Most of us read a job posting and breeze through it. If you’re looking for a new role, you’ve probably seen dozens of similar descriptions already. You skim it and pick out what you consider salient bits. You find the bits you wanted, you apply, you get ghosted, you wonder why. You move on.
This sucks.
At the same time, on the other end of the transaction, your resume arrives in a piece of software called an applicant tracking system (ATS). If you’re lucky, it’s viewed by an actual human who skims it for the salient bits. They don’t find them. They move on.
Here’s what both sides would find extremely valuable during this process: a clear understanding of the reason this role exists, and how someone in this role can know if they’re being successful.
Most companies get this wrong. They don’t think enough about the problem being solved. Or if they do, they skip straight to listing the 37 bullet points they think are requirements for someone to solve the problem (bullets which are likely the result of copy/paste from a dozen similar postings found in a single Indeed search). This oversight allows for a ton of bias to creep in and sets up the ATS-reviewing human for a lot of time spent filtering out poor matches.
Meanwhile, the job seeker who has to read 100 job postings to find 50 they have a hope of landing is left shotgunning their resume across the industry in the hopes that 5 of those 50 ever generate a non-rejection response. How do they pick which 50? A list of 37 bullet points with non-zero overlap with their work history. How many of those 50 should they have never wasted their time applying for? Rounding down…about 50. How many could they have self-filtered away from if they knew 1) the problem this role is meant to solve, and 2) how to measure success in the role? At least half.
What a crappy employee experience. And this person isn’t even an employee yet.
Here’s an excerpt from a job posting I suggested for a client to fill a Head of People role:
You can see the problem we’re trying to solve (“Here’s why we need your help”) and five measures of success. This is a director-level role so things are less concrete, less obviously measurable. But this excerpt still lets you know more about the job than 37 bullet points in the Requirements section. If I’m considering applying for the role it’s easier for me to filter out of the pipeline because I don’t want to – or know how – to solve this problem. Or because I don’t have enough confidence I can do the things pertinent to measurable success.
Bonus: Most companies lag way behind on internal job descriptions. But guess what. If you spent the time writing the above excerpt, you’ve already got most of your job description before you even fill the role.
So spend the time up front. Consult with folks on your team, come up with the Problem We’re Solving and the Measures of Success. Put them at the top of the job posting and give every candidate a better employee experience. Because one of them will eventually be an employee.