People often first encounter a company via their job postings. While companies are well versed in presenting job duties and requirements, company culture, benefits and other quality of life considerations, they often forget the most basic thing: presenting the information and the job details in a well formatted, succinct and error-free posting. According to a survey by Indeed, “52% of job seekers say the quality of a job description (e.g. spelling, grammar, role description, formatting) is ‘very’ or ‘extremely influential’ on their decision to apply for a job.” Therefore, it is imperative that companies take time in posting their openings to their applicant tracking system and on job posting sites, such as Indeed and CareerBuilder.

Here are some ways to create a professional-looking and easy-to-read job listing so that the candidate knows the duties and requirements and also comes away with a positive view of your company. Even if the candidate does not apply, they may keep your company top of mind for future job openings.

1. Make sure everything is spelled correctly, especially in the job title. A spellcheck program will find most spelling errors but be sure to read the listing again because no spellcheck program is perfect and often misses nuances that can result in an incorrect recommendation.
2. Use a consistent font of large enough size to read on multiple types of devices. What may seem like a good font size on a desktop may be too small to be read on a cell phone. And a listing with a variety of fonts gives the impression that the person who posted the job just blindly copied and pasted from one or more documents.
3. Avoid any grammatical errors. Again, a spellcheck program can spot many issues of this nature. However, be aware that many of these programs are less accurate in this regard so give extra thought to any recommendations from the program. An additional, careful read may be more reliable than any program in some situations.
4. If you copy/cut and paste from another document, make sure special characters (e.g., apostrophes, bullets) appear correctly. They may appear as question marks or other characters that are incorrect. Also, make sure any dates have not passed or are still relevant.
5. Bolding and italics are great ways to highlight items like sign-on bonuses, but don’t overdo their use or the job seeker may be confused as to what is most important in the listing.
6. Use headers and bullets or numbered lists for duties and qualifications. Doing so allows the job seeker to quickly assess what the job does and requires. Listings that put everything in a handful of paragraphs are harder to read and the job seeker may abandon the posting rather than sort through that information.
7. Do not make your listings overly long. According to Remko Glatzhofer of Indeed, “Shorter job posts (1-300 words) had significantly higher-than-average apply rates per view (the number of applications the job post got divided by the number of views).” Here are some ways you can keep the word count down in your posting:
   • First and foremost, only include information relevant to the job title, department, etc. For example, if you are hiring for an emergency department RN, do not have a generic nurse listing that includes qualifications for every department at your facility. Job seekers will not want to search for information pertinent to the position they are interested in. Also, limiting your qualifications only to the relevant job should dissuade unqualified candidates from applying.
   • You do not need to include any requirements that would seem obvious, especially if a more detailed requirement is also listed (e.g., if the IT tech position requires knowledge of a specific programming language, “computer experience” is completely unnecessary), or if the requirement is extremely basic (e.g., “ability to listen to others”).
   • If you have any qualifications listed as preferred, ask yourself if they are necessary for the person to qualify for the job. A few preferred items here and there are okay, but a potential candidate may feel unqualified and not apply if confronted by a list of preferred qualifications.
   • Avoid duplicating information. If you have benefits, for example, early in the listing, you shouldn’t list them again later. Also, if the earlier information doesn’t completely match up with the later information, it may confuse job seekers.

Investing in the appearance and readability of your posting from the beginning can potentially increase not only the number of applicants, but also the quality of those applicants. If your listing looks poorly written or requires too much time to read and understand, you may lose out on a quality candidate for not only the initial job listing they encounter, but any future listings. A well-formatted, professional-looking listing helps to win over a job seeker to an opening and to your company overall.

The below tips are geared primarily toward Indeed since it is the #1 job site in the world, but they can also be helpful for other sites that list your open positions.

Although Indeed does have a page mentioning job titles, they do not offer any real details. The list at the bottom of the page may provide some helpful terminology for you to use in your job titles and possibly increase the chance of your listing showing up in job search results. However, the list is not all-inclusive and you may not find one appropriate to your opening or needs.

The following guidelines are ones you should consider in writing job titles for Indeed and possibly other sites. Additionally, I have included a couple items to avoid violating Indeed’s guidelines, which could result in your position or positions being delisted on their site.

1. First and foremost, make sure everything is spelled correctly. If a job title is misspelled, it may not come up in job seeker searches.
2. If possible, try to keep the number of characters (including spaces) for the job title to 35 and under. If you need a longer job title, that’s fine but it should still be under 60 characters. Indeed allows more, but the more characters you use, the less information is visible in search results, especially in mobile searches.
   • Tip #1: You can use “&” instead of “and” if your job title is getting long.
   • Tip #2: It is acceptable to use “Sr.” or “Sr” as a substitute for “Senior” to keep the number of characters down.
3. Keep a job title to the basics, like “Customer Service Representative” or “Cardiac Sonographer.” If the position is one where a discipline is important, include that as well, e.g., “Registered Nurse, Medical/Surgical.” Nursing positions (and others like them) can cover a wide range of speciaties so this may be necessary.
4. Make sure any terms in the job title are terms the job seeker would use as a search term or would get the results you aim for. For example, while “ASU” may have meaning to the job poster, 1. It’s likely to bring in job types totally unrelated to yours and 2. It is not a search term most job seekers would use.
5. Avoid using abbreviations except for the common industry-recognized abbreviations. A job seeker may use the search term “RN” but is much less likely to search using “Mgr.”
6. You may also use the abbreviation in addition to the full term (e.g., Registered Nurse, RN), provided it does not make the job title too long. However, in many cases like this RN example, you shouldn’t need to include it with “Registered Nurse.” The algorithm likely knows to incorporate “RN” in the job seeker’s search and/or that term may be used in the job description.
7. No locations (e.g., Wilmington, DE) should be in the job title. This information is obtained and used elsewhere by Indeed and only adds unnecessary length to your job title.
8. You should avoid including schedule information like “Full Time,” “Part Time,” “PRN” and “Per Diem” in the job title field. Indeed has a separate field for the schedule and should be obtaining the required information from the jobs feed or scrape of your site. On a practical level, job seekers are also less likely to click on a job that is listed as “Per Diem” or “PRN.”
9. Indeed frowns upon detailed shift information (e.g., 9am-5pm) in the job title field. Indeed prefers that this information is listed in the job description field.
10. Typically, Indeed does not allow you to put sign-on and retention bonuses in the job title field unless you sponsor the listing. Please consult with your account manager and possibly also your Indeed representative to clarify the policy.
11. Similar to the previous item, Indeed generally does not allow you to include “remote” in the job title field. That designation should be mentioned in the job description and possibly in the location field in your ATS, if applicable. According to Indeed, their system should automatically assign a remote designation if these steps are followed. If that is not happening or you have questions about the procedure, please contact your account manager and/or Indeed representative.
12. Remember that your job titles are not set in stone. If you are not receiving the number or types of candidates you seek, you can revise and update your job title field for the job aggregators.

At its most basic, your job title should be short, simple and concise. You won’t be able to do that in every situation, especially for jobs that need to specify a discipline, but keeping that in mind should prevent you from writing overly long and thus ineffective job titles.

Download a handy PDF cheat sheet: