Your job ads are the worst ads you run.

Think about how you'd advertise a product.

You'd lead with the best thing about it. You'd talk about how someone's life gets better, the problem it solves for them, how it'll make them feel. You'd give them every possible reason to say yes.

Now open one of your job ads.

I'll wait.

Chances are it opens with a paragraph about the company, moves on to a list of tasks, then settles into a much longer list of things the candidate must have. What's actually in it for them turns up right at the bottom, usually as "competitive salary" and something about free fruit.

Honestly, it reads more like a list of demands with a logo on top.

We've forgotten what a job ad is for.

Changing jobs is a big deal. It's someone's livelihood. It's how they support their family. It's a genuine risk. A good job ad respects that, and at its core it makes a promise: here's how your working life gets better if you come here.

Most job ads don't even try. And AI hasn't fixed it. It's just helped everyone write bad job ads faster.

Play the highlighter game.

When we run job ad writing training, we start with a game. It's simple, and a little confronting.

Print one of your job ads and grab two highlighters.

In green, highlight everything about the candidate. What they get, what they'll learn, how they'll grow, what they'll enjoy and what gives the work meaning.

In red, highlight the demands. Must have this. Must have that. Minimum five years of the other thing.

Then step back and look at the colours.

In my experience, the typical job ad comes out about 80% red and, on a good day, 20% green. And the green is almost always at the bottom, where the fewest people get to.

Stop telling accountants what accountants do.

The other big offender is the task list.

The right candidate already knows what the job involves. A senior accountant does not need three paragraphs explaining month-end reconciliations. They've done a few. Some detail matters, like the scope, the team and whatever makes this role different. But a page of duties is space you could have used to tell them why this job beats the one they've got.

We also mix up features and benefits. "We're a large organisation" is a feature. "Because we're a large organisation, you'll have room to move and grow your career without changing employers" is a benefit. One of those gets someone to lean in.

A job ad attracts. Screening screens.

Here's the heart of it. We've taken two different jobs and jammed them into one document.

The job ad's role is attraction. Screening's role is screening. When we try to make the ad do the screening, it stops attracting.

"But Sean," I hear you say, "if I don't list every requirement, the wrong people will apply."

They'll apply anyway. The wrong people apply without reading. The best people are the ones who are carefully weighing up whether you're better than where they are now, because they've got options.

So your job ad has turned into a bouncer. And the only people it turns away are the ones who had somewhere better to be.

What a great job ad looks like.

The typical ad runs in this order: about us, about the role, a long list of required experience, a short list of what we offer, then how to apply.

A great one flips it:

1. Why this is an exciting opportunity. Lead with the promise, which comes straight from your employee value proposition.
2. Why you'll like working here. The real reasons people join and stay.
3. What you'll be doing. The parts that make this role different, not the whole duty statement.
4. The type of person who'll be successful. Now that they're interested, tell them what they'll need.
5. How to apply. Make it easy.

Job advertisement examples, before and after.

Here's an illustrative example for a senior accountant role. It's not a real client, but I've seen a hundred versions of the "before".

Before: "XYZ Group is a leading national provider established in 1987 with over 2,000 employees. We are seeking a Senior Accountant to join our Finance team. The successful candidate will be responsible for month-end reporting, reconciliations and audit preparation. Essential criteria include CA or CPA qualification and a minimum of five years' experience..."

After: "Want to be the accountant the business calls before it makes a big decision, rather than after? In this role you'll work alongside our operations leaders, helping them understand the numbers behind every major call. And because we're a national team of 2,000, there's real room to grow from here, whether that's into leadership or across the business."

Same job. One of them sounds like somewhere you'd want to work.

The most famous job ad example in Australia still makes the point best. When IKEA opened its Tempe store in Sydney in 2011, it printed "Career Instructions" in the style of its flat-pack assembly guides and slipped them into customers' furniture boxes. The campaign reportedly drew 4,285 applications and 280 hires, without buying any media.

You don't need IKEA's creative agency to learn from that. They wrote the ad in their own voice, and put it in front of people who already loved the brand.

Add video to your job ads.

Video makes a huge difference. An internal CareerBuilder study found job postings with video earned 12% more views and a 34% higher application rate. I've seen results above that, with a noticeable lift in candidate quality too.

Tailor it where you can. If you're hiring salespeople, use a video about your sales team. If you're hiring for customer service, feature your customer service people. Candidates want to see the people they'd actually be working with.

hipages is a good example. It has careers videos for each part of the business, backed by targeted recruitment marketing campaigns.

Audit one job ad this week.

Pick the role you hire for most often and play the highlighter game on its ad. Then rewrite the top third so the first thing a candidate reads is green.

That's it. One ad. You'll be amazed how much you see once you start looking.

If you'd like help rewriting your job ads, or building templates your team can use every time, that's part of our recruitment marketing work.

It's the work we did with the talent acquisition team at NSW Treasury, and part of the recruiter training we delivered for Townsville Hospital and Health Service.