That’s an attention-getting headline, isn’t it? The article it refers to delivers on its provocative title; too bad more job descriptions do not.
Manny Medina, CEO of GroupTalent, offers great tips to help us craft better job descriptions, and he turns some conventional wisdom on its head, including suggesting that we start including salary info in the job listing. This is rare. I don’t do this, and you probably don’t either. But how can we expect to do any serious poaching without giving up the numbers?
Medina also cautions against citing the number of years of experience required. Not only do we tend to over-inflate this number, it’s also not a good indicator of candidate quality. The hungry, eager, fast-learning candidate who’s chewing his way to the top might be a better fit for your firm than the one who’s labored in the industry for a decade without regularly updating his skills or his network. Just a thought.
Finally, Medina reminds us to focus on what’s most important to the job seeker. He writes, “There seems to be a major disconnect between what matters to prospective candidates and what a job description lays out. I wonder how many job seekers may pass up the perfect fit simply due to the lack of information in the job description. Why does this happen? In most cases, the person writing the job description does not have all the pertinent information (such as job specifics), so the prose defaults to easy-to-write and extremely generic descriptions that focus on culture and ‘rockstar’ and ‘code ninja’ narratives. In many cases, vague job descriptions almost sound inter-changeable across different companies and positions in the industry.”
Well said. Except on the rare occasion when I’m actually sourcing candidates for ninja positions (It happens), I’ll keep that advice in mind.
Here’s a link to the full text of the article at www.recruiter.com
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
