Saturday, September 25, 2010

There's a High Likelihood That Your Job Postings Suck

Just read a fantastic post from Ask a Manager which highlights a job posting that 37Signals in Chicago recently released, that seems to have sparked a bit of a revelation for me.

On top of that, Alison goes on to talk about the reasons why the posting works and contrasting it to postings from many current ads on Monster.com.  I think this is a huge point here: why are companies talking to the people they want to hire like they're born bureaucrats?  Talk to people naturally.  

If I came up to an HR Manager at one of these companies and asked them the main responsibilities of the job they're looking for, do you think they would be able to recite "Coordinate with applicable business areas to define/implement remediation activities"?  I don't think so.


I believe the major component that 37Signals got right here is in their "If you were working for us, here are some of the things you would have done last week:" section.  This is beautiful.  It allows you a direct insight into the exact day-to-day responsibilities of the job.   Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?


These are those little effective tips that make us better recruiters and headhunters and let us strike at the heart of the placement when it's made up of mostly ribs. 


Does anyone else have thoughts on this and how you can increase effectiveness in recruiting - specifically through job posts?