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Writing an effective job ad is the most important way of attracting the best applicants for your role. A job advert should provide a full overview of the job’s requirements and responsibilities, let candidates know how the application process will work, and generate excitement about the role and its opportunities. Follow these eight top tips to make your ad a success and find the right candidate first time.
1. Use a clear job title
A job title should be simple and familiar. For candidates to find your role, it needs to be something that they’re likely to search for and immediately indicate what the role entails.
Job titles shouldn’t raise questions for candidates other than ‘is this role relevant for me?’. Although a quirky job title like ‘Fundraising Ninja’ or ‘Marketing Superstar’ might reflect the fun atmosphere and ethos of your charity, candidates are much more likely to search for ‘Fundraising Officer’ or ‘Marketing Executive’.
Bonus tip: keep it focused by avoiding unnecessary details in the job title, such as location, hours and any extra information – leave that for the body of the advert.
2. Be transparent about salary
Publishing the salary of your role allows you to gain the trust of candidates and get twice the amount of quality applications.
It’s important to ensure your proposed salary is competitive for the job title, geography and seniority of the role, and realistically aligns with the responsibilities listed. Jobs with salaries that are lower than the going rate often receive fewer applications, and you may struggle to attract the right calibre of candidate.
CharityJob no longer accepts job ads without salaries out of respect for candidates. We feel it’s necessary to list a salary range when posting a role to encourage fairness and transparency in the sector.
Bonus tip: check how your salary range compares with our free salary checker tool, which lists average salaries by job title and charity size/location within the sector.
3. Include location and working hours
Remember to include the location and working arrangements in your job ad. Many jobseekers search for prospective roles based on postcode, city and whether it’s on-site or remote, which means including your location will make your ad more likely to get seen.
Our 2025 salary report shows that remote roles continue to be candidates’ preference, receiving seven times more clicks on the ‘Apply’ button than on-site roles and four times more than hybrid roles. So it’s definitely worth considering if you really need the role to be based on-site.
If you do require any kind of office presence – even just one day a week or month – then you should list your role as ‘hybrid’ so candidates know they need to live within a commutable distance. You can use the job description to outline what the in-office and homeworking balance is, so it’s clear what candidates will need to commit to.
Make sure you’re also transparent about how many working hours per week the role entails. Perhaps you could consider making the role part-time? This could significantly expand your pool of candidates, particularly for highly-skilled candidates who require more flexibility. If you’re willing to accept full-time or part-time employees for a role, then mention both options to show you’re open to this possibility.
Bonus tip: don’t forget to add the necessary number of working hours, working patterns and how flexible you can be about this (hint, the more flexible, the better!) into the body of the job description.
4. Keep the ad short, sweet and digestible
Keep your job ad concise and easy to digest. Candidates will be reading many ads, so you want to catch their attention. Include the most important details and get them excited about the role as quickly and concisely as possible.
Job ads that lead with the job title and a blurb about the role tend to perform better. The most effective ads are around 500 words long, which achieves a 12% higher application rate.
Avoid biased language and imagery
Bias – even the unintentional kind – in your job ads can stop you from tapping into a diverse talent pool. Using gendered language in job ads can deter people of any gender from applying, while any images you use could inadvertently suggest that older candidates or those from certain ethnicities aren’t welcome. Use neutral language to avoid turning people away from applications.
Bonus tip: try to find a balance between including necessary details, while also conveying the personality of your charity in your copy to avoid being too generic.
5. Outline role responsibilities
The details around roles and responsibilities is the real meat of your advert. Remember to keep it succinct and clear but don’t sell yourself short or leave out anything important.
Avoid having only a one-paragraph job description or being too generic. Stating ‘we’re looking for an enthusiastic person with great xxx skills’ is the equivalent of reading ‘I’m a passionate candidate and I believe with the best of my ability that I’ll be a good fit for your charity’ in a candidate cover letter – it doesn’t really tell you anything of value.
Keyword boost
Candidates often search for roles using keywords as well as specific job titles, so pick the ones that are most relevant to your role to weave into your copy and include in tags.
Before choosing the right keywords, it’s worth researching the words and phrases that potential candidates will use when searching for vacancies. Once you’ve identified these, include them in the body of the advert to help suitable applicants discover your role.
For example, if you’re recruiting for a ‘Group Marketing Manager,’ you might include keywords such as ‘email marketing,’ ‘content marketing’, ‘marketing campaigns’, ‘digital marketing’ and ‘team leader’ within your description.
Bonus tip: include a paragraph that summarises the job role, before outlining roles and responsibilities in snappy bullet points.
6. Be clear about applicant requirements
Potential candidates can be put off from applying if it isn’t clear whether they’re qualified or not. Similarly, lengthy criteria that doesn’t explain which items are essential to have and which aren’t can be a significant deterrent – so we’d suggest including a list of key essential and desirable requirements.
• Essential requirements – only your non-negotiables should be listed as essential requirements, such as necessary skills the right candidate will need to use every day. For example, people management experience or digital competency.
• Desirable requirements – these should be bonus items that are nice to have. For example, what’s more important, experience or education? Sometimes specific qualifications are necessary, particularly around legal or accounting roles, while other times demonstrable experience can be more valuable.
Bonus tip: if you can’t immediately decide whether a requirement should be essential or not, pop it on the desirable list.
7. Highlight your unique selling points (USPs)
Everyone is looking for ‘hard-working,’ ‘highly motivated’ candidates who are also ‘self-starters.’ Candidates often skim over these words to get to the crux of the role. Focus on what makes you different instead. Is there something that your organisation or charity is particularly proud of? Is this role new, unusual or part of a dedicated team? Do you offer any benefits? A unique value proposition will help to catch the candidate’s eye and get them excited about the idea of working for you.
Charity cause
Just as public and private sector roles introduce their business in job roles, charities should highlight their cause. Explaining what, or who, your charity supports is very important to attract the most passionate candidates. 76% of people who want to work for non-profits start their job search by exploring organisations based on their cause.
Benefits and perks
Although charity roles often have lower salaries than private sector jobs, applicants who are enthusiastic about your charity are often willing to overlook this for the opportunity to support a cause they care about. That being said, there are other ways aside from financial compensation to make your role more appealing. Are there any perks or benefits available to employees? This could include development and training opportunities, access to discount schemes or flexible working to offer a better work-life balance.
Bonus tip: be honest and realistic about any benefits you offer to avoid misleading applicants.
8. Reduce frustration with a suitable application method
When jobs are in demand, it’s easy to become inundated with lots of applications and not know how to narrow down the list of candidates. The way you accept and manage applications can help screen candidates from the outset and encourage the best applicants to apply.
Application process
The more difficult and time-consuming you make it for candidates to apply, the fewer will do so. Our best advice is to request a CV and ask a few screening questions to test how the candidate matches the most important aspects of the role. This should give you enough information for shortlisting, then you can ask for more details at the next stage.
We don’t generally advise using application forms, as including these can result in 50% fewer applicants due to the frustrations around repeating information already provided in a CV. If you have an application form prepped, you could extract a few key questions and set them up as screening questions instead.
Anonymous recruitment
If you want to improve diversity, equality and inclusion at your charity, make your recruitment process fairer by using anonymous recruitment. This will help remove unconscious bias in the first stage by removing all personal details from applications until you’re ready to contact the applicant. You can even briefly mention that you do this at the end of your job description to provide reassurance to candidates.
Interviews
If your role is particularly time-sensitive or hard to fill, then we’d recommend interviewing candidates as soon as applications come in, rather than waiting until the closing date. However, it’s important to let candidates know if you’ll be doing this. Otherwise, this would be disadvantageous to those with limited time or resources, so make sure to note this in your job ad.
Bonus tip: not that we’re not biased or anything, but we suggest selecting ‘CharityJob Apply’ as the application method when you post your role. Not only will you receive applications from passionate candidates (and you can choose if they apply by CV, cover letter, screening questions or a combination of methods), but you’ll also get free access to our Applicant Tracking System (ATS), packed with recruitment tools specifically designed for charities, so you can:
- Easily manage your applications in one place with our end-to-end hiring platform.
- Debias your hiring process with features such as anonymous recruitment.
- Share your brand and values with candidates through your dedicated organisational profile.
How to advertise your role with CharityJob
When you advertise a job with CharityJob, you’re posting on the UK’s busiest and most specialised job board for the charity sector, so you’re starting in the right place.
Our all-in-one recruitment platform will do the hard work for you to simplify and streamline your entire hiring process and make it quicker and easier to find the perfect candidate.
Choose the right package for your vacancy
Choosing the right job ad package is important, as it dictates the pool size, type and quality of the candidates your ad will reach. We offer four packages to suit your budget and needs.
Use your account manager
When you register with CharityJob, you’ll be given your own personal account manager, who can offer dedicated advice on how to tailor a market sensitive campaign to get the highest number of top-quality applications.
The recruitment market in the charity sector is constantly evolving and we’re continually improving our website to provide you with resources, but your account manager will always have the most current information.
So our final tip, and the most valuable one we can give you, is to contact your account manager for more personalised advice on how to write an effective job description. Give us a call on 020 8939 8430, or email us on [email protected]
This post was originally published in 2021 and has been fully updated to ensure relevance and to reflect the current recruiter experience.
Tags: charity sector, job ads, job market, post a job, recruitment process
