Tag Archive for: #HRTeams : After Decades Of The Antiquated Job Advertisement

The job description, the first important step in the hiring process, is an antiquated document that needs to be updated. The massive amount of bullet points in the advertisement demand what you need to bring to the table. There is virtually nothing about the financial situation of the company, your future boss or information that a job hunter would like to know before investing their time and energy. It is one-sided

More Than Just Salary Transparency

Many states have seen an employee-empowering movement to require salary disclosures on job descriptions. This is a decisive move forward to alert job hunters as to whether or not they are wasting their time pursuing the opportunity.

Without knowing the salary, a person embarks upon an interview process that could last from one to six months for white-collar professionals. They would spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for the interviews, sneaking out of the office for meetings, conducting clandestine video calls at home on their remote days and all the while worried about getting out by someone and potentially getting in trouble with the boss or even fired for being disloyal.

The salary disclosure is just the tip of the iceberg. You also want to know about bonuses, stock options, medical benefits, and future raises. In sectors, such as Wall Street and tech, bonuses and stock options play a large part in total compensation. It’s only fair and reasonable for companies to clearly spell out all the financial pieces of the total compensation so that candidates can make an informed decision before getting involved with a lengthy hiring process.

What Annoys Applicants About Job Advertisements

Companies should consider hiring professional writers to help with crafting job descriptions. Most job ads you read are filled with corporate jargon specific to the company and acronyms you’ve never heard of before. There is a lack of creativity and humanity. Job descriptions are nearly uniformly cold and dull.

There are 10 to more than 20 bullet points of what is required from applicants. It’s not reasonable for anyone to have all the experiences demanded by the ad. This turns off and discourages job seekers from applying. Ironically, the voluminous requirements do not stop people who don’t have much, if any, of the skills. Those folks will shoot their shot, hoping for a miracle. The results are that potentially good candidates opt-out and human resources must filter through dozens of inappropriate applicants.

Companies love to offer the range of years required for the role. This metric seems outdated. Saying that the candidate needs to possess three to 10 years of experience doesn’t make sense. The gap is far too broad.

Calling for a certain number of years doing a job doesn’t provide the intended results. How often have you noticed someone in your office who has been doing the same job for 10-plus years and isn’t that great at it? They’re mediocre at best. The odds are that they’ve become stale in their position and haven’t learned new skills and technologies.

You’ve all seen young and brilliant people who have outstanding accomplishments under their belt. It’s self-defeating for a business to discriminate against someone because of their age. Instead of requiring a certain number of years, leadership should think outside the box and open up the rigid requirements to include brilliant, fast-track people who can do the job, even though they don’t have the requisite years of experience.

On the flip side, older workers are overlooked. When was the last time you looked at a job ad that stated that an applicant needs 30 years of experience? It rarely ever happens. Asking for three to 10 years of experience kicks out anyone in their late 30s and older. If a photo accompanies the online advertisement, the odds are high that it shows a multicultural group of fresh-faced Gen-Zs and younger Millennials. There may be one token gray-haired person in the picture to ward off claims of ageism.

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What About The Manager?

Since the interviewers, human resources, internal corporate recruiters and hiring managers grill the applicant about their background and experiences, shouldn’t the company share information about its people? A glaring omission from the job advertisement is that there is no insight into the boss or executive management team, who will be your co-workers.

Who hasn’t read job descriptions, becoming enthralled with the position, only to feel later betrayed when they met with their prospective manager and co-workers? It feels like bait and switch when the ad sounds wonderful, but when you’re interviewed, you realize that the managers are rude, dismissive and abusive.

To level the playing field, the company should disclose any shortcomings of the people you will work with. Since this has never happened before, you may think this is a crazy idea. However, all that people want is to know the truth. Some people may elect to accept a job with a not-so-great boss because they love the company, its mission and feel that the specific role could be a career-accelerating move.

Tell Us About Working Conditions

As a traditional go-to question, the interviewer will ask, “Please tell me about yourself.” The same should hold for the business, its culture and its people. Job seekers want to know if the company has a toxic culture or advocates employee empowerment. Disclosures should be made if the business has been the subject of discriminatory complaints. You want to know if the bosses are micromanagers, implant spy software on your computers, verbally abuse people and allow managers to bully, harass and intimidate workers.

It would be helpful to know if they have plans to lay off people, rescind job offers or allow attrition without aggressively trying to replace the people who quit. Although the ad says the role is remote or hybrid, there should be a disclosure if management is considering changing the work style to going into the office five days a week.

An applicant bases their life and family’s lives on the work model offered by the company. If there was a shift from remote to the office, it would create turmoil for families, as it relates to child and eldercare. Their quality of life would substantially decline as a long commute would be required. They will miss out on all the school plays, ballet recitals and special events you can never get back.

Why Don’t We Know Anything About The Firm’s Financial Situation?

After accepting a job offer, the company usually requires an in-depth background check. They want to know nearly everything about you, ranging from college grades to late payments on credit cards. Wouldn’t it be fair for the job description to offer complete openness and cite the organization’s financial situation, as well as any potential problems on the horizon that could negatively impact the company?

Do the CEO and other C-suite executives hold other jobs, such as heading up another company, sitting on a number of board of director seats, investing in startups or running an entrepreneurial endeavor on the side?

What do you know about the CEO and the top executives? Have they run their prior companies into the ground, or were they highly successful? In full transparency, disclosing the compensation of the top executives would offer a glimpse into how fair the business runs. Earning larger multiples of money than the average worker signals that employees are not valued, as the upper echelon is lavishly paid.

Forbes.com | October 24, 2022 | Jack Kelly