JOBMATCHBOX

There are a lot of people that I talk to who think that there is a secret formula to writing a job description. They read lots of books and study other people’s job descriptions for many hours. Then they strategize about how to game the recruiters who will interpret their jobs and the candidates, all in one job description. What they don’t realize is that the job description is not the same as a job ad. People often confuse the two and much to their disadvantage. You want your job description to carve out what the role entails, but you want your job ad to sell your company, job and team. These are two different things. I think that this is one of the reasons why the big traditional job boards are falling out of favor with job seekers.

To get yourself on the right track if you are in this strategic job description writing camp here are a few simple tips:

Think about your team’s narrative and the audience who you want to attract. Your job ad should spell out what you are about. If your team works really hard and earns big rewards (or expects to upon IPO or acquisition) then talk about it. If your team emphasizes fun and likes to play network games then talk about the games that your team plays and the things that you do for fun. If your team is more likely to have people leave for Harvard Business School then spell this out in your narrative.

Provide visual clues that substantiate your narrative. If your office is a dive, but there are lots of great neighborhood amenities nearby then show the neighborhood in a photo album. If the opposite is true then emphasize what you have going for you on the inside of the office. If you have a lounge with Foosball, Ping Pong, Rock Band, Arcade Games, etc. then put photos of these things in your job ad.

Tie the job ad into your company career website and provide a more detailed job description there. You should expand on the narrative and visual clues that you provide in your job ad on your company website.

There are decisions driven by business priorities, then there are decisions that are just difficult to make.  Being in business involves a lot of difficult decisions that have to be made every day. 

We live in web 2.0 world where data is free, but clicks are not, but that doesn’t mean that you should engage in shady business practices.  My beef here is primarily with ecnext because they are engaged in a shady business practice that I would liken to splogging.  However, both Indeed and Jobthread can put a stop to their shady business practice or at least make it easier for publishers and hiring teams to avoid beign tangled in your spammy web. 

Indeed needs to find a way for users of their job search widget to report spammy practices like the one that I encountered today.  If they don’t want to go that far then they should take the time to verify that publishers using their job search widget are not using it for spammy purposes.  Guidelines for publishers would be a good start.  For example: creat a policy that prohibits widget publishers from grabbing company names from their (Indeed) API and then listing ads that look like jobs or for just plain jobs from companies other than those associated with companies.

Here is what I’m talking about:

This is not ok:
Indeed Job Search [ Enter Keyword]  [Enter Location] Search
Acme, Inc. (pulled from Indeed’s API)
Ad Job - Work from Home
Ad Job - Job at Sprint

This is an ok use case:
Acme, Inc. Jobs(pulled from Indeed’s API)
Acme, Inc. Job #1
Acme, Inc. Job #2
End Acme, Inc. Jobs.

Ad…

This is an ok use case:
Acme, Inc. Jobs (pulled from Indeed’s API)
No listings found.
End Acme, Inc. Jobs.

Ad …

One such user that is currently abusing the Indeed Jobs widget is a company called ecnext that is based in Westerville, Ohio.  Their phone numbers are 614-682-5103 (main line) and 614-682-5105 (customer support).  They are an an online advertising company owned by Hoovers that publishes sites like Goliath, Manta and Standards and Poors.  They have a B2B relationship with Indeed.com that allows them to pull data from Indeed job listings (via API). 

What ecnext does with that data is identical to what sploggers do with the content that they lift from other publisher sites. ecnext pulls the data from Indeed’s listings, creates company profiles, then puts ads under the name of the company.  The ads are for other jobs - work from home, competitors, etc.  My example above is from their Goliath website. 

The company doesn’t get a voice in this and this is really bad because it makes it look like the company is either a staffing agency or worse - a scam operation selling work from home opportunities.  The case that showed up under one company that I looked at today (on Goliath) included work from home opportunities and jobs at Sprint like in the example above.  The company that I looked at had no affiliation with either work from home opportunities or Sprint.  This is very misleading and is used to improve the site’s SEO and ad revenue.

I called Indeed and they said that they would consider giving companies and opt-out option, but gave no promises.  This is a major headache because Indeed gets their jobs from other companies like Jobthread, a site that doens’t tell publishers or job posters that their content is going to be leveraged by a 4th party (ecnext).  The content is so far upstream by the time a company is hit with the problem that someone would have to contact a variety of publishers independently to get the problem resolve.

In any case, ecnext goes up in my hall of shame right next to the sploggers that shamelessly rip content from publisher sites and then attempt to re-monetize it.  I’ve been supportive of both Indeed and Jobthread because they provide much needed tools to job seekers and help hiring teams by simplifying the job posting process, but if something doesn’t change (on both ends) then they are going to lose my support.

I was talking to someone a few days ago and we got into the subject of company culture.  There are company cultures that put fire in our bellies and ones that make us watch the clock.  Having spent time in the small business and startup community I’ve come to hear people talk about their “open company culuture” frequently.  It usually involves a spreadsheet and a talk about how the company has an open books policy that everyone in the company has access to.  A few quarters go by and the company doesn’t do so well and everyone gets bummed because the spreadsheet doesn’t change, despite rhetoric to the contrary.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  If you run a company you can have an open culture without exposing your financials (and yourself) to scrutiny. 

A great example of this popped into my blog reading this morning.  Andy Monfried, CEO of Lotame.com, posted a blog entry titled “4 Minutes and a Buzzer” today.  He talks about how the company has all team members to share an idea and have it debated for four minutes.  Now I’m not just throwing this out there to point out that it sounds interesting.  This sort of thing happens around the Lotame offices on a regular basis. 

The company is in the social media advertising space and doing some really innovative things.  If you ask the team where their most innovative ideas come from you will quickly learn that it is events like this that lead to many of them.

GIGO is programmer jargon for Garbage In Garbage Out.  I’m pointing this out because hiring teams often neglect their most important effort - attracting the best and brightest people.  This frequently means that they copy and paste a job description, then hand it off to a recruiter who interprets the job description quite literally (just like a programmer would interpret instructions - good or bad into code that will ultimately be good or bad as a result).  The part that I’d like to point out is that unless you have a recruiting team that knows your subject matter as well as you do then you need to compensate for potential interpretation challenges that recruiters will run into if left to their own devices.  Now before I speak any further on this I want to point out that no matter how good your instructions are, if you don’t have the right recruiting team in place then finding what you need will be like finding a needle in a haystack.  That said, it is always a good idea to provide details - requirements, desired attributes, benefits to working for your team (not the kind that end in k).  The part where people stop short is in providing guidance with respect to interpreting these details - i.e. what the difference between a developer and a programmer is.  Hiring teams often choose words (and job titles) because they have some sort of hip factor or because that is what they are used to.  People often make the same mistake when buying cars and consumer electronics.  At least consumer reports can help them to make more informed choices, but with job descriptions there isn’t a consumer reports guide so you have to do some thinking. 

Here is an example of a job description that was written with this line of thought in mind.  You will notice the following bullet in the job requirements:
“You are a developer, not a programmer.”

The link takes you to the article that I’m linking to above that talks about the difference between a developer and a programmer.  You could easily provide similar differentiators for other types of roles as well.  For example, how is sales different from business development or B2B?  

Remember that the goal here isn’t to create more work, just to create an item on your checklist for making sure that you are writing outstanding job descriptions that will help your recruiters to help you.  This will save you time.  Don’t expect the spammy job seekers to read your job description any more carefully because you have clarified the role though.

It seems like only a few days ago that the guys over at Edgio closed shop and sold out to the highest bidders.  Around the same time Jobster’s CEO jumped ship and moved to New York City.  Today I received tips from multiple sources that Eric Yoon, the CEO of Jobthread has moved on officially resigned.  No word yet on why.  They were partnered with Jobster right around the time that Jobster’s CEO moved to New York.  I can’t help but wonder if this is all happening by chance. 

I’ve been critical of big job boards, but this is out of control.  It’s official, Wal-Mart has entered the online classifieds business.  Does this mean that their next mark is Facebook?  Craigslist eat your heart out.

I’m a big fan of the beach and go every chance that I get, but the first time I hit a beach on the East coast I remember that the water was really cold.  I stuck one toe in and stopped.  I had expected to just jump right in and that the water would be warmer.  Networking is a little like this too.  For most people who haven’t done it before it is a really tough to get into.  You walk into a crowded room of people and there are so many strangers in the room.  The most natural thing to do is walk up and start talking to someone who you know, but in networking your goal is to meet new people and extend your conversation range.  Notice that I didn’t say rolodex (these days you can do that on Linkedin or elsewhere), but “conversation range”.

Yesterday I was talking to two different people who convinced me that I needed to take the plunge, into the networking Ocean that is out there.  In talking to them I realized that I have had one toe in.  Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I’m not networking.  I go to all kinds of different events and meet and have conversations with new and interesting people all the time.  The problem is that to be a really good networker requires that you constantly identify and explore uncharted territory.  In my case this means figuring out new groups of people to interact with from time to time.

The lesson here is that we all stand to benefit from expanding our social context so consider this a dare to go out and jump in - it will be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you’ll be comfortable before you know it.  Don’t just stockpile online contacts.

I found this collection of social media advice links that Chris Brogran assembled to be interesting and you might too.

The next Social Matchbox event that will be held (location TBD) on Monday, June 30, 2008 and would like to hear from you.  The last event had nearly 200 people and 30 companies in attendance.  Based on the feedback we received from that last event we are going to limit the number of presenters and try to secure a location that closer to a Metro stop in the district so that more people can be there.  If you would like to volunteer or if your organization would like to become a sponsor and help with the costs associated with the event (we work hard to minimize them).  Also, if your startup company is hiring and would like to present at the event let us know now.  We allowed event registration to go up until the day of the event last time, but that is not likely - if anything we will issue a limited number of tickets and once they are gone we will cut off registration.

To get involved, or to get more information, send a note to: email@jobmatchbox.com . 

Click here for details on the the last event.