I was so struck by the news that 10,000 people responded to UK Paintball's advertisement for a “Bullet Tester” that I had to go and have a look – what had made the recruitment ad so appealing?  Here’s what I found:

A stand-out title

If you’re going to recruit, you have to stand out.  From the job title itself, to the requirement that candidates have “a relatively high pain threshold” it attracted incredible attention that led to the ad being widely shared.

Salary

£40k proclaimed the headlines when actually it was pro-rata, two days a week.  Leading with the reference salary is not unusual in Public Sector; in Dynamics it’s common to see what the client is prepared to pay for an exceptionally skilled, highly experienced developer, so a candidate with <2 years of experience will get a different offer.  Managing salary expectations is a fine art, and something we’ll explore in another blog post.

Simplicity

"The job will essentially involve being shot at with every new batch of paint bullets to ensure all health and safety checks are in place.”  Neat, tidy and no room for misunderstanding which makes it perfect for candidates to qualify themselves against (although a little too dangerous for my liking...).

It’s an ad, but not just for a job

Every time the Conspicuous team puts together an advertisement, we’re using those Three S’s to cast our net as wide as possible – we don’t just want that one perfect person.   What we want is to attract NAV and AX developers from Devon to Dundee, understand their career aspirations and see if we can help them.  We also want to attract Dynamics partners across the UK by showing them we’re operating in the space that they want their candidates to come from, and demonstrating that we have access to an incredible talent pool.

Ten to one

So whilst we may attract ten candidates for a specific role, and only one can be successful, each ad provides us with multiple opportunities to start a discussion with someone about their career or a partner about their business growth.  Each ad we place is not just marketing a Dynamics job, it’s marketing the industry as a whole, and with the amount of growth happening it’s one I’m very proud to be part of.