A Job Description By Any Other Name

Suppose your boss walked into your office and said that they needed something from you. In short, your superior asked you to turn out a single page document in the next hour that will spur a talented stranger to rearrange their entire life and walk into your office with open arms.

At the same time, this magical form will convey all the same information to each member of the company so that every department will understand it…. Perfectly. Oh, and to top it all off, this paper will be universally recognized by every computer in the known world.

Yes, Virginia. Your boss just asked you to write a job description… not the premise to Stephen King’s next novel (though the two do have a remarkable amount in common).

Stephen King (no further introduction needed) said that a novel is “a love letter to a single person.” In that spirit, we must remember that the job description is a love letter to a single candidate… the right candidate, for our job.

We can’t all write like Stephen King. In fact, many of us including yours truly, struggle with the modern job description. The reasons we struggle are numerous, but in the end, I believe that they all stem from three all too common obstacles: time, communication, and of course, technology.

Fear not. In spite of the monumental odds before us, there are steps we can take to achieve our goal. That goal is to connect with the person who will become the next valued member of our team.

Here are five tips that will help us to create more readable, versatile, and effective job descriptions that will whisper sweet nothings to our top candidate(s):

USE LANGUAGE THEY WILL UNDERSTAND

People in different fields speak differently to one another. There are terms that you will use in conversation with a Project Manager that would not come up if you were talking to, say, a Sales Rep or a Registered Nurse. In fact, those professions will have a lexicon that is as unique to them as are the job requirements.

Before you type a single word, picture the candidate. What is their education level? What type of work experience did they have before the applied for your position? What sort of dialogue do you have on a regular basis with your co-workers, vendors, and clients? All of these factors will tailor the words and phrases that we will use to describe both the position and expectations.

By the way, if we don’t know the expectations (I.E. what you hope the candidate will achieve in the next 30, 60 and 90 days), pump the brakes immediately. Let’s take a few minutes to talk to our hiring managers, HR Department, or fellow team members. If we fail to provide these candidates with a proper road map, we won’t have anyone else to blame when they lose their way.

And yes, I wrote when and not if on purpose.

ESTABLISH A SET TIME FRAME

There are two subjects I follow closely, hiring and baseball. According to research conducted by EBI (Employment Background Investigations) in 2017, the average time to fill a position (in the US) was 42 days.  What I learned by following both was that averages were meant to be broken.

My point is that we will want to communicate to the candidate the time frame that we will be working with. If the position is an immediate hire, it will be best to let our job seeker know, especially if they are currently employed. If we are creating a pipeline of candidates for a potential role in the future, let’s be forthcoming with that information. If we are seeking a candidate at the start or end of the year, we may be in a rush, or hedging your bets against personnel changes in Quarter I and Quarter II.

Set a timeline, adhere to it, and if things go off the rails (which they often do), keep the candidate(s) in the loop.

LET THEM KNOW THE INS AND OUTS

This is a tricky one. As I mentioned earlier, we will be at the mercy of technology. Unless we want to keep it in your drawer for posterity, our completed job description will find its way onto job boards, aggregators, and networking sites. This is where keywords will play a role in the candidate match game.

We will want to use words that will come up in a standard search, Symantec or otherwise. Words such as “manager,” “Director,” or “Senior Rep” will be necessary if we want to sort out the right experience and keywords from the inevitable onslaught of resumes.

With that said, it will only take a minute to add some depth to our job descriptions.

For example, there is a big difference between “Manage the IT Department,” and “Manage a five-person IT team that will be primarily responsible for server optimization and reliability.” Are we looking for “a candidate with two years management experience,” or “a candidate with two years experience managing teams of four to eight individuals focused on business development for a start-up?”

Simple additions such as team size, task description, and KPI based markers (I.E. “Decrease ticket times by 20%), will not only guide our applicants, but will serve as an anchor for the team while they try to find the best match.

Broad stroking has become all too common in the world of resumes and job descriptions. I, for one, look forward to bringing that level of specificity back online.

TELL THEM WHO WILL BE MEETING THEM

Most job descriptions will let the applicant know whom they will be working for. Still, not many cue the applicant in on who they might encounter along the way.

Some companies will conduct a series of interviews for a given role. These may include individual interviews, group interviews, panel sessions, or even Skype conversations. As I mentioned earlier, it will be best to let the applicant know what to expect, and more importantly, whom they might expect. For instance, the process may start with a simple phone screening with a recruiter, and move on to a one-on-one interview with the HR Manager. The job may report to an area manager, but in reality, that manager will only be on site once a month or even quarter!

One of the most common complaints from hiring teams in the last year was that the candidate was not prepared for the interview. In response, we beg the question; what did we do to prepare the candidate? A simple line in the job description will make these ground rules clear as a mountain morning.

TELL THEM WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Finally, we come to that nebulous phrase, “Company Culture.”

One CEO was quoted as saying “Company culture is what your employees say when you [the manager] are not around.” Therefore, culture is the result, not the cause, of what employees experience on a day-to-day basis.

So what is our company culture? Is it collaborative or, like Swarovski Crystal, the product of talented individuals working on a solo basis? Do we adhere to the time clock, or do we offer a flexible work schedule? If we don’t understand our company culture, how can we expect an outsider to do the same?

There is no better time than the present to establish the work environment we are accustomed to. Remember that culture is a living, breathing thing. As the saying goes, the squirrel will not thrive in the desert, so let’s figure out if we have a desert before going on that squirrel chase.

Simple phrases such as “flexible work from home schedule,” “expect excellence,” or “key holding responsibilities” will let your candidate know more about what will be expected from them once they join the team.

What’s the point of all this? I hope that we all came to the same realization that what we are writing is not for us, but for our candidates. Like all love letters, the focus must be on the one that inspired the letter in the first place, and what they will take away after reading our carefully folded and scented note with plenty of emotion-inducing prose.

Maybe Stephen King will read this. I kind of hope he does, but I’m sure he will criticize my use of adverbs. Nonetheless, I hope you read it, comment on it, and take some of these notes to heart.

Our ideal candidate is out there, and they want to know exactly how we feel. Now let’s go tell them.