Defining the Requirements for a Job

This is a continuation in the series of articles I have been writing on LinkedIn on the topic of approaching cyber recruitment with purpose. The previous articles are:?

• Job Focus vs Career Focus Hiring??
• Be Purposeful in your Job Descriptions?

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Many of the thoughts I have been writing about on the topic are based on the approach I took in 2022 when I wanted to fill a new position for a Cyber Security Audit Manager. I specifically wanted to try attract a broad range of candidates, that included those who did not have any Cyber experience. While the role would be Cyber focused, it would not require a strong technical cyber knowledge to be successful, given the broad range of existing technical cyber practitioners that are available in the team that could be called upon.?

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By starting with a position that the candidate did not need Cyber experience to eventually be very successful in the role, led me to discount the technical skills that I wanted in a candidate. This meant my starting point was to purposefully spend time brainstorming, and eventually curating a list of priority attributes and soft skills that I believe would be required in an ideal candidate.?

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However, I did not stop with a simple list of attributes and soft skills listed in priority. I spent the time to consider each attribute or soft skill, and described under each why I believed that each of the listed requirements were important for the success of the role. I considered how that capability may benefit a candidate in being successful in the role. It may enhance a candidates ability and success of acquiring cyber knowledge and skills, or it could be a strong indicator of how they would engage with key people and also it may show how those capabilities would support a candidate during stressful or frustrating scenarios that may come up as part of the role. What is important is to also consider how those same attributes and soft skills may benefit a candidate for the role over time in their career growth and potential career pivots in your organisation into the future.?

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Once you have this list, sit down with your HR specialist/recruitment advisor and walk through the list. Explain your reasonings behind each desired attribute or soft skills and its alignment to the role you are designing it for. This will not only give you some potential fine tunings, or additional considerations to add, but it will also help provide HR/recruitment a strong understanding of the candidates you are hoping to attract, and what that roles’ internal career path may look like.?

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Now you are ready to create the job description. However, I suggest you initially ignore your companies default template for job descriptions and write the job description fresh, how you want it to explained in the format that best suits you. This is important, because your company’s template will automatically start constraining you on what you can include. You need to be able to prioritise, and use the right language to explain the attributes, soft skills and technical skills you want. Only when you are satisfied with the job description you have written, would I start working on how to copy it across to your company’s standard template. ?

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This takes a lot of time, and purposeful effort to undertake, but how can you expect to hit the lottery and find your ideal candidate, that you will likely want to be able to successfully work with years as part of a high-performance team, if you only spend 20 minutes “slapping” together a “minimum viable product” of a job description? This goes back to the axiom, the effort you put in is correlated to the value you get out.?

#cyber?#cybersecurity?#skillsgap?#recruitment?#career?#job?

#hr?#humanresources