Most companies massively underestimate the importance of visibility.
If your job advert isn’t being seen by enough of the right people, it doesn’t matter how good the job is - you'll never get the calibre of salesperson you want.
And the impact of inaction is brutal:
- Fewer applicants
- Worse applicants
- Higher cost per hire
- Jobs staying open for weeks or months longer than they should
- Lost revenue from empty sales seats
- Thousands wasted on ads that nobody sees
If your adverts aren’t optimised for visibility, you might as well set fire to your recruitment advertising budget.
Here’s how to fix it fast:
1. Use job titles candidates actually search for
Most job adverts underperform because the job title is “clever” rather than searchable.
Bad:
- Success Coach
- Revenue Partner
- Growth Evangelist
- Sales Ninja
- Client Hero
Good:
- Sales Manager
- Business Development Manager
- Account Executive
- Sales Executive
Search behaviour matters.
If candidates don’t use your title, you’ve throttled visibility before they’ve even started scrolling.
Pro tip: Think like a job seeker. Understand who your perfect hire is and then work out what they would be searching for. That's your job title to use on your advert. Do not use an internal job title unless it's the most simplistic form that you know people are searching for.
2. Show the salary - always
Adverts without a salary get 40–60% fewer clicks.
Salespeople are motivated by money.
If they can’t see the earning potential, they don’t bother clicking.
Would you?
No salary = low visibility = low quality.
3. Get your job in front of more people (multi-posting)
If you're only posting on Indeed, you are invisible.
Top candidates are scattered. Your visibility improves with coverage:
- Reed
- Totaljobs
- CV-Library
- Specialist sales job boards
- Social search
- Your recruiter’s network
Visibility is a numbers game - but targeted numbers.
4. Front-load the good stuff in the first 2 lines
Most candidates browse job boards on their phone.
They see the:
- title
- salary
- first two lines
That’s it.
If those lines are dull, generic, or HR-approved fluff, you lose them instantly.
Example of a bad opening:
“We are a market-leading solutions provider looking for a motivated and proactive individual…”
Example of a high-performing opening:
“Earn £60k+ selling a product sales teams genuinely love. We’ll give you full training and warm leads from day one.”
Big difference.
Pro tip: Use the opening section of your job ads to compel the reader to read more. Always be thinking "what's in it for me" (from the candidate's perspective) when writing your opening.
5. Refresh your adverts every 7 days
Most job boards push adverts down the listings after 5–7 days.
If you don’t refresh, you disappear.
When and where you can, refresh your ads to push them up the list.
Bonus Tip: Job title optimisation
Job board algorithms are relatively simplistic.
However they place huge emphasis on the job title.
So once you've chosen your job title that's going to get searched from step 1, strategically and contextually insert that job title 5-7 times throughout your advert.
This increases the relevance of your job advert to the search in the eyes of the algorithm and boosts your advert's ranking.
Which in turn means more people seeing your advert and therefore more chance of filling the job.
THE BOTTOM LINE
You can’t hire great people if great people never see your job.
But there's a lot to remember and it takes time to get right.
Which is why we exist - to help companies like yours attract the best sales talent out there.
If you want us to handle all of this for you - the job boards, the copy, the reach, the optimisation - just hit the green button below or call us on 0121 362 2300.
We've been doing this since 2002 so we've got a pretty good idea of where your target hires hang out and how to attract them.
Get in touch now and we'll talk you through any recruitment issues you might have and how to fix them.
