Using great design to attract the right candidates

Posted by Theresa Cortesi

Making sure you have an attractive, professionally designed recruitment ad is key when recruiting. It will help you capture the attention of the right candidates and also improve the number responses to your ad.  



It’s important to get the design of your advert right so here are some of my “tried and true” design principles tips to assist you next time you advertise:

• Firstly, you should design your ad to reflect your company’s unique image and personality by using your company logo, graphics and colours distinctively. This really helps to attract the right candidates to your role and reflects positively on your company’s image. 
• I find that visually direct, bold, dynamic ads always work best as they stand out in a cluttered recruitment market. So use unique borders, photos and illustrations for maximum effect. 
• Try not to overload your ad with too much text – you don’t want candidates to feel the “pressure of information”. Too much text and people will be put off, not enough and you leave it open to a wider range of applicants. 
• Take care in using colour tints and patterns behind type as this can drastically affect readability. 
• Make sure the main typeface in your ad is easy to read and at an acceptable size for people of all ages to read. 
• Where possible try to avoid using ALL CAPS as they are proven to reduce readability and you don’t want to be shouting at your potential candidates. 
• Always use bolded subheadings and bullet points to break up copy into key points of interest. Many candidates “scan” ads, so it’s about making bite size pieces of information and drawing people in.

 Hopefully this will help you when next advertising. 

If you would like some more advice and ideas on your advertisements, then contact me at: theresa@talentpropeller.co.nz

Theresa is the New Zealand Client Director at Talent Propeller. You can email her here