

From WordPress design to development to writing, Indeed offers many WordPress opportunities. Getting started is a simple process, create an account, upload the resume, and start applying. The users can see how active a job posting is, as Indeed does show the employer activity on each job opening. 

Most of the jobs posted here are full time and freelancing opportunities are there, but still, it’s less. If an employer finds your resume attractive, they can email you directly expressing an interest to work together. New jobs are updated often.

7. Upwork

If complete freelancing is what you are after, then Upwork is where you should be. There are a lot of WordPress jobs available here, but getting one can be a tricky part when you are starting.

One needs to submit a proposal and most often job posters do check how many reviews and stars your profile currently has. But don’t let this discourage you. Start small and build a portfolio and you are good to go. One can work on multiple projects and earn really big. Once you establish yourself, the chances of being contacted directly by clients with whom you have worked are really high. 

8. FlexJobs

If you prefer working from the comfort of your house, FlexJobs can make it a reality. You can find remote WordPress jobs, for the most part, whereas some job postings require the candidates to be in the concerned location. There are plenty of job opportunities up for grabs, from developers to digital media marketers.

9. SimplyHired

When looking for a new opportunity, the more information you can acquire, the better it is. SimplyHired offers everything you need to know from company reviews to salary benefits and many more so that you make the right choice.

Another great feature is that they offer a free resume builder with many templates that the users can try out. They also offer additional services where they can fine-tune your resume.

10. Fiverr

Having your presence on multiple job boards is the way to go and Fiverr is one such job board. Unlike Upwork, where you can apply to various opportunities, here, the employer contacts you based on your portfolio and reviews. This is a complete freelance platform trusted by the very best. Just like Upwork, one needs to build a strong portfolio to get the recognition one deserves.

11. Glassdoor

It’s not just about finding more opportunities related to WordPress but also ensuring it is the right one. Glassdoor can help you with both of these. Glassdoor provides users with company reviews which are anonymous, salary and benefits details, and everything an outsider wants to know before they apply for an open position.

Wrapping Up

Knowing where to find opportunities in WordPress is important.  All the above-mentioned job boards will take you a step closer to your dream career in WordPress.

Find the right set of candidates and deliver a good candidate experience throughout the hiring process. This is what all recruiters wish to do. But in reality, they end up doing only the former, being much more focused on the hunt for the right candidate.

But even then, nothing is guaranteed as to when you will find the right one. The process can take a bit longer than you initially expected as you come face to face with certain impediments. These minor roadblocks can be avoided in your journey to find the right set of candidates by implementing automation into your hiring process.

Automation allows you to improve your productivity, deliver a good candidate experience, and complete tasks more efficiently. We will take a look at what automation is in the hiring process, its advantages, and the top ways you can implement it.

What is Automation in Recruitment?

Firstly, automation doesn’t mean entirely replacing the human factor in the recruitment process. It refers to various technologies that help to lessen the burden on your shoulders. By use of these technologies, you can automate certain aspects of the hiring process instead of doing them manually and move from one stage to the next in an efficient manner and in less time.

An example would be to automate candidates’ alerts about their status change in the hiring process or pre-screening candidates.

How Automation in Hiring Can Help You?

Do you want to find the right candidate or do other tasks? Yes, the other tasks like email alerts and status updates are all a part of the hiring process, but as the number of applications increases, the time required to do all these tasks also increases. This, in turn, will greatly affect your productivity and increase the time to fill.

This is where automation steps in and makes you efficient and let you complete the hiring process expeditiously. We can explain these two with scenarios.

Scenario 1

Imagine you don’t adapt automation to your hiring process. You still tag along with the traditional methods. Yes, you can get through the recruitment process, but at what cost? You are sacrificing more time and effort than what is needed.

You have manually posted to various job boards, which has taken a lot of time, but you have the result you wanted. Your inbox is full of applications and as a recruiter, this is a good sign. You start reviewing the applications and realize that most of them don’t even align with your expectations and are from candidates just trying their luck. This is when you realize that going over all these applications will take a long time.

Then after going through all the applications, you have maybe a good 10 to 15 candidates. At least that’s what you like to assure yourself. But you have already spent a lot of time, going over all the resumes, so there is no guarantee that these candidates are available now. There is a high probability that they have been bagged by competitors. Then comes the stage where you have to rate and track them and so on.

Now, what about the other candidates that you have rejected? You have to let them know about their status. So, the only possible way since you haven’t adopted automation is to write them an email. How much time is it going to cost you? Of course, you can skip this, but if you want to provide the best candidate experience, this is a must, letting candidates know about their status.

Scenario 2

This is where you have adopted automation into your hiring process. You have established a candidate pre-screening method to limit the number of applications that reach you, you also have an ATS that helps you track and rate candidates and notifies them automatically about their status.

Now all that is left to do is to initiate the interview phase. See, how quickly you were able to reach the interview stage and, at the same time, deliver a good candidate experience and also cover the communication stage.

Benefits of Automation in Recruitment

Now the above two scenarios clearly show you how automation can help you. It’s time we look at the benefits automation has for you as a recruiter and for an organization.

 1. Impact on productivity

Automation affects productivity in a couple of ways. First, by limiting the number of applications that reach you by implementing pre-screening, one can be sure that the resumes you are looking at meet your set criteria. Thereby allowing you to find great talents in a shorter time frame and reducing the time to hire. Then secondly, an ATS will help you to effortlessly track, rate, and communicate with all the candidates in real-time and keep them in the loop.

2. Helps you cut down recruitment costs

With a reduced time to hire, you can effectively cut down the recruitment costs. The more time required to fill open positions, the more resources and revenue you have to spend to attract talented candidates. 

With candidate pre-screening and other hiring technologies, you can reduce the time needed to find the right candidate by a good margin.

3. Impact on candidate experience

Keeping all the candidates in the loop and alerting them about their status is a big task, especially when it comes to candidates that didn’t make it. But the communication can be automated with predefined email templates that are automatically sent out when the candidate’s status changes. 

It’s a win-win situation for both parties. For the candidates, it will be a good experience as they are updated about their status from time to time, and for you, a good brand image will be created.

4. Improves the hiring workflow

The main way automation impacts your hiring flow is how fast you can complete each stage without compromising on anything. The hiring phases that will otherwise take a lot of time if done manually can be completed in seconds with automation.

Top Ways to Automate Your Hiring Process

Now that we have a clear picture of automation can help you, it’s time we look at the top ways to incorporate automation into your hiring process.

1. Post to multiple job boards at once

The faster and wider you can spread the news about the opening at your place, the better it is. But in reality, accomplishing this is not easy. Moving from one job board to the next takes a lot of time and greatly affects your productivity.

But modern recruitment software can solve this problem. All you have to do is come up with a well-written job post and you can post to multiple job boards at once, from one place. There is no longer the need for you to move from one job board site to the next, repeating the procedure of posting a job opening every single time. By automating posting to multiple job boards with a click, you can ensure the openings reaches the maximum number of candidates without sacrificing a lot of time.

2. Pre-screen the candidates

Now that you have got the word out, the applications will start to come in. Here you have two choices, either allow all the candidates to submit the applications or filter them out. If you allow all the candidates to apply, the majority of the resumes you receive will be from candidates that do not meet the criteria. For them, there is no harm in trying, but for you, as a recruiter, a great of time will be spent looking at the resumes.

To avoid such a scenario where most of your time will be spent going over resumes that are not up to your expectations would be to pre-screen the candidates. There are a lot of ways to pre-screen the candidates, you can set up a screening questionnaire, and if you allow all candidates to apply, the modern-day ATS can pre-screen and filter out the resumes for you, make use of chatbots, one-way interviews, and so on.

By implementing all these, you make sure that the resumes that ultimately reach you are the ones from the best candidates.

3. Make use of an ATS

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) reduces the workload of recruiters to a great extent. The system does wonders when it comes to keeping track of all the candidates. With our job board plugin WP JOB Openings, you can track the progress of each candidate, rate them, leave notes and feedback for other recruiters, and also the system updates the candidates automatically about their status in the hiring process, and more.

Now how does this benefit you? Without an ATS this is how you will be able to track and rate candidates:

• Open a new document or an excel sheet
• Copy the names of all the candidates that made it past the screening
• Group them according to the position they applied for
• Routinely move from one window to the next to update their status
• Share the file with other recruiters for them to leave their feedback

Now, this is entirely possible but will consume a lot of time. But as the number of candidates and open positions increases this is not the optimum way of doing it. But with an ATS, keeping track of all open positions and candidates is fairly an easy task. You can effortlessly filter candidates based on the open positions, or based on the rating you have given them and more. Thereby saving time and being more organized.

4. Automate personalized emails

Communication is vital if your aim is to deliver the best candidate experience. What happens if candidates don’t hear from recruiters? They will move on and spread the news about how you left them in the dark. Updating all the candidates about their status is a time-consuming process, with the recruiter having to write one email after the other.

But this communication stage can be automated with the help of email templates. Predefine an email template and the recruitment software will take of it. Depending on the stage the candidate is in, an email alert will be sent to them automatically. Most of the ATS out there are configured to send out emails with the candidates’ names and the position for which they have applied. This greatly improves the candidate experience.

5. Scheduling interviews

Sometimes it takes multiple calls and emails to schedule an interview. The higher the number of candidates, the more emails and calls, and interview invitations. But that’s not it. You also have to consider the situation where multiple recruiters will be joining the interview. If that is the case then you have multiple calendars to sync once the candidate is ok with a proposed date.

This can get tiresome, easy to lose track of, and will affect your productivity. But modern recruitment solutions allow candidates to choose the date and the time. How it works is you can send a link to the candidates to schedule the interview, the software already houses the synced calendar of all the recruiters and shows only the relevant dates and times when the recruiters are free. Once a candidate updates his/her preference, all the recruiters that are synced to the system will be notified immediately. 

See how easy it was. You only had to send one email and didn’t have to make multiple calls or emails to both the recruiters and candidates to set up everything.

Wrapping Up

Implementing automation into your hiring process has a lot of benefits. It increases your productivity and efficiency, reduces the time to hire, and delivers a good candidate experience.

The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to maximizing application submission is your organization’s career page. The careers page plays a crucial role in influencing candidates, but its potential often remains untapped.

Everything you do to attract candidates, from posting on external job boards to offline ads, leads to your organization’s website; to be more specific, they lead to the career page. A plain and dull career page with just the open positions won’t be enough. The career page should be carefully crafted to highlight your organization, its values, and missions and, at the same time, should also engage the visitors and drive them towards a successful application submission. 

To achieve all these, there are certain elements that you need to include on your careers page. They can make a world of difference and increase application submission rates. Before we dive into the top things you need to include on your careers page, we need to understand the role a career page plays and how important it is to get it right.

What is a Career Page?

A career page is where you tell the world that you are hiring and make it official. Depending on the organization, the career page can be a single web page or a microsite, but the end goal is the same. To show the open positions, highlight what it is like working at your organization and why they should choose your organization.

As simple as it sounds, getting the career page right is not that easy. The career page is a blend of many things, which we will discuss later. Get it right, and you will see an inbox full of applications, but if you get it wrong, you will see an inbox with very little activity. 

Why is a Career Page Important?

Have you ever seen a card castle tumbling down? All the effort and time invested can be ruined by a tiny mistake. Not giving the needed importance and attention to your career page can have the same effect. Once the candidates spot a job opening, be it from an external job board or offline advertisement, they will flock to your website to get more information and ultimately land on the career page.

The careers page has to talk to the candidates, connect with them and convey what they want to know and see. The only way to achieve this is to start thinking like a candidate and not from a recruiter’s point of view.

Don’t believe us? Take a moment to view your career page from a candidate’s perspective.  Go through the careers page as a candidate. Like what you see, or do you feel incomplete? If you feel incomplete because of the lack of content and information, do you think a candidate will feel compelled to apply? Now, you know the reason why you are not seeing the results that you expected when it comes to application submission.

We have already done a detailed analysis of the importance of a career page, but we will quickly go over the importance of a careers page. The careers page is your opportunity to make a good impression on the candidates, how you may wonder? By putting your organization’s culture, benefits, awards, and achievements in the limelight.

This is your chance to showcase to the candidates why they should choose your organization to work over others and how it will benefit them in the long run. All the hard work you did outside the career page, like posting on external job boards and all lead to this moment. So, if you didn’t optimize the career page beforehand, then you will be at a loss when in it comes to making the best first impression.

The Top Things to Include on Your Careers Page

Now that we have covered how important a career page is and how it can drive up application submissions, now it is time to look at the top things that can make up a careers page. These elements – every single one of these, plays a crucial part when the candidates are checking out your organization.

1. Talk about your organization

Keep it short and simple. The points to focus on are: Who you are, what you do, your journey, what makes you special, and why you are in a different league than your competitors. Make sure to write the content so that it amuses the audience and evokes a sense of curiosity in them to explore more about your organization.

2. Talk about the company culture

Will you take the risk of walking into the unknown and later regretting it? Give the candidates a glimpse into your work culture and what makes you stand out. Highlight your mission, core values, and philosophy. Most candidates prioritize a good work culture and atmosphere over salary. A place where they can truly grow, learn and showcase their skills matters more than anything.

So, show the candidates that your workplace is the perfect ground to achieve this. You can achieve this by showing employee testimonials or highlighting the reviews you have gained on external websites like Glassdoor and GoodFirms.

3. Awards and Recognition

An opportunity to work for an organization that has bagged multiple awards and is recognized by clients globally is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But do the candidates know about this? If you are not conveying the recognition you have received and the awards bagged over the years, then you are just a normal organization for them.

Therefore showcasing your achievements on the careers page will only create a good brand image and at the same time, will elevate your organization to a league of its own when compared to others.

4. Benefits and Perks

An organization that has strong values is focused on its mission, bagged multiple awards, and has a good work culture. So far so good. The candidates are interested, but now comes the primary factor, What’s in it for them?

When you offer benefits and perks, you come out as an organization that values employees and cares for them. The most common benefits and perks that an organization should include are:

• Paid time off
• Flexible work schedule
• Health insurance
• Periodic salary revisions
• Option to work remotely

5. Include pictures and videos

Share the smiling faces of your team, and office space and showcase the fun you have. Remember how we mentioned you should highlight the work culture and atmosphere? The best way to do that is by adding images and videos of your team having fun and engaging in activities. This will give the candidates the needed assurance that your organization stays true to the work culture and atmosphere that was mentioned and wasn’t a gimmick.

6. Use a clearly defined job post

We have already talked about how a job post is different from a job description and how it can help you. Based on the open position and the targeted candidates, craft your job post in a way that aligns with the applicants’ goals and visions. The point to note here is to always use a job post and not a job description.

7. Enable Job Alerts

As an organization, you always want to keep the candidates close and in the loop. What if a candidate visits your organization and finds that you don’t have a current opening that suits them? How can they keep track of it?

In such situations, enabling job alerts for candidates to sign up is essential. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. The candidates will be alerted automatically when a new open position goes live, even if the position doesn’t suit them, they can still share the news. For a recruiter, this is a bonus, you get to have a pool of possible candidates and referrals without doing any additional work.

8. Keep the application forms simple

Even after doing all the hard work to captivate the candidates and drive them toward the required action, your job is not over yet. If you decide to make the application form a long and winding one, the candidates are sure to quit halfway. 

If the initial process is lengthy, what follows will be even worse. This is the thought that will arise in the mind of the majority of the candidates. So, keep the application form as simple and short as possible. With our job board plugin WP Job Openings, creating application forms is easier than ever before. You can create application forms, enable as many fields as you want with our form builder, enable file uploads, have different forms for multiple openings, and so on.

Wrapping Up

So if you were thinking about only including the current job openings or having a career page with just the openings, now will be the time to change it. As we have discussed a career page that houses all the above-mentioned elements will see the desired outcome.

A lot of organizations are out there with the same goal, which is to lure the best candidates to their organization. Most of the time they are successful and able to close the open position quicker than you. This makes you wonder how they were able to attract more candidates and close the open position so quickly while you are still waiting for more applications and far from finding the perfect one.

The only way to attract a good number of candidates is with a well-crafted job post. But the majority of recruiters still use a job description instead of a job post with the notion that they are the same. In reality, they are not. A well-defined job advertisement can be a crucial factor when it comes to attracting candidates.

To attract talented candidates to your organization, you need to write job ads that entice candidates, create the best first impression, put your organization in the limelight, and are worthy of their time. Before we look at the top ways to write job posts that will attract a large pool of talented candidates, we first need to distinguish a job description from a job post.

The Difference Between Job Description and Job Posts

There’s a fine line between a job post and a job description. Unknowingly the majority of recruiters still use a job description instead of a job post to advertise an open position. In reality, both of them are different and serves a different purpose. So, knowing the difference between the two is vital when it comes to attracting talented candidates.

What is a Job Description?

The job description is mainly meant to stay inside an organization. This is an internal document, more of a technical document that refers to the roles and responsibilities of a particular open position, which is created after hours of research. This also includes the experience needed, the educational background, duties, soft and hard skills, and many more. The job description acts as the foundation from which we build the job post.

One major point to always keep in mind is that the job description focuses on the candidates and not on the organization. Job descriptions allow recruiters to craft appropriate interview questions, screen the candidates properly, and can also be used as a benchmark to rate the candidates.

Key points that are always in a job description are :

• Job title
• Overview of the position
• Job location
• Responsibilities
• Needed skills
• Required experience 
• Education qualifications
• Salary range

An example of a job description will be like this:

Job Title: PHP Developer  Position Summary: Work with the product team. Job Location: Texas, Hybrid Responsibilities:  Focus on timely bug fixes, updates, and enhancements.  Test the products on a daily basis Needed Skills: Good knowledge of PHP, HTML, JS, and database management. Experience Required: 3 years of experience needed Educational Qualification: Engineering background Employment type: Permanent Salary range: $5000-$6000 Perks and benefits– Medical insurance, paid sick time off

What is a Job Post?

When it’s time to announce to the world, make it official that you have an open position, then you have to go with a job post. A job post is what the possible candidates will see and want to see. The job post can be defined as the marketing version of the job description. The main goal of a job ad is to attract candidates to your organization. The job advertisement can be seen on websites, online job boards, newspapers, and so on.

The job post does talk about the organization, its values, benefits, work culture, and mission, unlike the job description which doesn’t. A few recruiters still make the mistake of using a job description instead of an actual job advertisement. The job post has to grab the attention of the candidates, invoke a sense of curiosity and has to make your organization stand out from the rest. Therefore language and tone are critical.

Even though job posts share some similarities with the job description, it is the way in which things are delivered to the candidate that makes all the difference.

Key points that are always in a job description are:

• Job title
• An overview of the company
• Position Overview
• Work location
• Benefits
• Required skills
• Selection procedure
• Salary

Example of a job post:

Lead JavaScript Developer About Us: We are a web product studio that focuses mostly on providing the best of design solutions and web products that help organizations to elevate themselves in their respective fields. We cater to clients globally and have a wide range of online products and services. Our product is library growing and expanding as we are speaking right now. Job Description: As a part of our growth and expansion, we are on the hunt for a Lead Javascript developer. You will be in charge of managing the products and ensuring timely updates of enhancements, updates, and bug fixes. You will be working closely with the product development team and the other core developers of the team as and when needed.   Duties and Responsibilities: – Spearhead the development of current products and set up a proper workflow for future enhancements.  – Listen to user queries and feedback and tackle the issue appropriately. – Keep a proper record of issues and discuss with the team the possible solutions to maintain a good user experience across all our products. – Provide feedback on new features and ensure consistency all around. – Make sure the products are optimized across different operating systems. Job Location: Scotland, Hybrid.  Pay Range: $6000-$7000/monthly Benefits: All our employees are fully protected with health insurance and can also avail paid sick leaves. We focus on getting the work done, which means you can work from the comforts of your home, or from any place you please. We also provide biannual salary appraisals to our employees and team outings twice a year to take the steam off. Selection Criteria: The successful candidate should have 8 years of work experience. Ideally, the candidate should have an engineering background, but in the end skill and experience will prevail. The candidate must also be well-versed in React, Angular, and jQuery. Contact Information: Send your resumes to [email protected]  on or before xx.xx.xxxx

Now as you can see, there is a clear distinction between a job post and a job description. Now, ask yourself, which will attract more candidates, a job description or a job post? The candidates want to know more about an organization, its values, and its work ethics. This is also your chance, as an organization to make an impact on the candidates and drive them to a successful response.

Top Ways to Write Job Posts That Attract Candidates

Now that we have clearly distinguished between a job post and a job description, it’s time to look at how to make a job ad that will attract candidates. The most important points to keep in mind to craft the perfect job advertisement are:

Be specific about the job title

When it comes to the job title one should be precise, and professional. Don’t go overboard. The job title is what initially grabs the attention of the candidates. Some recruiters like to add words that have no relation to the post whatsoever hoping to gain more attention from the candidates. But, it is only going to backfire and prevent most of the candidates from applying to your organization. 

For example, using words such as expert, super, and professional is a big no. Stick to the industry standard jargon and that is all that is needed. Having a proper job title will allow the candidate to draw a route map of how their career can advance with the company. If the post is about “Junior JavaScript Developer”, then the candidate can have a higher possibility of moving to a senior position once he/she has acquired the relevant experience.

Highlight your organization

Give a short description of your organization. How, when, and where you started your journey, and so on. Make your organization stand apart from the rest. This is the opportunity to make a good first impression, so make it count. Talk about your organization’s missions, goals, and achievements and how the candidates will be playing a major role in all of it in the coming future.

Also highlight your company’s values, culture, and achievements. Give them a vivid picture of how all of these will benefit and shape their career. The most important thing is to show them the big picture, and what they can achieve. But make sure you don’t overdo it, keep it simple.

Describe the position in an appealing way

So you have grabbed the candidates’ attention. Now comes the most important part. The way you convey the job duties and responsibilities, and how effectively you can weave the words so that it aligns with the group of candidates that you are targeting. This in the end will determine how many application submissions you receive.

Most recruiters often make the mistake of plainly mentioning the duties and responsibilities of the concerned position. But that alone is not enough. Modern candidates need much more than this. They need to know what’s in it for them. Now as a recruiter you need to add various elements which will make the candidates take up action, and make them say that this is the organization they want to work for. You have to combine the job duties and responsibilities with the goals and missions that match the targeted audience.

For example- Instead of simply copying and pasting the job description which is  – “Work on timely bug fixes and updates”. You can go with, “In this role, it will be your responsibility to test the products, deliver timely updates, and enhancements and maintain the usability of the product across all the platforms”. The latter will give the candidates a sense of atmosphere where they can truly showcase their skills.

Convey to the candidates how they can grow their careers much better at your organization than anywhere else. Mention all the opportunities they will get. Give them a clear picture of how a day in the office will be and how the role will put their skills to the test and the same time allow them to develop and learn new skills.

Be precise about the required skills

Now, that you have given them a strong feeling, that this is the organization to work for, now comes the skills and other eligibility criteria for the open position. Be thorough and to the point. You do not want to confuse the candidates or leave any room for doubt.

Mention the required skill as well as the good-to-have skills along with the educational background and experience needed. Leave no stone unturned and be precise about what all you are looking for.

Salary and Benefits

The final push the candidates need is a perfect blend of benefits and salary. The candidates must get a sense that they are receiving a competitive salary and also benefits. By benefits, we are referring to bonuses, health insurance, and the new norms that are an option to work from home and flexible work hours.
Once you have crafted a job description, what will make the hiring process a lot more efficient is a robust recruitment plugin like WPJob Openings. With this tool, you can handle the high influx of candidates’ applications effortlessly. You can create customized job forms, set alerts, sort and filter out applicants with ease, and more.

Wrapping Up

The first step to attracting the right set of candidates begins once you realize the difference between a job description and a job post. With a perfectly crafted job advertisement, you can increase the applications you receive from the right talent set.

Every candidate has had this moment and the majority still do. The moment they see a job opening, they have flashbacks of the eternal wait after applying and the automated emails. The feeling of deja vu, the never-ending loop. What we are referring to is the familiar situation of being ghosted by recruiters.

But what the recruiters don’t realize is that this type of behavior will only tarnish the organization’s reputation. How? Because most of the candidates do share their experiences with each other, or they can leave reviews online, and so on. This can influence other applicants when they are doing research about the organization and can prevent them from submitting an application. So, in order to prevent such a backlash, you must provide a good candidate experience thought out the hiring process.

So, as a recruiter knowing when and how to break the news to candidates, that they didn’t make the cut is of utmost importance. Therefore having a proper plan to let the applicants know that they are being rejected without creating a bad candidate experience is vital. We will explore the common mistakes and how you can avoid them so as to ensure a good candidate experience right from start to end.

How Does a Bad Candidate Experience Affect Your Organization?

A candidate upon seeing an open position won’t immediately apply for the job. They will spend hours researching the organization and crafting a cover letter to give them an edge over others. All of this is in the hope that the recruiter will reach out to them.

But then, days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and finally, the candidates accept their fate and move on. But here is where the problems start for an organization. The applicants are definitely going to share their experiences with their colleagues. Be it a good experience or bad, they will share their experiences.

Let’s take a scenario. The recruiters contacted the candidates. They were told they didn’t meet their expectations and hence won’t be moving forward with their applications. This is an ideal scenario. Even though they didn’t make it, the recruiters took the time to let them know and didn’t ghost them. The candidates, even though they didn’t reach their goal of being selected, will share with their colleagues how the recruitment team contacted them and gave their feedback.

So, how does this benefit your organization? This small act of reaching out to applicants and updating them on their status will create a good rep for your organization amongst other candidates. A good rep, in the end, will create a good brand image for your company amongst job seekers which in turn will result in more applications in the future ultimately helping you find the right candidate a tad bit faster.

Now, the second scenario is where you don’t contact them. Just like the above scenario, they are going to share their experiences. But in this situation, it will be a negative review, and negative reviews spread like wildfire. A negative candidate experience does influence how many applications you receive. Because when candidates search your organization and find negative reviews, they will think twice before applying to such an organization that doesn’t contact all the candidates and updates them about their status. Thereby potentially robbing the opportunity of good resumes from reaching your inbox.

Different Scenarios and Ways to Disqualify Candidates Without Creating a Bad Experience

Now that you have decided to invest the time and effort to contact applicants to let them know they aren’t selected, there are a few points to keep in mind. The key element to note is at which stage you contact them and how you deliver the news and feedback. Yes, it will be heart-wrenching, but it’s part of the hiring process.

There are three stages at which you could let the candidates know that you are not moving forward with their applications.

• The initial stage- which is the moment you view their applications
• The Phone Screening Stage
• The interview stage

Be it at any stage, the most important points to keep in mind are:

• Get to the heart of the matter
• Be respectful 
• Mention why they weren’t selected
• Provide valuable feedback
• Encourage the candidates to apply in the future
• Thank the candidates

Rejecting candidates in the initial stage

For recruiters, taking a glance at the resume is all that is needed to know whether the applicant will move to the next stage or not.  The reason why they won’t make it to the next stage can vary. Maybe the candidates don’t have the needed experience or skills or lack soft skills or technical skills, and so on.

At this stage, the best option is to send out personalized emails to let them know that you won’t be moving forward with their application. By contacting them early in the initial stages, even if it is to deliver the news about being rejected, the candidates can move forward, devote their time to preparing for an interview at a different organization, and also look at other viable options. Yes, contacting multiple applicants at the initial stage is not easy. With many applicants, reaching out to each one of them won’t be easy. But with our recruitment plugin WPJob Openings, you can predefine email templates to be automatically sent out to applicants when their application status changes.

Rejecting candidates after the phone screening

Once you are happy with the candidates’ resumes, next comes the phone screening. Recruiters use phone screening to determine whether a candidate is eligible to be moved forward in the recruitment stage. The question that the recruiters will ask will vary depending on the organization, but for a candidate, this is the time to leave a good impression.

Once you are done with the phone screening and made a list of applicants that won’t make it to the next stage, the next focus will be on the candidates that made it to the next round, right? So, what about the candidates you rejected? You have to let them know that they are not selected. Just like how you find time to contact candidates that have made it to the next round, you should make the same effort to contact the rejected candidates and give them your feedback.

The best course of action is to send them a rejection email. Highlighting that you would like to have a conversation with them to provide feedback. If the candidate replies and wishes to have a conversation, call them and mention why they weren’t selected and the areas they need to improve and assure them that they can apply to your organization in the future.

Rejecting candidates after the final interview

The candidates have gone through a lot if they have reached this stage. They impressed you with their skills, aced the phone screening, and just have one final hurdle to cross – the face-to-face interview. At this stage, if you reject them, the best option is not to send an automated email, doesn’t matter how personalized it is.

The best action is to call them and give them your valuable feedback. That is it. Call them. Yes, it won’t be easy, but they would like to hear why they didn’t make it. Give them constructive feedback on the areas where they need to improve, the skills they should learn, and anything that can help them with their career. Assure them that just because they were rejected now doesn’t mean they are rejected forever. Let them know they can apply for a future open position in your organization, and all is not lost.

Wrapping Up

Providing a good candidate experience is necessary for an organization to attract talented candidates in the long run and create a good brand image. Applicants will hesitate to apply to organizations that don’t reach out and update them about their status in the hiring process. Establishing proper communication is your key to providing the best candidate experience.

Going through resumes, contacting multiple candidates, days pass by in the blink of an eye, and nothing to show at the end of the day. This is what a recruiter’s life will be during the hiring process and will continue until you find the right set of candidates. But how long will it take? Why is finding the right candidate taking longer than you expected?

If you are reading this, you are either going through such a scenario or have experienced this. Now, you want to ensure that you never go through this in the future. Reducing the time to hire is vital for an organization. The lesser time taken to find the right set of candidates, the better it is. The longer the time to hire, the greater its impact on your organization’s productivity and revenue.

We will explore what time to hire is, how crucial it can be, and also look at the top ways to reduce the hiring time.

What Exactly is Time to Hire?

Time to hire refers to the time frame calculated from the moment a candidate enters your talent pipeline to the day he/she accepts the job offer. In other words, it refers to the total days that were required for both the recruiters and the candidates to go over the various recruitment stages and in the end the candidate accepting the job offer. An even simpler definition is the time that was required by your HR team to hire the selected candidate.

The lower the time to hire, the more efficient your hiring process and your HR team are.

We can explain it with an example: You have an open position at your organization, and a candidate submits a successful application on September 1. The candidate accepts the job offer on September 18. So the total time taken to hire the candidate is 17 days.

Time to hire = day of offer acceptance – day of application submission

Time to hire is often confused with time to fill. But they are not the same. Time to fill is calculated from the moment the job posting goes live to its closure date which ends with the recruiter finding the right candidate. In all cases, the time to fill is longer than the time to hire.

How Important is it to Reduce the Time to Hire?

What matters the most is finding the candidate, right? Well, it is, but that’s not the whole picture. Getting the right candidate to join your team in the least time is also vital. Why? There are many reasons, one of them being, you are not the only organization to which they have applied.  The more you delay the hiring process, the greater the chance of the applicant accepting an offer from a different organization. This in turn means you have to start the hunt for a new candidate all over again.

There are quite a few reasons why you should reduce the time to hire and they are

• The first reason why you want to reduce the time required for hiring is to make sure you don’t lose a candidate. As we have already discussed, the candidate has applied to multiple organizations in most cases as the ultimate goal of the candidate is to land a job as early as possible. If your hiring process is long and complicated, the competition has already bagged the best candidates.
• Tracking your time to hire can give you an accurate picture of how efficient your hiring process is. If it takes a lot of time to complete the recruitment process, you should start looking into your hiring process to understand where you can improve. Find at which stage you are losing time and see if any other factors play a part.
• The more time required to hire a candidate, the higher the expenditure. By expenditure we mean, the external job board pricing, paying for job ads on offline media, and so on. So, by reducing the hiring time, you can cut down the recruitment expenses by a good margin.
• With the failure to find the right candidate, what else is affected? The project schedule. With a lack of competent candidates, the pending work gets delayed and will affect the productivity of the organization to a great extent.
• Reducing the time required to complete the hiring process also affects the candidate experience, The shorter the time to hire, the better the candidate experience.

Top Ways to Reduce Your Time to Hire

Now that we have covered what time to hire is and how important it is, it’s time to look at how to reduce it. Various factors can contribute to reducing the time required to hire the right candidate and they are:

1. Establish a proper hiring plan 

Without having a proper foundation and route map for the hiring process, all the other points that we are about to cover will not make any sense. If you are someone who says I’ll plan the process one step at a time, it’s a big no. You should have planned out the entire recruitment process before posting the job openings.

A rough outline would be like this:

Create a job description>Plan the different interview stages>Write a clear job Post>Post on external job boards and offline ads>Final offer

If you are someone who hasn’t planned out the journey now will be the time to create a proper map of the hiring process and make it structured. You should decide on the various interview stages, how many of them will be there, and the tasks that will be assigned to the candidates.

But if you are planning this after you contact the candidates or in the middle of the hiring process, it will only delay the process and also lead to a bad candidate experience.

2. Use precise job posts

The hiring process is interconnected as we all know. All the factors have to work together and one leads to the other. Once you have planned out how the hiring process is going to be, it’s time to make it official and attract the candidates.

Lack of information leads to a lack of clarity which in turn leads to minimum applications. This is what will happen if you use a job description instead of a job post. A well-written job post will give the candidates all the information they want to know and lead to more application submissions. If your job post is not well written to provide information and at the same time attract candidates, then the number of applications in your inbox will be much less which in turn leads to the hiring process being a long one.

So, write a job post that not only provides information but attracts candidates to your organization.

3. Keep your talent database and pipeline updated

Always keep a candidate database and a talent pipeline and keep updating it. All the candidates that applied at your organization and didn’t make the cut at that time, may fit the current openings. If that is the case having a database of potential candidates is helpful, as you can contact them directly. If you are lucky, some of them may be actively looking look for a new job and may be willing to make the transition to your organization thereby reducing the time to hire. If not they could always spread the news through referrals, which is an added advantage.

Filling the talent pipeline is a hard task, but considering the benefits it offers, it is something that all organizations should look into.

4. Perfect your careers page

We have stressed the importance of the careers page on multiple occasions. The careers page plays a crucial role when it comes to application submissions. The candidates will search for the careers page to dig out more information about your organization and what’s it like working at your place.

If the careers page isn’t optimized well enough to provide information, the ones that the candidates are looking for, then the number of applications you receive will be low. This in turn leads to the hiring process being stretched more than you want it to be. 

5. Ease through the hiring process with a recruitment software

Once the applications start coming in, you realize a few things:

• How do you plan to contact all the candidates? 
• How much time are you going to spend writing emails to let the candidates know of their application status? 
• How are you going to track at which stage they are? 
• How are you going to leave feedback for other recruiters to refer?
• How do you plan to rate candidates for quick reference?
• Can you quickly glance over their resumes?

You could do all these manually, but the time consumed here will be a lot. Thereby reducing your efficiency and greatly affecting the overall time required to complete the hiring process. With our recruitment plugin WPJob Openings, you can use our email templates to contact multiple candidates effortlessly, automatic email alerts to candidates on their application status changes, track and rate candidates, leave notes for other recruiters, and many more features. 

With all the mundane tasks taken care of, you can focus on initiating the interview process as early as possible to seal the deal.

6. Create Precise Application forms

Not too short, and not too long. This should be your motto when it comes to creating the application forms. The lengthier the application forms get, the more the chances of candidates quitting halfway. Go with the required fields – the most important ones, and nothing else.

The goal is to receive applications, not to prevent them. All the other necessary details you want will be mentioned on their resumes. Upon viewing the resume, if more details are needed, you can always contact them.

7. Map out the Interview stages

This stage should’ve already been mapped out in the beginning, before making the job opening official. Establishing a proper pattern would help you in two ways:

• Avoid chaos
• Speed up the hiring process

Split your interview process into multiple stages. Start with the phone screening, assign tasks to the candidates, and then to the final interview. You should have already created a task list to be assigned to the candidates. If you decide to create one after you review the applications, it will only result in the hiring process being delayed as you spend time researching the task, determining the difficulty level, and so on.

The goal should be to have everything prepared beforehand so that the interview stage moves without much delay. An even more important point to focus on is to make sure that there isn’t a huge time gap between one interview stage to the next and always keep the candidates in the loop. Yes, with multiple candidates, it can get overwhelming, but with proper preparation, it is possible to bring down the time gap between each stage.

8. Get the hiring team involved

Get the entire recruitment team onboard and work together. The more help you get, the better workflow control you have. With the entire recruiting managers working together, screening candidates becomes much easier, thereby reducing the time needed to move to the next stage a lot less.

Wrapping Up

Reducing the time to hire is not very difficult. With a proper plan, it is possible to reduce the time needed to complete the hiring process. The lesser time needed to find the right candidate, the better it is.

The time is here. It’s time to begin the search for the right candidate. But wait, how do you know who will be the perfect fit? Every hiring manager goes through this, regardless of which organization they work for, be it small or large.

Before the search for the right candidate begins, one must have a proper picture of who would fit for the open position as well as with the organization. This is where having a proper Candidate Profile Persona comes into play.

What is a Candidate Profile Persona?

As a recruiter, it is like entering a maze if you don’t have an idea about your ideal candidate. This is where the candidate profile persona plays a crucial role. The candidate profile persona is your guide, the compass that leads you out of the maze, in this situation leads you to the ideal candidate.

A candidate profile persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal candidate and all the qualities, skills, and talents that the candidate should possess. This candidate profile is created after hours of research by the hiring team. A lot of interviews and data analysis go into making the candidate profile persona.

The hiring team has to go through everything, all the aspects like work experience, education, demography details, soft and hard skills, and many more. This is a time-consuming effort, but the results are well worth it.

The Importance of Candidate Profile Persona

The candidate profile personas will ultimately determine the ideal candidate, the job description, and also the job post. Every piece of content that outlines the perfect candidate for the job is the outcome of a successful candidate profile persona operating in the background. The candidate profile persona helps us to reduce our search radius for the right candidate by focusing on certain key areas.

• One cannot simply post a job opening without collecting the relevant information about that particular role.

• Without a candidate persona, how can one determine the years of experience needed for this role or the skills and certifications needed?

Now, because of a proper job description that is the result of a candidate’s profile persona, the candidates themselves can analyze whether they are the perfect fit for this role or not. This in turn reduces the applications that reach the recruiters and all the applications that ultimately make it to the recruiter will be the right ones.

The candidate profile persona also allows the recruiters to know exactly where to source and find the right candidates and also optimize the recruitment process. As different job boards are mainly set up for a particular field, the hiring managers can target those boards to find the ideal candidates.

How to Develop a Candidate Profile Persona

Now that we have covered what a candidate profile persona and its importance is, it is time we take a look at how to create one.

1. Research

So the management tells you that there is an open position and the need to fill the vacancy. So, what do you do? Where do you start? You don’t know anything at this point. Every single detail counts like what the team is expecting and so on.

This is where you start the research. The research first starts within your organization.

Have a discussion with the top-level management and also with the people who are working in the department in which the vacancy has to be filled. The major part of the candidate persona can be collected within an organization itself. The management and other employees will give you an idea about the ideal candidate, the skills, and everything he/she should possess. The most important things to note down are:

• Educational background

The candidates from which educational background will perfectly fit this position or can someone with a different educational background do well and adapt? These questions can be easily answered by the management and coworkers easily.

• Experience required

Is this a high-level post or an open position? To determine this you will have to analyze the job title also. Does the job title mention senior or junior or anything else that might give you a heads-up is always a good start? Also, your team members can provide a concrete answer to the years of experience needed for this job. 

• Additional certifications

Will the candidate need other certifications along with them to be capable of this position? 

• Their current job title

Is the candidate new to this field, are they making a career change or not, or simply looking for a better organization and opportunities? 

• Soft and hard skills

Never overlook the soft and hard skills as they can cause problems down the line. We are looking for someone who is a mix of both, and not just one or half.

• Demography

Everything from age, gender, and income comes under demography.

• Goals and motivation

What they want to achieve in this position, why they are looking for a change, and why they want to work with you. Also what motivates them to perform well and grow. Is it learning new skills, taking up projects, work environment, and so on.

2. Research the current trends

So you have gathered enough intel from within your organization. Now it’s time to do some more work. Is there new any new trend or skill out there that could act as an added advantage in the long run. Search for a similar open position online and see if it aligns with the data you have collected. If you spot something new, not on your checklist talk with the management and other team members to know if this is important and useful in the long run.

3. Time to Create the Actual Candidate Profile Persona

Now that you have everything you need, it is time to combine everything to make sense. Start from the most important ones and move to the rest.

After you have combined all the data you have collected, present it to the team and management and if they give you the thumbs up, it’s time to put the plan into action, time to post an appropriate job post, and find the right candidate.

An Example of a Perfect Candidate Profile Persona

An example of a perfect candidate profile will be like this:

Job Title	Java Script Developer
Educational Background	Engineering
Experience	4 years
Skills	Should have knowledge and experience in Node.js, MySQL, Mongo DB, Express.js, TypeScript, JavaScript Excellent communication skills
Salary Range	$3000-$4000
Interests	Coding libraries, Developing mobile and desktop applications
Goals	Learn new skills Career Growth Ambitious
Motivation	Grow by tackling new challenges Perks and benefits Work Culture

Based on the above, the recruiters can structure the appropriate job description and job post to start the hiring process to find the right candidate. 

What would make the recruitment process simple and efficient after the candidate profile persona is complete is a powerful recruitment plugin like WPJob Openings. The tool allows you to create a career page and post job openings in a flash, provides you with customizable job forms, filter out applications, contact candidates, and more.

Wrapping Up

Every time you go through a job post, remember that a lot of research and hard work went into it. The reason why there is an apt job post and description for each and every job opening is that there exists a candidate profile persona in the background. Candidate profile personas are vital and play an important role in helping organizations always find the perfect candidate.