A job title is often a job seeker’s first impression of an employer. When a job seeker is scrolling through job postings, your job title is either going to make them click or keep scrolling. Job seekers will make assumptions about the position and your company based on your job title. They subconsciously make these assumptions off seemingly small details such as length, word arrangement, and capitalization, to name a few attributes. Furthermore, search engines will show jobs to job seekers based on an algorithm that prioritizes jobs by relevance to the search (and it uses the job title!). Excess words or characters will hurt your ranking in search results. Writing a great job title is actually quite simple; just follow these tips and use these tools.

TIPS FOR WRITING A GREAT JOB TITLE:

1– Keep it short and sweet. Short job titles with 2-3 words perform better than long job titles.

• Good Example:  Digital Marketing Coordinator
• Bad Example: Digital & Content Marketing Coordinator / Assistant – Full-Time – Great Benefits!

2– Avoid internal titles or jargon that your candidates may not understand.
3– Remove special characters such as *&,!:;”(). These characters hurt search relevancy. 
4– Use both the full word and the abbreviation, as relevant, as job seekers may be searching for either.

• Example: Certified Public Accountant CPA

5– Do not use the location in the job title. This unnecessarily lengthens the title because the location is already captured in the location field.
6– DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. The use of all caps may come across as unprofessional to job seekers.
7– Capitalize the first letter of each word in the job title, not just the first letter of the first word. Correct capitalization will give a more polished look to your job title.
8– Arrange the words so that they flow grammatically and in a way that someone would say the job title out loud. Easy-to-read job titles are more appealing to job seekers.
9– Do not include benefits, requirements, or any other information that should typically belong in the job description. If a job seeker is interested in your job, they will click through to read the job description and learn more. 
10– Finally, put yourself in the shoes of the job seeker. What are they most likely to search for? Give your job the title that qualified candidates (and your ideal candidates!) will be searching for. 
Check out The Impact of Adding “COVID-19” into RN Job Titles: Case Study

TOOLS TO HELP YOU WRITE JOB TITLES: 

Google Trends

A great free tool for fine-tuning and comparing keywords for job titles is Google Trends. This tool utilizes Google’s global search data to provide insight into trends for googled search terms, which makes it ideal for comparing search volume by job title keywords. 

In the below example comparing “Call Center Representative” to “Call Center Agent,” you can see that, at one point in time, “Call Center Representative” receives more search queries and eventually the two terms become comparable. In this case, it may be wise to run a Job Title A/B test to see which term works best for your organization and location. Also, you have the ability to look at this trend by state and country, which is great for optimizing job titles by location for anywhere in the world!

Indeed Hiring Insights

As the job aggregator that receives the highest number of daily visits in the world, Indeed has a wealth of job search data that can be leaned on for job title optimization. Indeed’s Hiring Insights tool functions similar to Google Trends, but can provide a more in-depth market analysis for a job title and location. 

Per the below example for a “Warehouse Worker” in Los Angeles, CA, you can pull the competition score, job seeker volume, average salary, and percentage of searches by device type, to name a few capabilities. You can perform searches using varied job titles and compare results to guide your job title optimization. 
This tool is available to employers with Indeed Featured Employer. 

In all, writing a great job title is simple when you let job seeker behavior and search data guide you. Hopefully these tips and tools will help you find your next workplace “rockstar” (but please don’t use words like this in your job titles!). 

FEATURE RESOURCES:

• How to Write, Optimize, and Test Effective Job Postings
• The Dos and Don’ts of Writing Effective Job Titles
• A Checklist for Writing Effective Job Titles
• Best Practices for Writing Job Postings

What did we leave out? Share with us in the comments.

Jessica Silva

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Jessica is focused on developing, maintaining, and growing relationships with clients and business partners. She is specialized in project management, high-volume hiring, and finds gratification in fulfilling niche hiring needs. When she's not on the job, you can find her hanging with her family or doing a DIY project.