Hire In Reverse: Write a job description with teeth!

Most of the job descriptions given to me are useless.

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If there's not enough information for me to perform a search. What makes you think there's enough for a job seeker to evaluate if they want to apply?

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Step 1: Forget everything you know about job descriptions. In fact, it might be best if you pretend you've never even seen one.

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Step 2: Fast-Forward 12 months.? It's March 31st, 2025, and you've scheduled a lunch meeting with the person you're going to hire next week, let's call her Sarah.?

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What's the topic?? It's an informal lunch, but I've told Sarah I'd like to talk about the first year working together. What worked, what didn't, what we learned, what's still evading us, did we set accurate expectations during the interview, etc.

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This is where we start writing the job description.? 1 year from now, where will Sarah be?? What will she have accomplished individually, and as part of the team?? Will she be ready for a promotion?? Has she already been promoted??

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Once we've established this, we can start working backward.

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Where will she be at 9 months?

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What will she have accomplished at 6 months?

- what signs will we be looking for that she's hit these target?

- what will be her responsibilities at this point?

- what will she own?

- what deliverables will she have completed?

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What do we expect Sarah to accomplish in the first 90 days?

- fully integrated into the team? What does that look like?

- become familiar with the architecture and code base?

- participate in 3-4 release cycles?

- attend her first quarterly onsite team meeting?

- what else?

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Where should Sarah be at 30 days?

- what boxes should she have checked?

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This is where the term 'Hire In Reverse' initially came from.? Conversations about back-ward planning key objectives and deliverables.

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For all the naysayers that have red-flags going off in their head, ok, it's true.? It never works out exactly as planned.? Sarah nailed some 30 day targets on day 3, and some 6 month deliverables at 9.

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Step 3: Embrace the goal!? By the time the interviews are completed, Sarah will know exactly what it looks like to "knock it out of the park" in her first year.?

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Step 4: Understand what the JD is and isn't.? A job description is an 'internal document'.? It tells the manager and the team what this person will do and where they'll fit.? It's not a job ad.? That's different.? The Ad is written differently, from a different perspective and with different details; But it's based on, and can't be written without the JD (but often is).

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That's not the whole Job description, that's just the objectives.? You still need to:

- define environment, resources and constraints

- define culture (character qualities and values)

- define leadership style

- define minimum hard-skills

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This isn't hard, and it doesn't take long.? In fact, loads of this stuff doesn't need to be defined for every job. Just once.? Like:

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Define the Culture.. to fit, Sarah will need to believe:

x, y & z.

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Maybe x is, believe that team should work together closely and be respectful to each other?

- communicate openly and honestly?

- have thick enough skin to roll with it when someone disagrees?

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I don't know, it's your team.? But you should know.? And you should be able to communicate all of this to incoming team members.?

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Don't leave them guessing.?

What did I miss?

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#visionaryleader #hiring #interviewing #softwareengineering #hireinreverse

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PS– Follow for more on developing the skill to hire accurately, and lead teams where career growth, meaning, impact, satisfaction and meritocracy dominate your team culture.