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.
