What’s the best billboard you’ve ever seen? Why did it stand out? Think of job advertisements like billboards. It’s something everyone can see, and the best ones are creative, memorable and lead to business opportunities.

Millions of people—insurance professionals included—find jobs by driving down the job search “interstate,” better known as the Internet. As Zippia.com cited, “80 percent of all job searches were done online as of 2022 and 50 percent of job applications came from job boards.”

When it comes to recruiting, the tool that has the best chance of helping you source top talent are job ads. That’s why how they are written is so important to your recruiting success.

Use jargon to connect with insurance candidates. Insurance is a unique industry. Your audience of claims, underwriting, sales, client service professionals and more want lingo they understand weaved into the write up. The more specifically you write the job ads, the more highly qualified applicants are going to be interested and apply.

Write ads that translate to social media to maximize your opening’s visibility and give candidates multiple ways to apply. Think about how a LinkedIn or Facebook post appears. You only see the top one-third of the post, but many times it’s enough to make you want to read more. Use attention-grabbing headers, titles and intros about your job or company so potential candidates want to keep reading.

Rely on bullet points rather than paragraphs. Too often I see job ads written as full sentences and complete paragraphs. Job seekers consume information in small bits. forget how you were taught to write in high school English classes. Informal sentence structure works. Format your advertisement with numerical lists and percentages to highlight the most critical information hiring managers want to convey.

Have a library of job templates. It’s time consuming to write every job ad from scratch. With templates, you streamline the creation process, making the inception of the opening to posting live on multiple sites very efficient. My previous Insurance Journal article — Your Template To Write an Awesome Insurance Job Advertisement — shows you how to build sample templates.

Insert as much “what candidates want” information as possible. Eliminate fluffy language like mission statements and company stats. Speak to what motivates insurance professionals to make a job change. Hot button issues right now are remote work, compensation, training and career advancement. Sprinkle this information throughout the job advertisement or create a separate section with fun headers like, “Why You Want to Work Here” or “Perks of the Job Our Employees Love.”

*This article was originally published by Insurance Journal, CM’s sister publication