Why Job Adverts Suck and What You Can Do About It.

At the start of this year, and many years before it the pundits of HR and Recruitment (yes, they really exist) make predictions for the year ahead.  As well as borrowing heavily from the mantras of Silicon Valley startups promising to be social, mobile and local there is always one persistent prediction that never seems to go away.

The mists in the crystal ball clear and a vision of the future appears, with absolute certainty, our forecasters declare "The Job Description will cease to exist!".  Then, as if to mock that same prescient certainty, they don't.

Despite the flaws of the formats on both side of the job seeker chasm things seem to stay the same.  Whilst the prognosticators may lament that their visions haven't been proven right the world keeps turning, recruiters still want to see your CV and HR departments the world over keep posting banal job descriptions.  As much as recruiters may decry applicants for their terrible CVs or offer advice on how not make CV mistakes there doesn't seem to be quite the same amount of concern for the job descriptions and adverts that they themselves post supposedly to entice those looking for work.

The average job description is currently a mishmash of an older version of the original specification, some amendments from an enthusiastic new hiring manager and some sexier phrases stolen from various other company's career pages.  When you stop to consider the amount of work that marketers put into a banner or headline just to make a viewer click it's mind boggling to think that recruiters expect people to consider making such an enormous change to their lives on the basis of bland copy and trite cliché.

There must be a better way... and there is...

In 1943 Abraham Maslow published his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the Psychological Review. He posited a series of human drivers that worked sequentially, the lowest order of which must be satisfied in order to achieve the next. For example when starving to death we're unlikely to be concerned with how our peer group thinks of us, until we meet that more basic need.

 Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging", "esteem", "self-actualization" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.  If we are using the format of a job advert as a means to motivating an action from a reader, could we borrow from the Maslow model to ensure that we are writing a well rounded and engaging advertisement?  Without too much of a mental stretch it's easy to see how these stages can be made applicable to pressing on the underlying motivations a person may have when wanting to apply or even moving from casual interest to intention and ultimately action.  At the very least we could use a model to broaden the appeal of a job advert and hit more of the motivational bases that Maslow identified.

The lowest order motivator for a job seeker has to be salary.  Whilst it is foundational and important it can quickly be satisfied and judged accordingly.  Try putting the actual salary range on your job postings and voilà the majority who apply will have some idea of how much you are prepared to pay for the role.  Assuming that your job is not unpaid or a front for slave labour stating a salary is a good idea.  Promising adequate or even fair pay for a candidate's toil should never be the best motivator you have to play.  Put simply, cash should never be your "ace in the hole",  if it is it's time to rethink the role.  Try talking to some other people who already do the job and ask them why they like it. Try to gain a deeper insight into the persona of those who enjoy the job - chances are that their reasons are probably inline with a potential employee's too.  It tends to be the third party recruiters who's job postings feature salary as the biggest incentive. "Java Developer $90,000" is a great indicator that the poster hasn't really understood the real differentiators or their target audience.

For a lot of job posts salary is where we stop. There may be other details given about the company doing the recruitment or a technology stack but these will be generic and explanatory e.g. "You will write code and fix bugs" these are statements which would be true of the same role in another organisation.  How can we make this a little more personal? Maslow's second step in the hierarchy is "Safety".  For job seekers this may take the form of permanent vs. contract or the security of your company as an entity.  These can be addressed early on, from startups referring to themselves as "VC funded" or larger corporates stating successes "Safety" should be accepted as quickly as the salary stage.  If you don't meet the needs of the job seeker here i.e. lower than expected salary and indeterminate contract length they will self select out of the process, and that's a good thing at this stage.  Remember a great job advert isn't about mass appeal it's about gaining the interest of the right people.  

A growing number of companies are following in the footsteps of the larger technical organisations and offering a bewildering number of perks and free incentives to their employees.  These are the hyperbolic tales of free food, dogs in the workplace, on site masseuses and hot and cold running champagne.  Who wouldn't want those things? However a lot of job adverts fall at this hurdle.  Promising money and free things are are a great way to have someone make a small change. Switching a bank account or internet service provider maybe but surely not enough to change employers?  Job security should be implied in any job description and the benefits and perks are nice to haves - but don't be swayed into thinking they are enough.

Maslow's third tier was "belonging" or "love".  For a job advert how can we convey a sense of somewhere a candidate might want to belong?  This is where a lot of job adverts fear to tread. We stop at the inanimate perks and don't consider the social interactions that having a job will bring.  Belonging in job adverts is best conveyed through the people the candidate will be working with. Humans are (mostly) social creatures and benefit from interaction.  Who really wants to spend eight hours a day treading the same carpet as people you hate? At the other end of the spectrum who would want to work with an ex-colleague or former manager who was an inspirational leader? Who might want to join a team of renowned experts in their field?  If we make a job advert generic and impersonal e.g. "You will work with our team of developers" we risk becoming generic.  Talking about the team is an opportunity to sell successes to a candidate and gain engagement from selling the pedigree of a potential peer group.  In the world of startup it's normal to see adverts proclaiming founders who are ex-Google or ex-Facebook in this way an employer borrows some of the perceived quality bar of their previous employers.

Another consideration for the "Team" level of a job advert is how the team organise and work together.  A job may be more attractive for a reader if it explicitly states that the team don't like to hold lengthy meetings, or that they work closely with other parts of the business.  There are some great examples here that would make brilliant recruiting messages like Spotify's excellent Engineering Culture video. For those who are harbouring frustrations about their current employer's bureaucracy or lack of insight and innovation, referring to how the prospective employing company gets work done can be revealing and enlightening.  Moreover, talking candidly about these things can help convey authenticity and engender trust in the reader.

For his fourth level Maslow talked about "Esteem".  This is the need for appreciation and respect.  People need to sense that they are valued and by others and feel that they are making a contribution to the world. When employees become unhappy and disengaged they slowly start to stagnate.  If they feel under appreciated or second best to others this happens all the quicker.  It may seem obvious to mention that  people like to feel valued but in a job advertisement it is wholly appropriate to mention how the role they will play will be important to the rest of the team or company.  It's a certainty that some of the role you're advertising will be similar to other roles at other companies - in these cases it's important to differentiate at a personal level.  It's a rare candidate that wants to be a cog in machine but still I see companies loudly proclaiming they are hiring "one thousand software developers this year!" the intended message is clearly designed to be one of security, though it's hard to escape from a different "come and be one of a crowd" vibe.  Remember a good job advert spurs the correct audience into action and acts as a self selection point for those who are not right.  A job advert should not be generic enough to attract all comers - if it does you just ensure that someone will have to wade through the mire of terrible candidates and machine gun applicants that apply to everything.

Knowing that the role you are performing is worthwhile and needed is a far better motivator than the lower level "carrot and stick" incentives of salary and mock "benefits" of legally mandated holiday entitlements.  The better job adverts will mention those truly motivating factors - autonomous working, results driven environments without the reliance of rules and policies.  This further adds authenticity and can be a real differentiator for a reader.

So what's left?  You have an advert for a new job that tells a candidate they'll be adequately financially rewarded, they'll be given a great set of benefits and the company is secure so their job will be too.  You've told them about the great team they they get to work with and then you've gone on to tell them how they'll fit into that team and why the work they will do is important and needed.  If you said that was all a job could do it's still pretty compelling, but Maslow has a further tier on the road to fulfilment.  "Self- actualisation". This is the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are essentially fulfilled and the "actualisation" of the full personal potential takes place. Research shows that when people live lives that are different from their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose goals and lives match.

In job advertising terms how can we then offer this form of greater fulfilment to a prospective candidate?  A majority of job descriptions fail in the balance of power they portray.  Despite the current market for hires becoming tighter, in far too many posts on job boards there is a weird "you should be thankful that we deign to allow you to read this" holier than thou language choice that only the most spirit crushed drone would find engaging.  However, this has become the accepted convention for weird mash-up of job description cum advert that employers post. Part internal HR document, part external facing "sexed-up" hyperbole.

Instead of using language straight out of the mouths of the mill owners of the Industrial Revolution why not let candidates know what they stand to gain from being an employee.  What are the experiences they will have that will let them grow as individuals.  Will they gain new skills or be trained in new areas?  Will they get to mentor or be mentored by other employees leading to more rewarding interactions? Will they have the scope and the freedom to be truly creative? Are they empowered to innovate? This is the future facing final tier of any great job advert and if you can hint at a brighter future for those who come and work for you it might just be the tipping point for them to hit that big red apply button.

Job Titles and Perception - Ninjas, Gurus and Rockstars?

Somewhat unfairly, I tweeted this comparison recently.

The photo compares the titles afforded to two luminaries of the technical world.  One is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet and is often credited as being the "Inventor of the World Wide Web".  The other is David Shing, a speaker and futurologist for AOL, the American mass media organisation.  I offered the comparison, as unfair as it is, flippantly and the seeming disparity for Berners-Lee's humility and Shing's presumption seemed to hit a nerve with the twitter audience.

As a recruiter it makes me think.  If we can all see a disparity so huge in this example that is becomes absurd why do we still see people using titles that seem at odds with an individual's function in an organisation?

Your job title communicates a lot more than you might realise.  Regardless of what an employer calls you most are pretty indifferent to you presenting yourself differently online.  The titles people self identify with can have a larger affect on the perception of the individual than you might expect.  Particularly in technical organisations there are a wealth of titles that are used to describe the same role - so how does the onlooker separate the Ninjas, Rockstars and Gurus from the Craftsmen, the Programmers and the plain old (like Sir Tim) Web Developers?  In making a choice and opting for a "wacky" title you make a statement that will shape the perception of others.  In most of these cases, for most of the people I've spoken to, they see a correlation with self claimed Ninja, Rockstars and an overestimation of their own skills and abilities.  For most of the people I've spoken to there is a connotation to brogrammer culture and the identification as the "Ninja" in question seeking to portray themselves as the hero in their own particular story...

All of this might be fine.  If the employer you want to work for has this culture you'll fit in well and probably be successful.  I don't think it's helpful for potential candidates to seek to be seen in this light.  The best technologists I've worked with, "best" here being the feedback from peers and the community, were also the most humble.  These were the people who had created tools and languages the world over, known in their fields as leaders and yet they let their achievements speak for themselves.

What then of a company that advertises to hire a "Rockstar Developer"? If a company advertises for Ninjas, Gurus and Rockstars does the reader infer that they are a fun place to work with little hierarchy or that the environment will be competitive and celebrate the individual over the team as a whole? For me that distinction is too great of a risk, I wouldn't want the advert to put people off applying for a job they might be otherwise perfect for, at the very least I'd prefer a part of the process to determine their fit rather than their reaction to a joke job title.  Whilst this might be true for me and the companies I recruit for if might not be the same for your organisations.  For example this video, recruiting developers for Kixeye, might illustrate they'd love some Ninjas to apply.  A company advertising might want to take the time to reflect on what their job title means for attraction.  Remember that whilst you might love the fact your business card proudly states you're a "Ruby Ninja", a "Marketing Badass" or even the "Chief Instigation Officer" (yes really!) the communication of these ideas is a two way street and your true meaning will always be affected by the listener's own values, attitudes and beliefs.

Whatever your job title and however you want to portray yourself, awareness is key.  The next time you have to respond to this type of job title this site might help.  For employers who might be using these job titles just for the shock value, I'm afraid that time has already passed, perhaps you could consider becoming a not for "Prophets" organisation?

7 Myths About Great Résumés

When friends find out I work in recruitment they often have a lot of questions.  They might ask for funny stories, the strangest applications I've seen, but it's never that long until I'm asked if I'll look at their own resume.  Sad though it may seem, I don't mind doing this, actually I quite enjoy it.  Almost every time I've done this I hear the same justifications for formatting, length, and content come up again and again.

I'm sure that this advice is always given with the best of intentions to those seeking jobs.  It's folksy, friendly and given in the same tones as the motherly maxims we were fed as children. However, times have changed.  We know that if we pull "that face" we won't stay that way, we know that eating those crusts didn't put hair on our chests, we even know that if you swallow chewing gum it wouldn't "wrap around your heart and kill you" (my elder sister used to tell me this with absolute conviction).  So much of this weird advice is now dismissed and yet when it come to job seeking we hold certain things to be absolute truths.  Here are seven thing people blindly accept as the "right way" and the reasons I think we can now give up on them.

Myth Number 1 - "Your resume should only be 1 page."

Truth - This is one of the most pervasive pieces of advice I hear.  Often I find people struggling to fit their experience on a page, resorting to 10pt font size or self-censoring and leaving some great things out, desperately attempting to make everything fit into no more than two sides of A4.  The problem with that?  I will probably never print your resume.  "Sides of paper" is a physical restriction that modern ATS's (Applicant Tracking Systems) and candidate tracking systems have made redundant.  The truth is that I will scroll through a CV on a screen, normally in a frame within another application, I'll be reading your resume not counting pages.  Some recruitment software even removes page breaks so the length is purely a measure of holding a recruiter's interest. Write interesting, relevant content and a recruiter won't mind if you add a page.

Myth Number 2 - "Avoid all complicated fonts or design elements."

Truth - This is another of those things that was potentially true in the past.  When looking at a paper resume it may have been the case that in printing a complex design would be corrupted in some way.  Similarly, early ATS's couldn't cope with any design elements as they tried to parse documents and strip out information.  Any modern system will now happily display submitted resumes in a variety of formats, even as beautifully crafted .pdfs the better systems are now advanced to the point where they can do this and still strip out information and enable searching.  Never has this advice been so misplaced when I was recently looking for designers.  The number of standard template resumes I received was scary - if you're a designer show it! If the design you send to a recruiter is overly complex and doesn't convey information clearly it will tell them a lot more about your abilities than the content.

Myth Number 3 - "Recruiters only spend 5 seconds looking at a resume."

Truth - Recruiters only spend five seconds looking at a bad resume.  With clarity of format and inclusion of relevant information you encourage a reader to read on.  Irrelevant, clichéd or boring copy means anyone, not just a recruiter won't linger for long.  You should write in a consistent format that is easy to take in - I have suggested the following format for wring about each job -

Company - Role Title - Dates of Employment

Who the company are, what they do - just a couple of sentences. 

The role you were tasked to perform - the duties you had

Achievements in the role - Call attention to specific things that match the role you're applying for or experiences you want to call out. 

This makes for easy reading, it tells me what you did, and how you did it. I don't have to second guess obscure job titles and still offers you the chance to blow your own trumpet a little.

Myth Number 4 - "Use Bullet Points."

I like bullet points, when listed the duties you undertook or telling me about specific individual elements of a whole they're great.  However, not everything should be bulleted.  I've seen resumes that are so clipped and hammered into bullet lists that they are no longer comprehensible.  As a rule any stylistic choice should enhance legibility.  If a resume is comprised totally of bullet points, each with their own clipped structure it can be like reading a newspaper using only the headlines.  I'll thank you for the brevity but I'll also doubt your ability to write a complete sentence.

Myth Number 5 - "Identify the problems of the employer."

Truth - Don't do this. I've never seen an example of this that doesn't sound arrogant.  I can't imagine a case where it wouldn't.  Cite relevant experiences, give examples that you think may resonate with the problems that your target employer would also face, but the assumption of a candidate leaping in and saving the company they are applying to work for is a turn off for most recruiters I know.

Myth Number 6 - "Don't use jargon."

Truth - Don't dumb down your resume to the point that it looks as though you don't know what you're talking about.  This is particularly true for technical professions.  A candidate is correct to assume some level of knowledge from the recruiter who is reviewing the resumes before they reach a hiring manager.  If a developer or sys admin is giving more details about a project they worked on I want to to know what technologies they used.  There's another reason to keep in the technical terms too - they are often how resumes are searched and candidates are discovered in the first place. In any database of resumes, LinkedIn included, search is initially about filtering millions of people through key words - they have to be there.
   Technical terms are not meaningless, include them.  Don't include the truly meaningless, clichéd company specific terms or management speak but if the term is relevant and needed don't be afraid to use it.  A good recruiter can either be relied upon to google the term or if the rest of the resume is good they'll ask you.

Myth Number 7 - "Don't add your hobbies or interests."

Truth - As a recruiter I tend to see all candidates as meaty flesh bags containing a skill set, their only possible use being to serve the organisation for which I currently ply my trade, said no one ever.  An organisation that would discriminate against you for your hobbies or interests probably isn't one you would want to work for.  However, there are some people who may have legal yet contentious pastimes.  Things that might not be a good idea to add are religion or political activity or hunting as an example.  It's important not to give the recruiter a reason to reject your application out of hand but at the same time as a recruiter I'd still like to know you were a well rounded human being.  
In a related area, don't make up hobbies or interests, recruiters will ask you about them.  There's nothing more awkward for us both like a sudden improvisation about your made up live action role-playing experiences.

Remember as Mary Schmich said "Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of 
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth". The next time that someone offers you some advice on your resume make sure that it really applies to the application you're making, but this is just my advice.