Centric Revitalizes Job Ads
Centric’s Talent Acquisition Team reworks job description wording to remove gender bias and improve application conversion rates.
Centric actively looks for complementary and unique talent to add to the team. In order to achieve this goal, we need to spread our network out and be intentional about finding the most talented people.
Our goal is to tell potential candidates who we are and why we are special. Many times the job ad is a candidate’s first exposure to Centric – so it’s a perfect opportunity to tell our story. Many articles have been published lately on how the wording within a job ad influences the number of applications – and particularly, the number of applications from women and minorities. Writing a job description that attracts a diverse array of talented candidates is part art and part science.
As a result, the Centric Talent Acquisition team completely overhauled job posts in order to better entice candidates to apply. Gone are long lists of bullet points that outline requirements. Instead, the job ads now use a concise format that emphasizes personal traits over qualifications. And, of course, helps to better tell the Centric story.
To continue with improvements in job ads and increase application rates, Centric joined the beta test for Textio, a new tool that uses statistics and machine learning to determine the best way to word job ads. The intent is twofold. One, to remove inadvertent gender bias from job ads. Two, to improve application rates for everyone by using appealing and persuasive terminology.
The change had a huge impact – the Centric careers website pageviews are triple what they were a year ago. Centric is seeing more qualified candidates, and particularly more qualified female candidates.
“It’s a relatively new concept to remove gender bias and improve application conversion rates via job ad wording.” Says Carmen Fontana, Centric’s National Recruiting Manager, “I know it’s a huge leap of faith to abandon the traditional way of promoting positions. We have definitely not learned everything we can on this topic. We will be continuing to test new wording and formats.”