Prioritize Quality—Here’s How To Write a Job Post on LinkedIn To Reach High-Value Talent

LinkedIn is a high-traffic platform attracting more than 850 million professionals globally, which is both a pro and a con for job posters. You can use the site’s quality networking features to interact with and hire top talent from literally any job niche. The only problem is that you’re competing with roughly 15.7 million job posts at any given time, so poorly written job postings slip into obscurity in search results rather soon.

Our guide will present the best strategies on how to write strong job posts on LinkedIn. Since it’s common for entrepreneurs, creators, and startup teams to feel lost posting jobs on the platform, our goal is to help you:

• Navigate every step of the job posting process
• Understand the language required to attract talent
• Format status updates for sharing jobs

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How To Write a Job Posting on LinkedIn—Stepwise Optimization Strategy

You can post a job on LinkedIn by using the Post a job option from the Work icon that appears on the navigation bar. There are four primary steps for creating a job post on LinkedIn:

1. Filling in the basic job details
2. Providing the job description and skills
3. Setting up applicant screening questions
4. Posting the job as a free or promoted listing

Like any recruiter, your end goal should be the overall optimization of the job posts. The following sections suggest the best ways to complete these four steps so that your job post stands out in search results and attracts clicks from the right people.

Step 1: Filling in the Basic Job Details

When you start creating a job post on LinkedIn, you first need to input the basic details of the vacancy. Here’s what the screen looks like:

Filling out the fields in this section is no rocket science, but you should still pay attention to the following:

1. Job title—Avoid using complex job titles that candidates hardly search for or understand. If the role can be confused with similar positions, use the industry-standard job title that best fits the intent of the job. For example, if you’re hiring someone to process data and spot consumer and market trends, you’d be looking for a Business Analyst, not a Data Scientist
2. Workplace type—You can choose from On-site, Hybrid, and Remote for your workplace type. Since the pandemic, many jobseekers have been favoring hybrid or remote roles, so consider choosing those if the role allows

Step 2: Providing the Job Description and Skills

Once you finish up with the basic info, you’ll be taken to the job description and skill-tagging page, referred to as the Job Details section. How you polish this section directly impacts the quality of candidates who click through or apply.

Refer to the table below to understand how to navigate the Job details sections:

We also have detailed sections on the job posting language and formatting that you can check out after the steps.

Step 3: Setting Up Applicant Screening Questions 

The Applicant Options is the final info section before you post a job. It allows you to:

1. Choose how you receive applicants—You can provide an email, an external website, or an ATS link where you receive the candidates’ resumes. Unlike other sections, this info cannot be edited once you post an ad
2. Add screening questions—Screening questions are optional, but adding them automatically filters out unfit candidates. LinkedIn automatically suggests you some screening questions, but you can create customized new questions or use the tags at the bottom of the page to do so
3. Pick must-have qualifications—When you tick a particular screening question as a Must-have qualification, LinkedIn automatically rejects candidates who don’t meet that criteria

Step 4: Posting the Job as a Free or a Promoted Listing

You’re taken to the job promotion screen before you post the job. You can choose to:

• Post the job for free—Your listing would remain active for 30 days, although its visibility would dip drastically within 2–3 days. If you’re using a personal or a company page account, you can have only one free job listing at a time
• Promote the job—Promoted LinkedIn job posts dominate search results and are also sponsored via email and text alerts. LinkedIn offers intuitive promotion rates on a per-click basis, i.e., the rates vary according to criteria such as job title and location. You can create a daily or total job posting budget depending on the rate

Once you’ve selected between free and promoted job listing, your post will become active.

LinkedIn Job Posting Language—What Are the Expected Standards?

Your job description will reflect what you are as a company, so you must be mindful of the language you use. LinkedIn recommends writing descriptions with:

1. Relevant keywords and hashtags
2. A professional and objective tone
3. Gender-neutral terminology
4. No company-related fluff

Relevant Keywords and Hashtags

Job descriptions with industry buzzwords attract the attention of driven and confident professionals. Your post should also include keywords and hashtags for search optimization—research how the job posts that fare well in search results describe the advertised role.

For example, check out the keyword-packed job description for a product marketing manager in the image below:

As for hashtags, use LinkedIn’s search box predictive tool to find them.

A Professional and Objective Tone

Avoid going for fun ways to post jobs on LinkedIn. Job ads with a casual tone don’t perform well on the platform because they give the impression that a company is not serious about its goals. According to LinkedIn surveys, job posts with informal wording (like a kickass marketing whiz) or lame hashtags (#tally4life, #alwaysthewinner) were the absolute worst at attracting talent.

Check out the intro in the image below, for instance—even if the company means well, a serious jobseeker may be repulsed by the “hip” choice of words.

The best strategy is to write a concise job description that’s easy to process in a single read.

Gender-Neutral Terminology

LinkedIn promotes the use of gender-neutral terminology for job descriptions to enable diversity-focused and gender-balanced hiring. Statistically, women apply to fewer jobs than men because many job descriptions contain words that are psychologically and culturally deemed masculine. Be aware of “masculine-charged” words that can be a turn-off, and make a conscious effort to replace them with gender-neutral alternatives. Check out some examples:

No Company-Related Fluff

Don’t waste your word count on detailing your company background, mission, and strategic vision. Jobseekers won’t be invested in that but in what they’d be required to do and the compensation they would receive. Take the following job post intro as an example:

Almost an entire paragraph is about the company background—a jobseeker skimming through multiple similar roles in a session won’t absorb the info. The best job descriptions are crafted with the reader’s attention span in mind.

How To Format a Job Post on LinkedIn—The Essentials

Almost half the job views on LinkedIn come from mobile devices, so the job description should be formatted for optimized display on both big and small screens. Here are the recommended formatting guidelines:

1. Keep paragraphs short—Avoid big chunks of text as large paragraphs can be intimidating and may dissuade a jobseeker from further reading
2. Use paragraph spacing—Use paragraph spacing to demarcate sections, which will help the reader understand the framework of the text and navigate through it easily
3. Bold, capitalize, and/or underline headings—Distinguished headings are especially helpful when the reader is using a mobile screen. It prevents them from accidentally scrolling past important info 
4. Use bullets and lists—Core info like job responsibilities, performance indicators, and qualifications required should always be presented as listed or bulleted items

Keep in mind that these suggestions are based on the formatting options provided by LinkedIn.

FAQs on Writing Job Posts on LinkedIn

If you still have doubts about writing jobs on LinkedIn, refer to our FAQs below.

Does LinkedIn Allow Editing of Job Descriptions After Posting?

If you’re not satisfied with the description of a currently posted job, you can always go back and edit it for optimization. You can access the option by accessing the Posted jobs dashboard, which allows you to edit, remove, or pause job posts.

Once you open a job for editing, you can also:

• Add or remove screening questions
• Switch between free and promoted listing
• Use the Improve your job post section for:
  • Suggesting skill assessment tests to candidates
  • Adding salary and benefits info

What To Write When Sharing a Job Posting as a Status Update on LinkedIn?

The share button on a posted job allows you to share the job post with your followers or connections. It’s essentially a status update with a link to your job post, so you shouldn’t write anything too descriptive or gimmicky. Simple texts like “We’re hiring/looking for a candidate with ABC qualifications and XYZ skills…” work fine. Use the #hiring hashtag, keep it short, and request your connections to share or tag candidates.

Where Can You Find Ready-Made Job Descriptions for LinkedIn?

Several external sources offer you ready-made job descriptions for various positions but avoid copy-pasting their texts as they may not be up to LinkedIn’s standards. If you’re looking for optimized, keyword-driven job descriptions for over 500 roles, you can find them on Workello.

Workello is a platform offering complete hiring solutions to businesses. You get:

• Pre-written and customizable job templates created by experts
• Pre-hire tests for finding the top 1% of applicants
• A centralized dashboard for creating and managing a hiring funnel

What Other Job Boards Should You Consider Besides LinkedIn?

Don’t stress too much if your job post doesn’t get too many clicks on LinkedIn. There are many online job boards offering active exposure to your job post. Some even offer to optimize the job description and cross-post it on multiple platforms. You can find the reviews of some of the top job posting websites below:

• Indeed
• Google Jobs
• Mashable
• Monster
• Facebook
• CareerBuilder
• Craigslist
• Dice
• ZipRecruiter
• Ladders
• Juju
• Careerjet
• Snagajob

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Then, go back to the Facebook posts you made, and drop a link to each commenter.

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