Hiring Wisdom: The 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Internet Job Postings

While this is not an endorsement for the Indeed job board, they just issued a set of guidelines I encourage everyone to use when posting your firm’s job openings online.

According to their website:

Indeed is the No. 1 job site in the world and the recruitment tool of choice for all kinds of companies. Indeed’s commitment to the experience of jobseekers is key to the hiring results of employers. At Indeed, we work hard to ensure the safety, privacy, and positive experience of people who search for jobs on Indeed. This requires that every job meet the following standards of accessibility, transparency, and fairness.

Here are the 10 tips from Indeed:

Specifics, not clickbait — Make your job title the name of the particular job as it might appear on a business card, with no extra information or eye-catching gimmicks. Job descriptions should include the particulars a qualified candidate would search as well as other details you think are important.
Offer a real job — Indeed is a search engine for jobs. Non-job content, including spam, scams and other offers, will not be shown to job seekers.
Tell the truth — Job seekers deserve to know the true details of your job, including its location, duties and whether the job is being offered by the hiring company or by a recruiter on the company’s behalf.
Don’t discriminate — Jobs on Indeed must be made available to qualified candidates regardless of age, race, gender and sexual orientation. There may be specific exemptions for some kinds of jobs, but you will need to show yours falls into those exemptions.
Pay reliably and fairly — Jobs that people find on Indeed should have hourly or salaried wages and may not cost the candidate anything to apply, interview and begin work.
Make the application accessible and transparent — Job seekers should not have to navigate through complicated steps to begin the application process.
Treat candidates with respect — Applicants should hear back from companies to which they apply and if they are invited to interview, they should be updated on their status at reasonable intervals. Most importantly, the privacy of the jobseeker is paramount and information you get in the application process should be safeguarded.
Don’t use job content that isn’t yours — Each job that appears on Indeed must be offered by an authorized representative of the company seeking to fill a position.
Don’t try to game the system — Like other search engines, Indeed uses algorithms to provide the freshest, most relevant content in response to searches. Listings that attempt to exploit these principles by reposting roles within a short time frame or posting roles in more locations than the job is offered for increased visibility will not be accorded the same visibility to our users as jobs which we feel are more relevant.
Use online job posts to fill a job, not a pipeline — Indeed is an invaluable tool for recruiters, but each posting should represent a real and currently available job. Attracting applicants for future possible matching opportunities is not an honest use of a posting.”