Do job postings (and job descriptions) frustrate you?
They should.
Check out this article by Cody Pierson on RecruitingBlogs: The Truth About Job Postings
Talk to a handful of recruiters and HR people and you’ll know they are as frustrated about job postings as job seekers are (well, maybe almost as frustrated as job seekers are).
Let me address the last two points Cody makes:
Nobody Reads Them: He says a candidate (that is, the job seeker) scans for bullet points and dollar signs. We know it is rare to have dollars discussed in a job postings, unfortunately. What I scanned when I was in a job search were the points I could say “yes, that’s me! That too! Oh, I’m perfect for this job!”
I read the job descriptions but I read them in a different way. I read them to see how many requirements there were and how good a fit I was. I have since learned that those requirements are not always accurate.
My favorite was many years ago when I was looking at programming jobs for a fairly new programming language. It had been around less than one year. Yet some HR buffoon put down a requirement that you had to have two years experience in that language. Programmers and IT people see that regularly… and if that’s the level of detail that goes into a description, what else can you trust?
Everybody’s A ‘Team Player’: AMEN! If I had something in my job descriptions when I was hiring people, every single interviewee would say they were expert in that thing! Frustrating!
Well, not every single person. I remember an lady who came in and admitted she didn’t fit ANY of the requirements … had no experience with computers, programming, etc. That was a funny (and quick) interview.
Anyway, Cody says “These are meaningless requirements because everyone believes they’re all of the above.”
What he calls meaningless I call cliche. When you lay it on that thick, no one believes any of it.
So, what do you do? How do you get around this meaningless document that is supposed to be the gateway to you understanding what a company is looking for?
