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.

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.

The following article has been re-published with permission from the staffmagnet team, a Washington, DC based company that specializes in attractive practices for companies that inculde active community engagement.

A few months ago a good friend took a job working for a startup company that you’ve probably heard of.   He had been having informational interviews with the top startup companies from around the area.  I say informational interviews and not interviews because these were more like conversations about what he wanted to do and whether or not they could line something like that up.  There were no developer tests or technical screen interviews (at least not in the early stages) or other major hoops that he had to jump through.  The companies that he interviewed with had an edge over the competition, but not a silver bullet.  Three of them had active community engagement programs.  One of the three didn’t have the flexibility to make a role for him, but the other two did.  He ended up taking the best opportunity of the two. 

The magic of what happened wasn’t that he responded to an ad on ANY job board.  In fact, there was not a job posted anywhere.  He had a connection to the companies that were hiring (all three) because they had active community engagement programs.  A few others out there do too.  The big ones have the resources to do this and usually implement programs that are directed toward college students, but smart companies these days are implementing active community engagement programs that leverage both their employees and their recruiting teams.  In one case I’ve seen a company hire a community manager outright.  A community manager who serves both the interests of the company and helps the company recruiter – together they actively engage the community very effectively. 

But even with all of the community engagement efforts of this dynamic duo, they miss a lot of really talented people who they would like to hire.  But the people who really miss out are the companies who don’t have any sort of community engagement program in place.  Some have passive community engagement programs, aka employee referral bonus programs.  The problem is that just offering a referral bonus is like offering someone a reward for referring their relatives and immediate friends.  The problem with this is that friends and family don’t get screened like prospective applicants and they end up taking more time than they are worth (think courstesy interviews).  Community engagement means that employees are actively scouting for talent all the time, because they have been trained to think about it and because they see the benefit of it. 

As I’ve mentioned, the power of community engagement is really clear to some companies, but to me it became even more clear today.  I would like to share two different examples: 

This morning I spoke with a candidate who I have been talking to for more than 6 months.  He works for a company that is well known for hiring too many people, overpaying them and then letting them go in bulk.  People stick around because the money is too good not to.  The candidate just got a big raise and had no reason to be looking for a job.  No job board resumes or job descriptions involved.  The candidate knows me well and knows that I’m a door opener.  I figured that when the candidate was ready to look that I would get a call, or at least a Twitter message.  Instead, I got a ping about the candidate having given 2 weeks notice.  I asked why I didn’t get a call (I had recently presented some great opportunities) and here is what the candidate said - It was his collaboration with one of the lead team members from the company he is going to go to work for in two weeks that prompted the move, not something that a recruiter set up.  Now I know the person who un-officially recruited this candidate personally too.  It is someone who is very active in a DC area group that both are involved with (I am too which is how I know one of them).  This candidate is a top notch developer, the kind that a lot of companies would move mountains for. 

Later today I spoke with a candidate who had also just given his employer two weeks notice.  He is going to work for a company that has hired more than a dozen people with hot web developer skills and experience (all local) while other companies have been pressed to hire any web developers with similar skills and experience.  The small company that he accepted an offer at doesn’t have an office or a recruiter.  They have done this because they have taken an active role in a local group and they send their people to this event monthly.  After each event they typically go out for drinks and appetizers with whoever is around.  The crowd is really social and the team members from the small company get to know the members of the group through this way.  It isn’t that the small company is doing something amazing, they are just spending time on a regular basis in the company of the people who they want to hire.  It has paid off for them. 

 It is easy to get lost in all of the different events that are going on these days, but there are only a few that happen on a regular basis that these companies have to hit to find who they are looking for and get to know them well enough to attract them.  While companies could send recruiters in to do the work of peer talent scouts, the result isn’t the same as a coordinated effort.  You know the saying, the more the merrier, and it is very true in community engagement as well.

Copyright 2008, Robert Neelbauer, staffmagnet, LLC.  Re-publication of this article without permission is prohibited.

Update: I found this post with a related story while skimming the day’s job seeker Tweets.

A few days ago I was involved in a panel discussion that covered many of the challenges faced by companies that are just getting started. We covered quite a few topics, but one that sticks out in my mind more than many others is the importance of the pursuit of perfection. I’m far from perfect myself, but I try my hardest to make sure that I do my best at everything I get mixed up in. As a business owner this usually starts with hiring people who are willing to work toward perfection. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there who are content to just show up and get their hours in so that they will get paid.

Consider the following examples of this that I encountered today:

The first time was during a conversation that I was having with a technician from our current DSL Internet provider who managed to get us back up and running after a three week interruption in service. Three previous technicians and more than 14 individuals in the Internet service provider’s call centers were involved in resolving the problem. I ultimately had to get my problem escalated to the Operations Manager and threaten to sue before they finally sent this guy, who knew what he was doing. No matter what the outcome of this situation was, nobody wins. The Internet is now back up and running, but for the last three weeks our employees have had to work on an emergency basis. Outcome #1 is that we will cancel our service. Outcome #2 is that this will cost the provider more than the entire amount of money that they billed us for the short period (3 months) that we used them. Outcome #3 is that we will not use them when we sign up for corporate wireless services in a few weeks. This entire situation could have been avoided had they hired someone who had handled the job right the first time. Perhaps the problem isn’t the person who performed the initial installation (sounds like it was), maybe it was the person who trained them. It is hard to say, but in a customer centric world it is absolutely crucial that companies make sure they hire the best people the first time.

The second situation that made me think about this today came during a phone call with a friend who owns a technology solutions company. Without going into too much detail, their company provides technology consultants and solutions to the government. Sometimes that means that they have to go through others that do too. They ended up involved with another company that they had to go through for a government contract recently, and that company really put the screws to them at the end of the negotiations. For example, the company disclosed their bids to several other bidders in the process (they were not supposed to do this). The other firm also had a lot of what people in the staffing industry like to call “sub-vendors” or “3rd-Parties”. I could talk endlessly about why third-party vendors are disliked or about why they are used (especially by large staffing companies doing work for large companies), but that isn’t the point here. The point I’m trying to make here is that my friend’s company hired a sales representative who arranged this business relationship in the first place based on some really loose associations. Had my friend’s company found someone who was a little more motivated by the quality of their sales dealings then my friend would not have been in this situation. Outcome #1: a lot of time was wasted. Outcome #2: time is money, so a lot of money was wasted - something small business owners don’t have a lot of. Outcome #3: My friend and his team are in a bad mood today which will impact the rest of their activities for the next day or two unless…

At the end of the day, I’m thinking about how perfection in what we do isn’t always achievable, but that the pursuit of it sure helps.

Yesterday my company’s Internet service went down.  I went through all of the drills and could not get it to work so I had to leave the office, send my employees home (we use skpe for phone calls), and convert our organization into a virtual one for the day.  Then I called Verizon’s DSL tech support line.  What happened next blew my mind.  Here is a short transcript of the call:

Tech Support Supervisor #86215: I can have someone come out there sometime in the next 24 hours.
Me: Could you be more specific?
Tech Support Supervisor #86215: No.  I can’t guarantee when someone will come out there.
Me: What do I do in the mean time?
Tech Support Supervisor #86215: You can call the business unit and ask them to not charge you for the down time.
Me: Ok, so someone will resolve this and I will have internet service again within 24 hours, right?

THE NEXT PART WAS A SHOCKER:

Tech Support Supervisor #86215: I can’t guarantee that it will be fixed within 24 hours.
Me: Huh? So when can you guarantee that I will have Internet service again?
Tech Support Supervisor #86215:  I can not guarantee that it will be fixed at all.
Me: Is this a joke?  Yesterday was April Fools day.
Tech Support Supervisor #86215:  No one from Verizon can guarantee that you service will ever be restored.
Me: This isn’t funny.  Click.

So this call got me to thinking.  Why would someone EVER want to work for a company that puts their employees in such a terrible position.  I was so put off that I hung up.  THEN I got a robo call that said “This is Verizon, your problem has been resolved.  If this is not correct please say so now: …”.  I checked my Internet service and sure enough, it was still not working.  I left for a client meeting and then returned – my service was working again.  No guy visited.  What happened is a mystery.  But what isn’t a mystery to me is that the customer service experience that I had during my effort to get my service working again and during my effort to get service initiated with Verizon was worse than what I would wish on my worst enemy.  Come to think of it I think that those people in the Department of Defense might want to hire the customer relations team from Verizon to give them some ideas about how to conduct psychological warfare.

So all of this got me to thinking.  Here is what I came up with:All companies have an applicant customer service team.  That applicant customer service team falls into one of three categories (in my book): recruiters, hiring team and the hr team.  For most applicants the experience is a resume being submitted via some awful system like Brassring or Taleo that would rival Verizon’s over the phone customer service experience.  Whenever I come across a company using one of these systems I think that they must not like people at all.  Even for companies that don’t use these systems, the most significant interaction that they have with potential employees happens in the form of an auto-response email that says that the applicant is either “being considered” or has “been rejected, but will be considered for other positions if appropriate for the next X number of months”.  Then there is the recruiter experience.  Most organizations that I know of work with staffing or executive search firms that have recruiters do much of the hunting for them so that they can coordinate interviews, scheduling, and onboarding.  The organizations that have recruiters internally typically hire recruiters who worked for the agencies.  So agency recruiters are like the people from Verizon.  Just like Verizon they probably have a few good men and women working for them.  However, most of them are in a call center and really don’t have a vested interest in improving the experience of the customer.  You are probably thinking, ‘Why is that?’.  In my experience, the answer to why Verizon and staffing agency company applicant customer service  are so bad is because these teams are managed by metrics systems and not quality systems.  A manager is more worried about recruiters hitting their numbers and banging out phone calls than with quality.  The reason for this is that the numbers game eventually pays off.  The ugly reality is that it doesn’t work for bringing in the best and brightest.  That is a major problem. 

So I would like to propose a solution for this.  Companies should start thinking about their applicant experience in much the same way that they think about their customer experience.  If they aren’t sure of how to go about doing this then they should hire an outside consultant who has experience with building a better applicant user experience.  The difference might be whether their company succeeds over time or just hits their hiring quota.

A former colleague mentioned an article written about careers in social media. The article talks about how difficult it is to objectify the sort of person required for a “community manager” role or for any sort of social media role. Why is this worth writing about? I question why most organizations would want to hire a dedicated social media person. I’m all for organizations being forward thinking, but the people who run around looking for gurus who spew their insights about social media for the sake of social media for the sake of being at the top of everyone’s RSS feeds need to get a grip. Truth be told, the social media pundits do too. Social media is code for “have you been paying attention to what is going on (online) for the last 12-24 months?”, despite the efforts of the Stanford faculty.

Let me back up here for a moment. An organization that is seriously pushing the envelope of social media, like ClearSpring, needs a community manager like my friend Justin Thorp. A company like a hotel probably does not. The difference is that a company like ClearSpring is expanding into markets that haven’t been charted yet, and they need people who can get others excited about those uncharted territories. A hotel needs someone who can do marketing, PR, and who happens to have been paying attention.

These are two entirely different people. The second might have attended a training class on how to leverage Facebook while the first probably organized a Facebook developer garage. One might have an iPhone, the other has had an iPhone and probably organized a group to take their iPhones apart and then re-Program them. They both have a place, but they have different places. If you don’t understand the difference then I recommend reading iWoz, or asking someone who has heard of a blue box. I guess the bottom line here is that it takes one to know one. If reading this makes you want to say “I’m not an engineer” then you should consult experts in this field.

The bottom line is that there are people who set trends and people who follow others who set trends in a one sized fits all manner. Every company needs to hire people who are paying attention, but not every company needs to follow every trend.

Update - I thought that a few links that are tangential to this post might be of interest to some of you. Here they are:

The Hard Pill

The Social Media Expert Plague