Job description best practices based on hiring data
Feb 06, 2017
On Friday, the first jobs report came out since President Trump took office. Overall, the report showed stronger job growth than economists expected, though most of the growth was in categories like trade, transportation, and professional services. Only 5,000 jobs were created in the manufacturing industry.
As Quartz noted, President Trump campaigned heavily on reversing the outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing overseas. Despite his pledge to bring these jobs back to the U.S., it looks like he has a steep uphill battle.
We analyzed our data from over 70 million job posts and their hiring outcomes from around the globe and found even more data showing how hard this might be for Trump to fix: it takes nine days longer to fill an open manufacturing position in the U.S. than it takes abroad.
We also used data from Textio’s predictive engine to show us which words or phrases could statistically help companies hire faster. Here are three things that you can start doing with manufacturing job posts today that will likely reduce your time to fill.
1. Include strong equal opportunity language
We’ve written before about the importance of an equal opportunity statement, Textio’s data shows that jobs with strong equal opportunity statements fill an average of 10% more quickly than jobs without them. In the manufacturing industry, well-crafted equal opportunity language can reduce time to fill down to just eight days. The data shows that the best statements are written to reflect your unique employer brand, like this from Sherwin-Williams: “Our 45,000+ employees across the globe are diverse, innovative and passionate. With a variety of rewarding and challenging opportunities, Sherwin-Williams is a great place to launch and grow a career.”
2. Emphasize health and safety
It’s clear that the kind of manufacturing environment that a potential job seeker can expect also plays a part in the appeal of a job. “Safe and healthy,” simply “healthy,” and “challenging” all shorten time to fill.
3. Value your customers, and think global
Also, how you talk about relationships with customers makes a big difference. Saying you “value customers” is likely to shorten time to fill. And here’s an interesting quirk: if you talk about your company being “global” the job post fills faster, but if you use “international,” the time to fill slows down considerably.
