Here’s how we laid out the bottom line when we told you how to increase your candidate acquisitions now: the clearer your job posts are, and the more complete the info is you provide, the more likely it is candidates will reply. And that’s not all: the better your match rate is, the more you will appear on people’s lists of matching employers too, and gain additional candidates there.
So if you want to get better results, the best way is to start with the basics: improve your job posts! It may feel like a drag to spend more time on writing up your post, but you earn back that time by finding the right nurses, sooner.
There are two ways to post jobs on NurseRecruiter.com: manually and automatically. Are you using job feeds? Go here! Do you post your jobs manually? We will give you some short, clear pointers in this post on how to do it better, taking you through the relevant fields one by one.
Your company profile: upload your logo and present yourself. Emphasize your unique selling point, but keep the description short — a wall of text will make the candidate’s eyes glaze over. Make the description concrete, avoiding bland corporate generalities. And highlight where you are strongest in meeting the likely priorities of candidates, whether that’s competitive pay, generous benefits, a convenient platform, a personal touch, a focus on the well-being of nurses, or a central or exceptional role in your area.
Location: Just start typing in the name of the town or city, and pick it from the list that appears. Cheat code: you can also just paste or type in the ZIP Code! The name of the city will appear automatically.
Profession and specialty: pick a profession from the drop down list (or start typing to narrow down the options), then do the same with the specialty. Can’t find the profession you’re thinking of? Remember to pick Allied Health as profession for occupations like Surgical Techs, Ultrasonographers, Rad Techs, Respiratory Therapists and Cardiac Cath Techs. There’s always the Other category, but it isn’t going to be very efficient!
Our inside tip: there’s an additional way to tweak these fields to increase your reach. Sometimes you will have a job opening that reasonably fits more than one profession and specialty, especially if it’s in a less common field. In those cases, keep in mind that the nurses who fill out their profile on our site can only select up to three specialties. So if you only post your opening under one specialty, you might miss out on some nurses with relevant experience! That’s where you are better off duplicating your post to match more than one profession/specialty so more nurses see it.
Compensation, compensation, compensation! Including a $ number in your job post is optional, but we can’t stress enough how effective it is. Nurses prefer job posts which list salary info by a country mile, and we will list jobs with that info above those without it.
With employment type and shifts, too, the more specific your listing is the greater your chance of success. Always make sure to specify whether it’s a travel, per diem or permanent position, and pick one description of the shifts involved (day, evening, night or varied). Whether nurses love or loathe the night shift life, they’re a lot more likely to mash that button for your job if you make the type of shifts clear right away!
If you’re posting a travel nursing job, the employment duration field is optional as well but, again, highly encouraged. Understandably, travel nurses will hesitate to say they’re interested in a job if they don’t know for how long it is!
Job title, description and requirements — the meat and potatoes of your job post come last, but they’re obviously at the heart of your appeal to candidates.
The job title is both most important and easiest. You can only cram so much into this field, so for most jobs it’s straightforward: profession/specialty + location + pay (if that’s a draw). If it’s a travel job, add that. There are always exceptions, of course, but they should directly address candidate priorities: for example if you’re posting a remote job, or if the position is open to nurses with any state license.
The description is the most substantive part, but also the part where we have least to add: since it should reflect what you think is most important about the job and your facility or platform, only you can decide!
It’s also the part where you may be most hemmed in by lacking the time to individualize each element, so we see a lot of copy-pasted text. We get that. But if you want to get all the candidates you can get out of NurseRecruiter.com, we’d still stress the benefits of being specific about the duties, setting and scope of responsibility of the individual job you’re posting — and keeping the rest of the text concise.
The requirements field can usually be a single line (e.g. “ACLS, BCLS and current RN license required”), and after that it’s a matter of picking how many years of experience are needed.
Finally, you can specify the email address that applicants to the job you’re posting should be sent to. This field is optional; if you don’t specify an address here, notifications about new applicants will simply be sent to the default notification email for your employer account. (You can set that on the notification settings page.)
That’s it! It all seems pretty intuitive, doesn’t it? And yet it would be easy to improve most job posts by implementing all the above tips. And that’s all we want: for you to be more successful on NurseRecruiter.com!