When I was a young recruiter we used the local press to attract staff using semi-display ads. For those that have never heard of these, or have just forget, we paid by the line. The more lines, the more cost and the less our bonus would be that month.
So we had to think about how much space we took. Too little kept the cost down but wouldn't fill vacancies so no profit. Too much, and it would be at least a plain waste or worse case, too many applicants that did not fit the bill. And back then, we'd only run the ad for a day or so and in some cases tell people the vacancy was filled when we just had too many people to see. Not great but that's how it was. No way could we afford to put the entire job description in the advert. Of course, for bigger ads we would use the Display Ads but these were 10x the price and needed approval from the manager. Where we did use these, we would have to think REALLY hard about content as this could be the make or break of our bonus for the week.
Then along came the job boards, with unlimited space and all you can eat packages and out went the creative effort. Career sites haven't helped either. For so long now recruiters have been sticking great big long job descriptions in as a job ad. Many of us have gone about this but with little change. Some get it but not many. I'm hoping that the limited space within Twitter posts is going to start to help change this. Even the status updates concept on other social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin and even Ning will start to see thoughtful brevity when it comes to recruitment marketing activities. Add a bit of SEO where content/relevance is king plus SEM and SNM (Social Network Marketing) where ad content is again limited to brevity, and creativity will be critical for success. Once again, few will get it but those that do will come out well ahead of the competition.
Creativity is allegedly the ad agency domain; so go do what you've been doing for years and get rid of those awful job descriptions!! In the meantime, I'll keep on keeping on with any of the organisations I work with and between us and the social networks we may just start to see some headway. Oh the good old days.....