Writing effective job ads is an important aspect of every recruiter's responsibilities. Poorly written job ads get poor results, low quality applicants and can create more work for recruiters who need to weed through all those inappropriate job candidates. If you want to attract the best job candidates, then write a job ad that will appeal to them.  Here are few tips:

1.    Understand your target job candidate.  What types of jobs do quality job candidates want?  Do they want a high salary?  Room to grow? Great location? Do they want to work for a prestigious company?  Do they value working independently or working on challenging projects?

2.    As you finish answering the questions above, ask yourself, "Why should the best candidates work for our client and not the competition?"  What advantages does your client have?

3.    When you write your job ad, be specific, never vague.  Make sure you list the exact salary or salary range if possible. Offer details on job responsibilities, workplace culture and what training and rewards the job candidate can expect if they choose to work for your client. For example, you ad might say "XYZ firm prides itself in a fast paced environment that rewards employee productivity with substantial yearly bonuses."

4.    If there are features about your client's job that you know will be selling point, then emphasize them.  For example, if a firm offers an official mentor program that may be something you want to point out in the job ad.

5.    Finally make sure your job ad is written in a dynamic, specific conversational tone (yet professional) and utilize active verbs.  For example, you might say, "XYZ firm invests in their attorneys by offering continuing education funding starting in the first year of employment," instead of saying "XYZ firm offers educational assistance."

Many recruiters and employers requesting resumes via email are often cautious about attachments.  Some employers and recruiters may even ask a job candidate to send their resume in the body of the email to avoid the possibility of viruses.  But doing so can leave a job candidate with a formatting mess.  Here are some instructions on how you can create a readable and attractive text resume that can be inserted into the body of your email.

1.    Open your resume and rename it using the .txt extension. Most programs will allow you to do this by going to "Save as…" and saving the document as ASCII text. If you don't see the ASCII option then select "text only with line breaks."

2.    Remove any graphics, including lines, photos and logos.

3.    Replace bullets with asterisks or dashes.

4.    Use the spacebar to line up text the way you want. Do not use tabs or any macros.

5.    You are limited to 80 characters per line.

6.    You can also use Microsoft NotePad or any other text program to make the changes above or any other changes to you text resume.

7.    Once you're done you can save it again.  Make sure you select "Save as…" "ASCII" because most word processing programs will revert to their own extensions (i.e. Microsoft Word .doc).

8.    Once you have completed your text resume, you can copy and paste it into the body of the email.