Gender-Neutral Words Better for Job Ads

If companies want to attract more and better job candidates, they need to write job ads with an eye for gender neutrality, according to a report released by a NH-based firm that offers recruitment advertising technology and services.

Appcast in Lebanon recently released its “Impact of Gendered Wording on Candidate Attraction” report. The company says it conducted the report to offer insight into how the wording of an ad affects who applies for the job. The conclusion was that ads with gender-neutral language overwhelmingly perform best, reducing the cost per application (CPA) while increasing the number of applications per job.

To conduct the study, Appcast used gendered wording originally identified by a Duke University and University of Waterloo academic study. Commonly used male-coded words include ambitious, confident, decision, logic(al) and superior, while commonly used female-coded words include compassion, emotion(al), interpersonal, sensitive and warm.

The Appcast report finds job ads without male- and female-coded words resulted in:

• 41% lower CPA compared to ads with both male- and female-coded words;

• 29% more applications per job compared to ads with both male- and female-coded words;

• 24% better apply rate compared to ads with both male- and female-coded words;

• 44% more applications per job compared to ads with female-coded words;

• 20% better apply rate compared to job ads with male-coded words.

• However, Appcast says only 38% of job ads use gender-neutral language.

Appcast also found that in jobs in male dominated fields, gender-neutral language receives 145% more applications per job at a 16% lower CPA than job ads with both female- and male-coded words. However, in fields dominated by women, Appcast found gender-neutral ads have the lowest CPA but also the least number of applications per job. Jobs dominated by women seem to be the exception, as job ads with female-coded words get 62% more applicants.

For jobs that tend to be gender balanced, Appcast found job ads with female-coded words get 46% fewer candidates at a 16% higher CPA, and job ads with male-coded words get 25% fewer applications per job at a 49% higher CPA than those with gender-neutral wording.

For more information, visit appcast.io.