Job description best practices based on hiring data
Jun 26, 2017
Last month Textio published a line-by-line analysis of technology job posts from Pinterest and Twilio; so for June, we’re going to shift industries and dig into a pair of roles in the banking field. A quick job search turned up two comparable listings from KeyBank and RBC for open roles they have for investment bankers.
The RBC posting, for a Senior Associate Investment Banker, scores a “strong” 84 in Textio, with a slightly feminine tone. That’s slightly higher than the typical RBC listing—if you look up RBC in the Textio Index, you’ll see that the Textio Score of their average job listing is 72.
Still, that’s much better than KeyBank’s average Textio Score, which comes in at just 28, ranking them lower than heavy-hitters Wells Fargo and Bank of America. KeyBank’s current listing for an Investment Banking Associate gets a Textio Score of 37, and has a slightly masculine tone, which means the post will statistically attract a higher ratio of applications from men.
Let’s take a close look at what’s working and what’s not in each of this listings side-by-side:
- KeyBank: Investment Banking Associate, Technology
- RBC: Investment Banker — Sr. Associate, Real Estate
Use more verbs
Both listings show a potential performance improvement if they would use more verbs in their language. Textio’s data shows that job listings with the highest verb count fill the fastest — the ideal percentage of verbs in your text is actually 15% or more! This KeyBank job description is only 6% verbs, while RBC’s is somewhat better, with 10% verbs. Listings that are heavy on verbs may be more popular with job seekers because they offer more detail about what they would actually be doing on the job. Textio calculates that KeyBank could improve their score by as much as 20 points just by improving their usage of verbs!
Include “You” statements
Another big difference that strongly affects how well these two posts will attract qualified applicants is the ratio of “you” statements to “we” statements. Hiring data shows that listings with slightly more “you” than “we” get higher candidate engagement. The KeyBank job post literally never says “you,” which makes it sound very formal and it might be making it difficult for prospective employees to envision themselves in the role. RBC’s language is more personal and has a ratio of 0.7, but they could still stand to improve: the ideal proportion is 1.2.
Ask engaging questions
Another important thing that the low-scoring KeyBank job listing doesn’t have? Questions. Real-world recruiting statistics show that the ideal number of engaging questions in a job post is 3–4 (but don’t put in too many—having 6–7 questions is actually worse than having none!) This may be one of the biggest differences between these two job listings, and an easy one to fix. The RBC post is great at asking questions like “What’s in it for you?” and “What do you need to succeed?”
Textio’s predictive engine also identifies an interesting opportunity in the RBC post to strengthen language that is otherwise neutral when it comes to the Textio Score. Even though coaching is neither a positive or negative phrase, Textio detected the writer’s meaning and surfaced an opportunity to boost the score by changing that word to either mentoring or mentorship, both of which will statistically help this role fill faster.
