Job formatting. Let’s be honest–I bet even if you weren’t pressed to, you could find many more things you’d rather discuss than job formatting. But, consistent job formatting is essential to tapping into maximum recruiting benefits and the best way to ensure compliance with VEVRAA mandatory job listing requirements.
Every night when DirectEmployers technology electronically acquires company jobs, it looks for several key pieces of information to make available to job seekers, such as:
- Company name
- Job title
- Job location
- Requisition ID
- Apply URL
- EOE Statement
- Job Description
Each of these is like a piece to the puzzle that is your job listing. The picture is not complete unless all the pieces are visible and consistent.
What do we mean by consistency?
When technology is written to electronically acquire job content, it is written to expect various pieces in a specific sequence. If an item is out of sequence, the technology can potentially skip that section, moving on to another, or it can quit and just not “grab” anything on the page from that point forward. This could lead to information required for compliance and recruiting to be missed. Let’s look at how easy it is to make sure jobs are consistently formatted.
- Job Locations: From a visual and informational standpoint, consistent formatting of locations really paints your company in the best light. Consistent locations mean that delimiters like spaces, dashes and commas are used the same way across all jobs. For example: Indianapolis, IN for one job is not the same as IN-Indianapolis on another job. Our recommendation: pick one format and stick with it throughout your listings.
- Requisition IDs: These unique identifiers for each job are important when it comes to fully benefiting from two reporting platforms at DirectEmployers: OFCCP reporting and Analytics. Both types of reports allow you to generate job-specific reports using individual requisition IDs. From a compliance perspective, you can generate reports for OFCCP and internal audits with just the specific jobs you are searching for. In Analytics, you can drill down to the specific job you are investigating which is helpful if you have jobs with the same job titles.
- EOE Statements: The OFCCP requires these on ALL job advertisements. To ensure their capture, they must be located on the actual job in a separate field or outside of the body of the job description. Burying them in the job description or placing them in the header or footer of the job means they could get missed. DirectEmployers recommends one of two EOE statements.
- A simple version that covers all your bases is EOE-disability/veteran.
- Or, if you feel compelled to list each protected class, you can go with EOE-race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran.
- Job Formatting: Think of this like a picture of your job. DirectEmployers technology literally takes a digital snapshot of how your job is displayed on your site. Does your job look like a big block of text with no line breaks or spaces? Does it have headers, indents, bullets, etc. to make it easier to read? If you picked the latter, you’re in good shape.
There is so much more to job formatting than just these four basics. Members who are interested in learning more can view the recorded presentation and download the slides from our recent webinar by visiting the Connect Community. Also if you’d like additional assistance, our membership team would be happy to provide an audit of your jobs to ensure everything is on the up and up. Reach out to your Member representative today to get one scheduled.
Happy job formatting!
