Two Crazy Rules for Better Job Ads

Let's all make a New Year's resolution for 2016: no more terrible job ads. Please.

I am not looking for work. I do, however, try to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market. Periodically I'll click on a job ad on LinkedIn to see what technologies are being looked for in different tech sectors. Lord help me, I clicked on an ad for a Senior Web Developer at T-Mobile.

It very aptly demonstrates serious violations of my two rules for better job ads.

RULE 1: SELL THE JOB

When good talent is in short supply, employers must sell their jobs to get them filled. Remember that really good candidates have a lot of choices in hot tech regions.

The opening sentence of the job ad was: "The Sr Web Developer will provide tangible business value to represented web sites by maintaining workflow, managing content while jointly developing web-based applications for internal and external customers."

That sentence is grammatically awkward at best... when it's not lulling you to sleep.

There is nothing in the entire job ad about work environment, the team, or attractive benefits. Essentially it's all about what's expected of you and nothing about what you might expect... aside from broad definitions of what you'll be doing to meet those expectations.

I ran a search for Senior Web Developer ads. Liberty Mutual spent about half its text talking about culture and benefits. Liberty Mutual is giving me reasons to apply. T-Mobile's approach is only giving me reasons to self-select out of applying.

RULE 2: GIVE. A. SHIT!

Let's look at the web tech you'll need to know in the T-Mobile ad. "Advanced knowledge of the following programming or scripting languages: SQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, JSON, VBScript, HTML 5, ASP, .NET, JavaScript, VBScript, DHTML, XML"

So apparently this was prepared by the Department of Redundancy Department. It asks for JavaScript twice, VBScript twice, and both HTML5 and HTML (because you can apparently know HTML 5 without learning HTML).

You know in a company this big, this ad probably had to pass through a few hands before it made it to LinkedIn. Not one of those people could be bothered to notice that it was calling for multiple technologies multiple times in the same sentence. No one considered it their job to proofread the ad and make sure it was compelling, interesting, or even grammatically correct. 

To me, that shows that the people you'll be working with don't give a shit about doing their jobs well. And a big part of a great workplace for many people is working with others who like and take pride in their jobs. It is frustrating to work with people who are just killing time and going through the motions. 

I know caring, motivated people exist at T-Mobile and even count a few of them as friends. But when a company puts out a terrible job ad like this, it not only reflects on the company and its employees negatively, it makes it really hard for the company to actually recruit top talent.

If you want to recruit top talent, follow these two rules: Sell the job and give a shit. If it's obvious you're doing neither in your job ads, you're just hurting your company. Why would you want your first contact with a top candidate to be any less stellar than you want the candidate to be?