Have you noticed how terrible most job postings are? Not very many stand out from the thousands of computer generated/outdated job descriptions from stuffy HR departments. Your postings tell candidates an awful lot about your company as soon as they see it. Will they read on or will they just jump to the next one that appears on their screen. Candidates deduce rightly or wrongly from the ad that your company is a conservative, shut your mouth, follow the rules type company or possibly an exciting avant-garde newcomer looking to blaze a glorious trail.

As a candidate I want to be wooed, I want to read your ad and go WOW this is the company I want to work for, where do I sign up. Too many companies tell me too little about their company and why I would want to work there but instead tell me in nauseous detail about the activities I will perform if I am the lucky candidate. Sorry but if I am an experienced procurement manager I know what the job is about so sell me on why I should want to work for your company and not my current company or some other employer.  So  what do most candidates look for in a job ad.

1. Why Should I Consider your Company?

Company ads should have a front end paragraph that tells me why your company stands out from the rest of the herd. This front end should be branded in coordination with your corporate brand, in-line with your workplace culture and why your employees love to work there. Tell me the truth, I am not an idiot and will research you via social media and ask my network about you. If you lie, kiss my application goodbye.

2. Why is this Opportunity so Exciting?

Why should I leave my current role where I am doing quite well thank you for this role? Tell me what additional responsibilities or purview I will have.  How differently does your company view this profession and role than others in the industry. What’s the career path? Excite me or I will click away to some better opportunity.

3. Do I Qualify?

Stick to the basics and tell me the key educational,  accreditation, years of experience, software or technologies I need to have to be considered.  Remember I am an experienced professional in my field and if you're adding some far-fetched additional competency to the requirements, I expect you might already have a candidate in the nepotism pipeline or that your too narrow-minded in how you approach talent. If that is the case I will not ever consider you for employment again and let my friends.  Let your recruiters find the best in the field, don’t limit the quality of your applicants by some snobbish but not necessary standard.

4. Contact info:

Please provide all the details; phone numbers, recruiter or managers name, email, additional information on the role, company, partners, etc.  I want to make an educated decision before sending you my cv. I will have to look up this information either way but I favor employers who make it easy for me to make that choice. If you make me go thru some “ten step ATS” then you can kiss my application good-bye.

If you still want to do it your way and make me try to go thru hoops and sing at the same time, kiss good candidates good-bye, you will only get passive candidates with limited skills and questionable experience. We all know you will then have to go to an outside recruiter who’s smart enough to call me anyway and then of course I will have to tell that recruiter that I would not work for your company even if you offered me that big fat bonus check and all those other incredible perks.

So get it right the first time and stop wasting yours and my time.

The Candidate.

For more on Francois Guay and AttackDefendDisrupt:

Linked in - http://ca.linkedin.com/in/francoisguay

Blog - http://attackdefenddisrupt.wordpress.com/

Twitter -http://twitter.com/#!/GuayFrancois