Diagnosing multiple audience disorder in job descriptions

Every good marketer first defines an audience to market to, and then crafts their message to that audience. Ineffective marketing is often the result of trying to please multiple audiences at once.

It’s no surprise that so many job descriptions are ineffective. They suffer because they are trying to accomplish too many goals simultaneously. The job description tends to be used for many purposes, instead of being tailored to a single audience.

1. For approvals
   A team lead needs to hire a new computer security specialist, but they need to justify the opening to the executive team and the HR department. What expertise would this person bring that they don’t have? How will they add to the bottom line? They leave the salary field blank, hoping that HR will suggest one.
2. For referrals
   The company needs to double headcount in sales this year, and they need everyone to be on the lookout for stellar sales folks. But the execs need everyone to understand what to say when recruiting their friends. So they send out the job description to the whole company. Since all the employees already know where the office is, they leave that part out.
3. For external recruiters
   The Product Manager needs to hire a growth hacker, but the headhunting firm she works with demands a more specific list of requirements. So she writes up a list of guard rails to create a persona that the headhunter should be searching for, and then tells them over the phone — “but a fast learner with a bit of experience on a product team might be good too.”
4. For the career page
   The marketing department wants to make sure that the company looks like it’s growing all the time, so there are some job descriptions on the career page — even if they’re already filled.
5. For the job boards
   Eventually when someone decides to post all the company jobs to a job board, they have to get copy+pasted from somewhere.

Just like a good marketer, if you want to write good job descriptions, you have to choose an audience. It’s going to be hard to cater well to an audience that includes CXOs, employees, headhunters, site visitors, … who am I forgetting? Oh right, the people you actually needed to hire.

Edit — we are working on a tool to help write better job descriptions. Check it out at jobgrader.co

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