A job description isn't a sales tool and never will be.

For reasons best known to themselves, many recruiters bemoan the absence of a decent job description and person spec from a client. I agree it’s frustrating when what you get is a series of seemingly unrelated one liners in terms of a job description and just the basic facts about the skills and experience you need in order to do the role, but, the emphasis should be on you, the recruiter to eke out the information from your client that will sell the job, not to cut and paste the bare bones of a dull and uninspiring JD and person spec onto a job board entry template. In short – the job description is not a sales tool, it’s merely a checklist of duties.

I know that some of them can be pretty dire (but often memorable), but imagine if every commercial break on television was filled with hideously dull advertising. For instance, instead of seeing Papa and Nicole prancing around the French countryside, you were faced with Sid, a mechanic in scruffy overalls, droning on about the technical specification of the latest Renault. Indeed, imagine that no decent tv ads had ever been made. No ‘vorsprung durch technik’. No meerkats, no Smash robots, no Boddingtons top bombing - just dull offering after dull offering after dull offering, every day and every night.

Now think about all too typical job board content. A lot of it is recruitment’s equivalent to listening to Sid and his monotonous tones. It seems that just as most product advertisers go to great lengths and expense to bring allure and memorability to their commercial offerings, so many recruiters pay little or no regard to the need to actually sell the vacancy they are trying to fill.

There is, of course, an argument that says what does it matter what you post? After all, people don’t read the ads anyway. Apparently they just scan them for job title, salary and location and then hit the ‘apply’ button. But what kind of candidate doesn’t actually read about the job they are applying for? The desperate? The ones with no eye for detail? The ones devoid of decent listening skills? Certainly not the good quality ones I would wager. But then so many recruiters make it difficult to want to read their job advertisements in the first place because they are just so deathly dull and boring. Particularly the ones that seem to think that a job description IS a sales tool.

I firmly believe that when it comes to advertising, any advertising, you get out what you put in. If recruiters let their people blindly cut and paste job descriptions and fire them scatter gun style then yes, they will get a response, but it will invariably be of extremely poor quality – and that will apply whether you put it on a job board or a link to it on a social media site.

Allure, intrigue, excitement, opportunity, challenge and reward, the feeling that the ad is talking to the job seeker, personally - all are essential ingredients to anyone who wants to get a good response from their recruitment advertising. Unless, of course, you’d rather see recruitment’s answer to Sid reading from his manual littering the job boards and social media sites? But if you would, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a decent response.

Some say the job board is dying. I don't believe it is, despite many recruiters doing their level best to kill them off by posting up really bad job ads. So, here it is, one last time - a job description is not a sales tool (so don't cut and paste them anymore, please)

Comment by Alasdair Murray on March 17, 2010 at 4:00am: Some interesting points raised. My next blog will examine the same job title working at two different companies and talk about how to get the necessary information off a client that will enable people to write a good, honest job ad for both roles which, whilst sharing the same name, are in fact very different propositions.

Comment by Tracey Dunn on March 17, 2010 at 5:26am: Agree with many of the points raised - I think recruiters ought to help with puttign togetehr job specs and help employers focus on competencies rather than responsibilities - and challenges rather than requirements. Sometimes employers need to be reminded that they are selling as well as buying!

Comment by Gareth Jones on March 18, 2010 at 10:42am: Some relevant points here but we are getting caught up in the whole 'advertising and marketing' thing and missing some fundamental drivers. Yes, job ads are part of the marketing strategy and present a marketing opportunity AS WELL AS a marker for competencies etc. BUT.

1. Job descriptions are as old as the hills, are boring, badly written in many cases and are less relevant now in their current form.

2. Despite what organisations say, many of them don't take resourcing seriously enough to make the connection from hiring need right through to the attraction strategy. The people constructing these painful documents rarely think through how its going to be used at the hiring end.

3. You have to remember that the days of print are gone. In those days, ads competed on a level playing field, to stand out on the page. It was far more creative. The internet, and job boards have changed all that. Job boards very so much in the way they serve up the ads against a candidate search. Some results are presented on date posted, others on relevancy etc. The structure of the 'back pages' has gone. Many recruiters, if they do get involved in writing, tend to create adverts loaded with keywords which just look dreadful. Unfortunately, the 'great story' which might be in the job description sometimes cannot be incorporated into an online ad like it used to be in the days of print, because to do so would reduce the ads relevancy ranking.

4. Recruiting has become lazy. The internet has allowed an explosion in the whole 'post and pray' mentality. Direct sourcing, even with the emergence of social media, is dying in the UK recruitment market especially. Job boards only perpetuate this. thats not to say its their fault, but its a legacy of their introduction and dominance

Finally, Dave's comments don't really seem to be about the subject but i think he is right to be angry. He's touching on a much bigger issue and it is very valid. And unfortunately Steve, its the majority, not the minority, who piss in your river and its no longer acceptable. People's lives all over the planet are being ruined by these muppets - supposedly the top global talent - and its time we changed it. Telling people to 'get over it' doesnt help, and is defeatist.

Comment by Alasdair Murray on March 18, 2010 at 11:38am: To me job descriptions are still a vital part of the process i.e. as I say a checklist of duties and responsibilities. Also I would guess they are contractually necessary in case of any litigation. In no way do they represent a marketing or sales message though.

Comment by Alasdair Murray on March 18, 2010 at 12:01pm: You might like my next blog Kevin .... "The best recruiters take a drill to client meetings (or, how 'fit' is as, if not more important, than skills)" Out later today on Recruiting Blogs

Comment by Steve Levy on March 18, 2010 at 12:40pm: Gareth, yes "It's A Wonderful Life" but it goes both ways. The top people worked their arses (this seems to be a UK convo so I'll try to fit in) off to get to their perches; the innovators maxed out their credit cards because they believed in themselves and their ideas. The regular working stiffs - perhaps because some elected to sniff their noses at early education and instead spent their money on stupid stuff - ended up in jobs they hated because no one would hire them as a CEO with only their GNVQ.

After tasting defeat, there are those who accept it...Gareth, what do YOU do when you meet an impasse? I suspect you find a way around it - or through it. Why can't others? And to those who give up and elect NOT to try, what should we do - pat them on the back and offer love, kisses, and never-ending government support?

Outsourcing certainly took place and moved jobs but it was part of "progress" that we're now seeing includes "insourcing" these jobs back to the native countries. Complain about the muppets all you want but consider our own profession and how technology changed everything.
Imagine the days before blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Booleans, etc. when we did this via the phone and with index cards. Oh the poor older recruiters who couldn't adapt to the new age - they were out of their jobs. When they began failing at finding people because the more nimble younger recruiter was as a result of new technology quicker to the candidate, who felt bad for them (perhaps it was YOU who helped one of these old farts leave the profession)?

As a society we certainly must support the people who are "less fortunate" (and also less motivated) - but to a point. Do you grumble about the tax rate in the UK? I'm sure you do as much as we complain across the pond. These tax rates and economic policies "force" multinationals to move around the globe in search of ways to make up for monies paid to support society and in doing so, jobs get moved too. Communities are impacted by the loss of revenue and it trickles down. Still, the China Syndrome won't last forever and neither will outsourcing customer service to India (broad brush example by me). Jobs are coming back - but they'll also continue to move around. And people will continue to receive pink slips.

If you think that mandating that companies “stay home” and not be part of a global economy, resource rich countries will flourish and resource poor will vanish further exacerbating the divide. If you believe in implementing a “Buy British”/”Buy American” initiative, then GNP growth will slow and countries will be unable to support internal programmes – unless tax rates rise even more – and the internal divide will expand.

As horrible as this sounds it’s quite a bit like the war maxim that states, “There are two rules of war: Rule number one is that young men die. Rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one." In business, decisions are made that take way peoples’ jobs; it is simply part of business. But don’t excoriate the muppets, have a heart-to-heart with the bloke who refuses to attend school…

Wasn't this thread about job descriptions? Now that would be a "useful" certification - if resume writers have their own certifications, I think there should be a cert for writing job descriptions...

Comment by Gareth Jones on March 18, 2010 at 1:21pm: Lol, wow Steve i think you must be replying to another post?! Where did outsourcing, global mobility and all that come in?! 'Buy british/buy american"?? I certainly didnt mention that and neither did Dave!

No, my comment re Dave's comment was purely that the leaders of many of the global top 500 probably need to be replaced. Certainly, ive seen enough of the mess they have been making not only of their organisations but also the global economy. A mess driven, largely by their own greed and incentive packages only marginally larger then their ego's.

We have spent the last 20 years supporting the myth that personal ambition/MBA/tough love etc is key to business success and its total crap - the global meltdown shows that. Ive worked for international businesses most of my life and also entrepreneurs and most, at the senior level, had people who were just out of touch and full of their own self importance.

As yo mention call centres ill use that one as an example. At one point, many years ago, someone very senior thought it would be great to outsource call centre activity to say India. Andthey did, mainly on cost saving basis. And thye got a big pat on the back for it. And they got a big bonus, and promotion too probably. Then they went on to 'bigger dicks Inc' thanks to their track record at 'smaller dicks Inc'.

Now, a the time of the original idea, someone less important, further down the foodchain of the organisation, with more personal credibility at stake with customers, probably said "i dont think thats going to be a good idea. It might impact on Customer service". If he was lucky, he got to keep his job after saying something so foolish. If not, he probably got the sack for not being 'committed'.

Of course, 2 years later, he was proved right. But Bob CEO has moved on, probably with a bad memory of Mr middle manager.

Ive seen it happen, ive sat round the board table, at most of the businesses ive been in and seen the idiots at work.

Whatever, we have got it wrong. We need a cull. Trash the ego's. And the incentive packages that go with them.

Now, where were we?? Oh yes, Job descriptionssszzzzzzz........

Comment by Dave Hitchman on March 18, 2010 at 2:08pm: Steve appears to have bought into the 'we worked hard to be here' propoganda. Some did, I have no doubt about that. The majority of the 'big business bosses' work considerably less than most of us 'lazy' grunts, many got to the top because of friends in high places and good family/school connections. The boss of one of my previous companies managed to hop from running a hospital to running a 1000 person engineering company, I can't persuade people that it is possible to hop from running a 12 man project delivering mobile phone software to a 12 man project delivering banking software. Certainly I knew the boss of that previous company well, he was clever, nice, personable, and very lucky, he was where he was from luck, no better education, no more skill, no more working hours. But yes, we were on job descriptions - and no, no amount of job description makes a silk purse from a sows ear, and over selling a pile of s**t leads to the vacancy being available just as soon as there is a chance to move on. Given the state our leaders have managed to get all the western economies I guess that won't be for many years - if ever. And no, the jobs aren't coming back, thats a myth as well, you can see that because every european country is hiding 20% unemployment (in its working age population) behind 'training schemes' and mass 'disability' - I suspect a quick look at Americas figures will show much the same.

Comment by Steve Levy on March 18, 2010 at 2:10pm: It was the socioeconomic comment to Dave that included "defeatist" -sure sounded that way to me.

Job descriptionszzzzzz aren't easy simply because recruiters, HMs and people who write haven't been weaned on the job being about solving problems...

York International UK? Ever go to York, PA? I helped move a company down there 13 years ago and spent one year of my life in the city.

Comment by Steve Levy on March 18, 2010 at 2:26pm: Dave, I can't help you with that chip but I've heard that all techies hate non-techies (especially if they're managers of any variety) and think they're the scrum-of-the-earth. Any truth to this?

Now how about those job descriptions?

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