I’m reading a lot of job descriptions and after almost 20 years of work, I often end up skimming rather than reading them because they are a cultural indicator as well as a checklist. I am looking for signs of a corporate culture between the lines and as someone who has hired, written and revisited job descriptions continuously for 6 years, I think the way we think about them should change to adapt to our times.
- Numbers please. How many employees, how big is the team, who does the role report to, how many direct reports and where in the org chart are all questions I would love to have answered in a JD. Except they never are. So I have to snoop around Linkedin and Companies House to figure this out. It’s really silly. If the role reports to the CEO, say it. If it’s middle management, say it. If it’s not in SLT, say it. If you don’t, you risk disappointing candidates in the interview when they are asking questions and have already invested a lot of time in applying for the role.
- Be clear about what the person will be responsible for in conjunction with who they are accountable to and the authority they’ll be given to make things happen. If you under-describe these critical dynamics, you risk someone landing in a role without the ability to reach their OKRs/KPIs because you’ve not made space for them to control their team/tasks. In a JD that could mean saying ‘you’ll be expected to directly manage a yearly budget effectively to help your business unit reach its quarterly objectives’. It sounds simple but you’ll letting the candidate know they’ll be given some leavers to be successful.
- Describe your hybrid culture. This is often quite opaque and not discussed enough. Knowing where people are in a business matters to some roles. It means the difference between trying to build an office culture from scratch or landing in a team with some strong habits. ‘Our team is remote and mostly based around Bristol and the team meets Tuesdays and Thursdays’ is a nice thing to include in a JD next to the benefits section. Someone might have a really good reason they can’t make either days (due to their partner’s work habits for eg.) so you want them to know this before applying.
- Avoid being vague. The more ‘management’ a role gets, the less descriptive the JD. It’s all ‘leadership skills’ and ‘managing a team’ when it might be nice to say ‘you’ll be expected to coach and manage 10 direct reports who are responsible for teams of 50 each’, ‘we’re expecting a candidate with some experience of different team structures and moving from one to another quickly’ or ‘we’d like someone who understands organisation culture and is ready to help us improve ours’. Yes it’s showing your own employees what you think is needed at the highest levels of your business, but they already know what your challenges are. And so do your competitors because everyone talks. So being vague just makes your sifting job even harder because you’ll end up with a glut of applicants who throw their hat in the ring because they can’t decipher your JD. A lose/lose situation for your HR team.
These are pretty punk i know, but not completely bonkers either. But in the meantime, I’ll keep skimming.