How to hire the right candidate?

Want to hire the right candidate for a position? It all begins with the advertisement that you put up, suggests a new study.

The study shows that a few minor changes in the wording of a job advertisement can increase the size and quality of an applicant's pool.

A typical job ad focuses on what the employer wants from the applicant for example; academic degrees, specific skills and a strong work ethic.

But researchers say that ads focusing on what employers can provide job seekers - like work autonomy, career advancement and inclusion in major decisions result in better employee-company matches.

And these ads produce a larger number of better qualified applicants. For the study, researchers manipulated real job ads at a large engineering-consulting firm in Canada.

"And the results were clear. Ads that focused on needs-supplies (N-S) fit (what the organisation can supply to meet an applicant's needs) received almost three times as many highly rated applicants as ads with 'demands-abilities' (D-A) fit wording (what abilities and skills the organisation demands of candidates)," wrote the researchers.

The study is based on responses from 991 applicants who responded to 56 ads for engineering and project management-based positions emphasising N-S or D-S fit.

Part of the reason so many employers still run D-A-heavy ads, researchers suspect, is because the people writing them often have little training in this area, have very specific skill gaps they need to fill quickly, or rely on head hunters who might focus on their client's needs more than the applicant's needs.

The solution, however is not to simply slap in some N-S statements to make the job sound more worker-friendly.

"It is key not to add these types of statements if they are not true," lead study researcher David Jones said.

The study is forthcoming in the Journal of Business and Psychology.