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Get more out of ReliefWeb Jobs: Tips for advertisers

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Got humanitarian jobs to advertise? Great, this article is for you. ReliefWeb's immensely popular Jobs page makes it an ideal place your advertisements targeting humanitarian professionals. With 1,200 organizations posting 20,000 job announcements a year, you'll want to make sure that your announcements are seen by the right people, and that they are complete and accurate. So here are some tips that will help you create a perfect job announcement.

Title

Let’s start with the title. It should be short, clear, concise. With a few key words, you need to describe what the job is about - the title is what makes the applicant decide if the job is worth clicking on. You don't want to copy and paste a whole paragraph from the job description, as a long and wordy title would have the opposite effect. AN ENTIRE TITLE IN CAPITAL LETTERS DOES NOT MAKE YOUR JOB ANNOUNCEMENT APPEALING. And check for embarrassing typos!

Closing date

Double check the closing date, as if you accidentally select a date in the past, your ad will not be published. This is a good thing, because it lets you extend or close an ad at any time by simply modifying the closing date - no need to ask ReliefWeb editors to change the closing date. For this reason we recommend against putting the closing date in the job description body field.

Country

It’s very important that a country is selected as most users search for jobs by location. If you indicate the job location in the title but do not select a country, you can miss out on good candidates. If the position is home-based, you can select “World”. If the job has multiple locations you can select more than one country.

Organization

Would you apply for a job with an unknown organization? Probably not. To prevent fraud, we do our best to make sure that we only publish job announcements from legitimate organizations. If you think your organizations qualifies, find out how you can register. While we are on the subject, we also have some tips on how to stay away from scammers.

Body

Many hiring organizations do not fill the job description in the body but post attachments instead. You may lose good candidates if they don't bother opening the attachment, considering that more users are accessing the site with mobile devices. Make sure the duties and responsibilities, academic and work qualifications as well as salary and benefits information are in the body. A clear and detailed job description is key!

Categories: Job Type, Years of Experience, Career Categories, Theme

There are thousands of open jobs on ReliefWeb and many job seekers use the filters to narrow down their search. If you think selecting all themes and career categories will give you more visibility, think again. Candidates get frustrated as they spend more time navigating through jobs they are not interested in. Less is definitely more - only select the themes and career categories that actually apply to the position you want to fill, and not to the work of your organization as a whole. Make sure the years of experience selected in the categories match that of the job description, fresh graduates will probably not be interested in applying for your senior positions!

Questions and feedback

If you still have questions about how to post job ads, check out our Feedback forum. We would also love to hear more about your experience with our jobs service: Have we helped you find the perfect candidate for a position? Did you get overwhelmed with applications? Or did you expect to receive more? What could we improve? Email us to share your stories and ideas!