Let’s Rethink Job Descriptions!
At Shortlist, we’ve worked with close to a 100 clients in India and Kenya to help them hire better. These clients range from 10 member start-up teams to large global consulting companies. However, something’s that struck us as being uniform to almost every company we’ve worked with is how job descriptions are written. And we’re now out to change that!
Not only does the job description (JD) form the first impression of your company for hundreds (or thousands!) of applicants, but a well-crafted, specific JD will attract candidates that are right for the job far better than a generic, run-of-the-mill JD ever could.
Well-designed JDs can help deliver a far greater volume of relevant candidate applicants. Yet we see majority of job descriptions being text-heavy documents filled with recycled corporate jargon, a long list of candidate “requirements,” and impersonal tones. Why is this?
Back in the day…
When job descriptions were first introduced in the early 1900s, ad space in newspapers was at a premium. This forced companies to publish succinct, straightforward ads that were differentiated from internal documents. How times have changed!
Now that hiring managers have endless room to list jobs on their website and on job boards, they tend to write lengthy JDs that would better function as internal documents — a laundry list of responsibilities, with little about their company culture and employee value proposition.
What can you do to revamp your JDs to jumpstart better recruiting?
- Think of JDs as marketing tools, not exhaustive internal documents
If you were tasked with creating a poster for a giant billboard on a busy motorway, chances are you would spend at least a few weeks perfecting the layout, design, and content. After all, this is your opportunity to attract tens of thousands of new customers!
You should think of the job description the same way. A great JD should be able to market your brand, describe your values, and sell the role. Unfortunately, the majority of JDs are black and white Word or PDF documents with a test flow of paragraphs and lists.
What should you do instead: It’s time to get creative with JDs! Don’t be afraid to throw in media elements (in color!) like pictures, graphics, and videos to make an impression and set yourself apart.
2. Be concise
Many professionals are dissatisfied due to a mismatch between what a JD promises and what the job actually entails. It is imperative to be realistic in terms of both the responsibilities of the position and what you’re seeking in a candidate.
Fancy responsibilities and potential accountabilities are a great selling point but it has to be balanced with a realistic depiction of an actual day, operational elements, and more.
Candidate requirements is another section where jargon is often recycled and stock words and phrases such as ‘passionate about,’ ‘team player,’ ‘motivated,’ and ‘creative’ are repeated almost by default. You then end up with a list of over 10 requirements for a candidate and you’re almost never going to find a candidate that embodies all of them. In fact, the more requirements you have, you’re more likely to dissuade great candidates from applying. An internal study by Hewlett-Packard found that women in particular often apply for roles only if honestly feel they meet 100% of the requirements.
What you should do instead: Start thinking about the most critical requirements for a candidate and include no more than three to five points in each section of the JD. Spend some more time on personalising the JD for each role rather than recycling existing JDs. JDs should include what a day in the life of the role would look like in order to give a candidate a real flavor of what to expect.
3. Technology’s changed everything — the JD shouldn’t be an exception!
In an age where job-seekers use smartphones for almost everything, a JD should be as well-designed and mobile-friendly as any app. Studies have estimated that between 65 and 89 percent of candidates use mobiles to search and apply for jobs. To reach the greatest number of candidates, JDs should be designed and optimised to be mobile-friendly.
Technology also offers multiple ways of engaging with candidates. Rather than using written text as the only medium of conveying a job’s responsibilities and employee value proposition, employers should start engaging with candidates using multimedia. A study by Ongig found that the average time spent by candidates viewing a text job ad was 55 seconds whereas if a video was integrated into the job ad, the average engagement time went up by almost 2 minutes.
What you can do instead: Before publishing a JD, view it on a mobile rather than a document on a computer and test it out with a handful of users. Most of your candidates are used to scrolling on apps such as Linkedin and Facebook. Let the JD incorporate a similar user experience.
4. Speak to millennials
By 2020, millennials will overtake the baby-boomers to become the largest generation in the global workforce. But what appeals to millennials is considerably different than previous generations. Millennials place a relatively large importance on the purpose and mission of an organisation when assessing potential jobs. When marketing to millennials, having a well thought out employee value proposition is critical to attracting high quality talent.
What you can do instead: Emphasize the mission and values of the organisation in the JD and the tangible impact the individual can have in the role.
Pointing to a better way
At Shortlist, we’re on a mission to bring solutions to companies that are struggling with talent management issues. We combine best practices from experts with research and experience to deliver practical solutions to growing organisations. We’re currently piloting a product called JD 2.0 which is a concise and mobile-friendly JD where all content is carefully delivered from both a marketing and HR perspective.
In the next article in this series, we will detail some of the elements of the JD 2.0 followed by the results from a few roles we pilot it with in Kenya.
