Testing our job advert against Jukesie’s top tips
Yesterday @jukesie posted a summary of his investigation into effective job ads/descriptions as a set of 10 top tips. Today he’s posted an assessment of the advert for the Government CDO post, giving it a total of 58/100 against the top tips.
Today’s post inspired me to do a self-assessment of one of the roles we are recruiting now: Delivery Manager | £46k | closing date 21st September.
1. Salary information is not optional
A strong start. The salary is clear and there is some info about other benefits.
I hope we will, in the not-too-distant future, publish all our benefits info, policies etc in public (like Barnardo’s) so people have a full picture at the application stage.
9/10
2. Embrace remote working if you can and advertise your roles as such
It’s remote at the moment, but I expect we will return to *some* face to (appropriately masked and distanced) face eventually. It isn’t in London though, so I’m going to give us some points.
4/10
3. Use common job titles — and be true to them
This is hard in a small organisation without the capacity for a full set of specialist roles (Neil’s written a bit about the question of a minimum viable team). We’ve used the common job title that most closely matches the role, I think. I’d be really interested in others’ views on this though — does this look like a Delivery Manager role?
6/10
4. Avoid generic job descriptions — be specific about the actual role
Hmm. It is a bit generic. Maybe partly because this is a new post, so to some extent it will be what the appointee makes of it.
This may also be the result of having multiple people contributing. Writing stuff by committee is never a good idea (see also, point 8).
6/10
5. Prioritise information about the job not the organisation (or their ‘journey’)
Once you’ve got as far as downloading the pack, this is OK. It leads with 713 words about the job, followed by 163 ones about the org and application process. Perhaps it needs more about the organisation and the team?
9/10
6. Link to supplementary information and background content
We’ve included a link to my twitter page and an option to contact me for more info. We should have also linked to our blog and possibly Neil’s or Sarah’s. Better than nothing, but a bit thin. 4/10
7. Essential skills should mean that — it isn’t a wish list
I tried not to make this a unicorn-seeking wishlist. Perhaps it should be more clear that we don’t necessarily expect candidates to fully meet all of these points.
7/10
8. Clear English is your friend. Use Content Designers if you have them.
Our format for JDs is a bit confusing. The bit that would usually be called ‘skills and experience’ is headed ‘What do I need to be successful?’. Will people understand what this means?
We don’t have any content designers, but I wish we did. The concept of content design isn’t one the organisation yet really understands. I’ve been encouraging people to read Sarah Richards’s book. It’s a start…
According to the Hemingway app the doc reads at Grade 12 level, which seems OK. 9 of 48 sentences are hard to read and 10 are very hard to read. Could be worse, but definitely room for improvement.
6/10
9. Invest in really good jobs pages for your organisation.
Umm, no. Hard fail on this, I’m afraid. We will get to it eventually!
Also not great that the job pack is a) a .docx that b) doesn’t open properly in Google docs because of an overly-complex template. Why are these things always done as downloads? Why not just have a webpage? 2/10
10 Check for Race/Gender bias in ads / descriptions
I would expand this point to include other forms of bias (which, of course, intersect with race and gender). This includes class, age and ableism which often creep in through (e.g.) unnecessary demands for qualifications, use of words like ‘energetic’.
We come out pretty well on Kat Matfield’s Gender Decoder app:
“This advert is feminine-coded: This job ad uses more words that are subtly coded as feminine than words that are subtly coded as masculine (according to the research). Fortunately, the research suggests this will have only a slight effect on how appealing the job is to men, and will encourage women applicants.”
See the detail here: http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/results/8cd8dffe-bc58-4bba-be09-75ead0ed3b84
I don’t know of any equivalent tools to help spot racism or other kinds of bias. I read around on the topic and hope to have avoided any exclusive language creeping in.
I notice that the stock image on the job pack is of two PoC. I hope this sets the tone that we aspire to be a diverse workplace, but it isn’t an accurate representation of the organisation now.
Some effort, but could be better: 7/10
Total: 60/100.
Of course, I’m too close to this to be objective, but it’s been useful to think through each point. Have I been fair? What have I missed?
