One of the most common mistakes that companies (and agencies) make when recruiting is advertising the job description itself as the job, rather than write an appealing bespoke advert. Job descriptions are not designed to sell you the job, they are there to explain the function of the job, so why do so many companies persist in doing so.
Yes of course the interested candidate wants to see the job description, but make it be part of the information flow. Start with the advert (whether it be a job board advert or a career site), make it appealing and give the basics but above all sell the role and the company to the audience. Then make the interested parties show their interest by either sending you a CV or directing them to you career site.
If you have directed them to your career site, make your landing page exciting and whatever you do, do not let them see a job description yet. Give them what Lou Adler calls a Talent Hub - "a warm up" - a page on the career site that tells people what your company is like, what it is like to work for and the tremendous opportunities there are in your company for new employees. If they like what they see then they are going to want to work for your company.Then and only then show them a copy of the job description, which now should be less relevant anyway because the candidate has already decided that he wants to work for your company anyway!
Peter Gold in his latest post Hide and Seek mentions actually having to sell jobs to candidates to get a good success, and of course he is right. We all sell jobs to candidates every day, but now companies and agencies must learn to do this selling earlier in the cycle or else their advertising and career sites will simply dry up - like most of the lakes in the UK will this summer.
