What Affects Applications?
It’s a common question from companies who are thinking about advertising with us on Employment4students. And it doesn’t have an easy answer! How many applications you get depends on a range of factors – some of which you control, some of which we control, and others which are not down to either of us!
Relevance to our Candidates
This is probably the main thing. The more relevant your vacancy is for students, the more applications you will receive. We have over 300,000 candidates coming to the site every month – and they are all looking for jobs. None of them is likely to apply for a job on an oil rig with 5 years experience required and a PHD in oil discovery. Unfortunately our candidates just don’t fit the bill for this!
This is something that you need to determine first, and we are happy to help with this. If we don’t think your vacancy is relevant we will let you know straight away. Having irrelevant vacancies on the site is not great for our candidates and we’re much more concerned about that than a bit of money!
Location
We have candidates from across the whole of the UK – we do not focus on any one area. The location of our candidates closely follows the general population density, so we have more candidates in London than, lets say Leeds. Equally, we’ll have more candidates in a city like Leeds than less populated cities and towns. We do tend to attract more jobseekers from student areas, so if there is a college or university near you then we are likely to be seeing relatively higher number of jobseekers from there!
Your Job
This is probably the biggest factor in determining how many applications you get! We have adverts clients advertising for waiters and waitresses and generating hundreds of applications. On the other hand an advert for a Russian Speaking Marketing and Sales Executive will achieve far fewer applications!
Your Offering
The package you are offering is also key in determining how many applications you will get. This is one of the hardest parts as it requires knowledge of what candidates expect, and what you need to pay to get the best candidates. We can help with this – and really encourage you to get in touch to ensure that you don’t end up paying too much, or equally, offering too little and not attracting the best people for the job. The offering is of course not solely the salary. It includes the perks, benefits, and anything else that a candidate might see as adding value (such as working for a big brand name!)
How well written your advert is
Although so far every point has been either key or very important, this really is the most important one! If you write an advert well, really sell the position and the company, then this can attract candidates regardless of the above! There are a number of articles here about writing an excellent job title, and a killer job description. Please do read them as a bad advert could result in your advertising being completely ineffective. Naturally we’re happy to help and point you in the right direction with this, so again, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
One last thing. We generate over 200,000 applications every month, so to benefit from this post your advert now!
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