You have about 14 seconds to grab a candidate’s attention with your job posts. But the uncomfortable truth is, many job posts are not worth a second glance.

“People are straight up guessing,” says Katrina Kibben, CEO and founder of Three Ears Media. “We have never been taught how to write job postings. Honestly, most of us have never been handed a decent example.”

Katrina’s company is dedicated to helping recruiters write better job posts. After spending years helping Fortune 100 firms shape their brand content, she decided that every company deserves the tools to tell their story in a way that connects with candidates in a more human way.

“There are few things we can control when it comes to hiring,” Katrina says. “But the one thing we can control is how we ask.”

Read more on the LinkedIn Talent Blog here. 

Get some quick advice on writing better job posts from Katrina Kibben on the New Yawk HR show. 

​Employees themselves can be an excellent source of recruitment-marketing content, says consultant Katrina Kibben.

“There’s a lot you could share from every department in your company that would be super-interesting to your hiring demographic,” she says. “You wouldn’t be giving away trade secrets, and you’d attract a whole lot of people.”

Candidates want to be “enchanted” with the idea of working on a particular team, says Kibben. This can be addressed via short questionnaires filled out by employees, such as “I’m excited to come to work every morning because of ‘fill-in-the-blank,’ ” she says.

“Videos, blog posts and social media posts that profile company leaders, or show what a day in the life at the company is like, can be used as a starting point to build engagement with your talent network,” says Michelle Armer, chief people officer at CareerBuilder.

Candidates are especially interested in information that’s useful, says Kibben. This can include emails offering helpful tips on preparing for an interview, she says.

​“Just go get a client.” Dawn Burke, innovative human resources professional turned consultant shares her journey from corporate life to consulting. She discusses how she didn’t initially self-identify as an entrepreneur, the need to do business bigger than herself, taking time to think and breathe, and the importance of admitting what you’re failing at.

Dawn Burke never thought HR would be her career. After tiring of the irregular schedule that comes with working in retail management, she decided to make a change – and eventually rose from administrative assistant to director of HR. After a decade at one company, she accepted a VP of people role at a tech organization in Birmingham, Ala.
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About 18 months ago, Dawn began her own consulting business, where she teaches people about modern HR practices and how to work in a more human way.

Katrina Kibben discusses the importance of good writing for increasing the quality of responses – whether for recruiting new employees or marketing products and services. She also shares two key approaches for entrepreneurial success, the importance of evolving the vision for the business, and two big downsides to venturing on your own.  ​

In this tight job market, companies are being forced to approach the candidate experience in a new way.

Katrina Kibben, CEO and founder of Three Ears Media, which seeks to help brands improve the candidate experience, explains it this way: “Right now the candidate experience is like a one-way mirror, where all these candidates are walking by the glass. You're seeing them, but they aren't seeing you.”

To compete for top talent, especially in industries like healthcare with significant shortages of qualified candidates, employers need a different approach — a more open approach that connects with candidates in a real way. That human connection is crucial to compete for top healthcare talent.
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Here’s how healthcare organizations can put the human element back in their recruiting process.

CEO, Katrina Kibben, was recently mentioned in an article on Forbes. Here's a snippet of the article:

"...as Kibben notes, AI is not a panacea. It should be a strategic complement to the human aspects of the process, including the one element that will likely always rest with people—deciding, or not, to make the hire."