Open Letter to Job Seekers

Open letter to Job Seeker members of SPM Jobs
(www.spmjobs.com)
(software and internet product marketing & management professionals)
Service includes professional review and constructive feedback on all job posting descriptions.

Help SPM Jobs post the jobs you want to hear about

Help turn SPM Jobs into the best place to find the software, internet product marketing and management positions that you want.

Over 4,000 Job Seekers are poised to receive SPM Jobs postings via email, our website, and blog. We calculate that the optimum number of Job Seekers should be 10,000 to attract the highest quality postings while providing a good “hit rate” to subscribers. We need your help to get there.

Invite just 2 people you know to join as Job Seekers by forwarding this email to them.

Basic Information about SPM Jobs

• SPM Jobs is FREE for Job Seekers.
• You as a Job Seeker need make no effort nor reveal any information unless you actually apply for a position. Job Seekers essentially “do nothing” until the perfect opportunity presents itself.
• Job Posters pay a modest fee per job posting. (During our soft-launch beta phase, it's a nominal $1.)

What SPM Jobs does for you

We help software and internet product marketing and management professionals at all levels find great opportunities.

Those are the only positions we post. You see only jobs in your career path. No distractions.
We interact directly with Job Posters to help them describe their opportunities completely and clearly. You can then see right away whether their job interests you. You don't waste time wading through vague, frustrating "jobspeak" boilerplate.

Face it. Most job postings are vague, incomplete, or boooring. They don’t compel top candidates – that's you – to apply. It's not just us saying that job postings need improvement. The Wall Street Journal agrees.

As just one example, on other job boards postings may direct applicants to respond to an anonymous emailbox. Riiiight. Top talent wants to deal with a real person, who has a name and title. Not a mailbot or a clerk. We require a titled and named contact person to receive the résumés.

Summary of the SPM Jobs service

• Exclusively job postings in software and internet product marketing and management (and only professionals in this space are allowed to be members of the list*)
• Job postings must meet a high-level criteria for openness and completeness

If you want to know more about the processes used by SPM Jobs, keep reading…

How SPM Jobs helps Job Posters create better job postings

At SPM Jobs we believe that both Job Seekers and Job Posters will benefit if certain criteria are met in the job postings:

Criteria

• Must be appropriate for the members (see home page for list of approved job titles).
• Must include Job Poster's name, title, company, and email address. [Job Seekers want to know who will be receiving their resume and how to contact this person.]
• Must include enough information about the position, company, hiring manager, etc. so that Job Seekers can determine if they really are interested in the opportunity.
• Must have easy to find key information: job title, area of expertise, company, location, relocation assistance (if any), and title of hiring manager.
• Require a fee that helps ensure the quality of the posted jobs and the sincerity of the Job Poster in reviewing the resulting candidates. Prevents the kind of “resume trawling” found so often on other sites.

Review & Recommendations

Every job posting is reviewed by SPM Jobs management and modifications are suggested to make the posting more compelling. While each job posting gets individual feedback and suggestions, typical recommendations are:

• Removal of rigid length of work experience requirements (e.g. 5-7 years experience) and replacement with skills and/or type of experience required.
• Addition of a “day-in-the-life” scenario to give Job Seekers a real understanding of what the person who gets the job will actually be doing.
• A clear explanation of the experience required e.g. a senior product manager could be writing product requirements for a new internet widget, or crafting online advertising campaigns to bring in a new type of customer. These are very different jobs that would attract very different Job Seekers.

www.spmjobs.com

The new website, SPM Jobs, was created to implement the required criteria and review and recommendation process.
[Job Seekers receive the job postings by joining the Yahoo Group at www.spmjobslist.com.]

How do we make SPM Jobs attractive for Job Posters?

Key to success in this endeavor is to have a large high-quality set of Job Seekers. Please invite your colleagues to join the group and spread the word.

How SPM Jobs Works for Job Seekers

Job Seekers simply sign up for the SPM Jobs List (a Yahoo Group) at www.spmjobslist.com. The job postings come in the form of HTML emails which are sent directly and individually to each Job Seeker (the jobs can also be browsed in the Yahoo Group and in a blog). The sign-up process requests a brief description of the person's professional experience and is reviewed by Cynthia Typaldos, the founder of SPM Jobs. There is no fee for Job Seekers.

Questions or Comments?

Please feel free to contact Cynthia Typaldos, the founder and manager of SPM Jobs. You can also add a comment to this email in the SPM Jobs Management Blog [add link to blog].

Thank you.

Cynthia Typaldos and the SPM Jobs Team and Advisors

*The Job Seeker list was originally built from people that knew Cynthia Typaldos. The list is now open to anyone in the field of software and internet product marketing and management. All requests to join the list are reviewed and approved (or rejected) by Cynthia (as of Jan 2007).

Should Job Seekers pay for access to job listings?

A provocative article on this from Bob Tedeschi in the NYTimes titled "Listing Top Jobs but Charging Candidates to Seek Them".

"RECRUITERS with six-figure jobs to fill know better than to post them online and start a stampede of marginally qualified job seekers. But they also know that the Web is the easiest way to find applicants.

The Web’s surprising answer to the problem? Charge them to look.

A growing number of niche sites devoted to high-end jobs are finding that applicants are willing to shell out a few dollars — or a few hundred, in some cases — for the chance to get access to job ads. The strategy will not help the big online job boards find more applicants for entry-level positions, but analysts say it is ideal for sites like TheLadders.com, ExecuNet and others seeking the senior executive crowd."

For the rest of the article go here: Listing Top Jobs but Charging Candidates to Seek Them".

According to the article there are 40,000 niche job sites (not sure if this is worldwide or US only).

Update on SPM Jobs for Job Seekers | How to unsubscribe

Dear Job Seeker Members of SPM Jobs:

Over the next few weeks we will be doing a soft launch of the new SPM Jobs interface for Job Posters. Nothing essential will change for you, the nearly 5,000 Job Posters; however you will see some additional administrative emails during this time, and a change in the email address of the job postings. At the end of this short period, there will be an increase in job postings as we market the group to hiring managers, recruiters, and HR personnel.

What is SPM Jobs?

SPM Jobs is an email-based job posting service exclusively for software and internet product marketing and management positions (with some marketing communications and biz dev positions as appropriate). The service is free to you, the Job Seeker and simply requires that you sign up for the Yahoo Group (of which you are already a member or you would not be receiving this email.).

How Did You Become of Member?

Yahoo Groups only allows individuals to sign themselves up – at some point, which could have been anytime since Nov 2001 when the group started, you enrolled yourself. If you no longer wish to be a member of this group anymore, simply click on the very last linked word at the bottom of this email titled “unsubscribe”.

(The only exception to this enrollment process is if another non-Yahoo Group in which you belong is itself a member. Over the next few weeks I will be attempting to identify member email addresses that are not those of individuals and ask the group owners to remove them. Only individuals should be members of this group.)

New Email Addresses for Job Postings and Administrative Messages

In the future, emails will not longer come from my personal email address (cynthia@typaldos.com).

• Job postings will come from the email address job@SPMJobs.com
• Administrative messages will come from the email address cynthia@spmjobs.com

What Next?

Next week you will hear more about the plan to market SPM Jobs to both Job Posters and Job Seekers, and how SPM Jobs differentiates itself from the myriad of job-based services.

Want to Make a Comment?

You can do so right here!


Thanks very much.

Cynthia Typaldos
SPM Jobs

WSJ: Job postings recruit a broader pool of promising candidates when they don't set strict education and work-experience requirements

One sentence summary of the WSJ article:
Job postings recruit a broader pool of promising candidates when they don't set strict education and work-experience requirements

Aha, so it isn’t just our imagination that job postings really are poorly written!

Job Ads Loosen Up, Get Real
March 12, 2007
Plain-English Portraits of Positions' True Duties Help Firms Cut Turnover
By ERIN WHITE, WSJ
March 12, 2007; Page B3

When apartment-complex operator Aimco analyzed high employee turnover, it found an unlikely culprit: poor job descriptions in its recruitment advertising.

The ads didn't help applicants understand the work they would do. Instead, they featured jargon-laden task lists, and emphasized education and experience requirements. Many new hires quit shortly after realizing the job wasn't what they thought.

With the old ads, "we felt perhaps people were overselling the positions and trying to glamorize them a little bit," says Terri Heredia, senior vice president of talent at Denver-based Aimco.

"We're trying to present a realistic day-in-the-life-of" with the new descriptions.

Aimco, or Apartment Investment & Management Co., is among a small but growing number of employers revamping job descriptions. The strong labor market has stiffened competition for workers, but Internet ads are often formulaic.

Traditional job descriptions, some recruiters say, emphasize qualifications, but skimp on describing the work, the challenges and the company culture. "The job description shouldn't be this dull, boring, 'must have this [qualification],' " says Lou Adler, chief executive of Adler Group, a human-resources consultancy.

Consultants blame the Internet itself. Before electronic job boards and company career sites, employers often used recruitment-advertising agencies to craft job descriptions in an enticing way, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of CareerXroads, a staffing-consulting firm.

These days, job descriptions are simply posted on the Web. Employers gained efficiency but may have lost allure, Mr. Crispin says. Now, a few employers are "trying to figure out how to put the sizzle back into the steak," he says.

HELP WANTED

Some companies are updating the way they advertise jobs. Here are excerpts from apartment manager Aimco's old posting for a "community manager" and a new version:

OLD

• "Responsible for all operations of the apartment community with the primary objectives of increasing the net operating income of the community…"
• "Has a staff of at least one Leasing Consultant and/or at least one Service Technician."
• "Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience required. Typically 2-4 years related experience required."

NEW

• "Community Managers run the show, so to speak."
• "A Community Manager is a team leader...motivates, challenges, and delegates."
• "...may not necessarily have previous apartment management experience...should have a strong management, sales, customer service, and fiscal decision-making background."

Mr. Crispin estimates that fewer than 10% of employers are experimenting with new job descriptions. Employers say they hesitate to change because it takes time to rethink and rewrite ads.

"It represents a pretty big shift and a big time investment," says Jessica Donovan, senior recruiter for software maker Wonderware, a U.S. unit of Invensys PLC of the United Kingdom.

A few months ago, she and two other Wonderware employees spent about 4½ hours rewriting the job description of an information-technology manager. She says the group focused on "describing projects and impact versus describing skills."

The effort paid off, Ms. Donovan says. Applicants had a better sense of the work, she says.

The revision helped Wonderware managers, too, by clarifying the importance of tasks such as upgrading to Microsoft's new operating system. "We really knew exactly what we wanted out of the role," Ms. Donovan says.

As well as internal candidates, one of whom ultimately got the job, the ad yielded several promising outside candidates.

Aimco began changing job descriptions for certain positions during the summer, part of efforts to tackle high turnover rates in so-called customer-facing jobs, such as building superintendents, maintenance workers and sales staffers. Aimco is testing the revised ads in its Gulf region, from Florida to Texas.

One reason for the turnover, Aimco believed, was that hires lacked a clear understanding of the jobs. The traditional ad said the manager of an Aimco property is "responsible for all operations of the apartment community with the primary objectives of increasing the net operating income of the community." It specified that applicants should have a bachelor's degree and two to four years of experience.

The new ad for the same position is clearer and less formal: "Community Managers run the show, so to speak." It outlines duties in plain English, such as training staff and handling many phone calls. And it mentions challenges, such as collecting rent from delinquent tenants. Working "evenings and weekends [is] par for the course," the ad says. It doesn't set firm academic and experience requirements.

Ms. Heredia of Aimco says the new job descriptions have helped cut turnover where used. Only 3% of employees hired for customer-facing jobs through the new ads left within 90 days, she says; that compares with 22% of those hired for the same jobs through the old ads and other means.

The new ads can also help recruit a broader pool of promising candidates because they don't set strict education and work-experience requirements.

HealthEast Care System, a Minnesota hospital group, began rewriting job descriptions for certain nurse and nurse-manager posts, among others, several years ago. The old descriptions emphasized requirements and tasks; the new ones describe a job's goals and challenges. An ad for a management position, for instance, might mention dealing with high staff turnover.

Candidates "can say, 'Boy I'd be a good fit,' or 'I'm just not a good fit for that job,'" says Trudy Knoepke-Campbell, HealthEast's director of work-force planning.

Patty Kelley, a HealthEast veteran, changed jobs within the organization last year after reading a posting for a human-resources position. She says the description of her new job "painted a picture rather than listing tasks."

Write to Erin White at erin.white@wsj.com
URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117366804383633870.html

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Common Job Posting Mistakes

The new SPM Jobs front-end for job postings (now in beta testing launching in Feb/Mar 2007) is designed to help Job Posters from making these common mistakes, and provide feedback to entice top candidates to apply.

This first post to the SPM Jobs Management Blog explains why a front-end for Job Postings is necessary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction

For 5 years I’ve managed a (now) 5,000+ member job posting board for software and internet marketing professionals. Sometimes job posters leave out critical information in their job postings which meant that in order to keep the quality of the job postings up to my standards these postings needed to be reviewed, and feedback and guidance provided. Since the goal of SPM Jobs is to enable the Job Poster and the Job Seeker to find a match, I felt given my experience in hi-tech marketing I could add value to this process. The new SPM Jobs website is an efficient way for Job Posters to input their open positions and for me to easily provide comments. The structure of the website also ensures that all job postings have key information and that the postings themselves can be easily scanned by the Job Seekers.

Below are the problems that the new SPM Jobs service will help Job Posters solve before circulating their job posting.

Common mistakes Job Posters make

Serious Job Posting Errors:

1. Not specifying the location of the job (about 20% of the job postings I receive do not have this key piece of info)
2. Not specifying who the contact person is (or where to send the resume) (about 10% forget this key piece of info)
3. Egregious spelling errors (10% neglect to run spell check)
4. Formatting so poor that the job posting can hardly be read or looks unprofessional (about 10%)

Flaws that can keep great candidates from responding to a Job Posting:

1. Not naming the company, the market space, or the exact location of the job (or any combination of these three). While there are good reasons to keep this information confidential, the downside is that top candidates will usually not respond to a posting where this key information is missing.
2. Only providing a generic email address of website where candidates should send their resumes, e.g. jobs@company.com. Top candidates want to know the name and title of the person who will be receiving their resumes.
3. Providing so little information about the job that no one could possibly be inspired to apply
4. Cookie cutter job experience and requirements and duties – no passion and no specifics
5. Not selling the company, the market space or the position (or any combination of these 3). If the company is not well-known, the market space is obscure, the location isunusual, and the position is bland-sounding, nobody really great will apply. SELL your company, sell the market space, sell the benefits of living in Boise, and sell the position!
6. Narrowing the requirements or experience so much that no one in this universe could actually be qualified (e.g. “must have an MBA from MIT, have worked at Google, Dow Chemical and WebVan and have 3.5 years of experience doing needlepoint embroidery”)
7. Putting incredibly rigid experience requirements – e.g. “between 5 and 6 years of experience doing this exact position at eBay”
8. Requiring that the person worked at least at some of a named list of companies – all of which are now defunct!

Tips to get the best candidates from a Job Posting:

1. Don’t make the mistakes listed above
2. Be specific about the job, the market space, everything. The job should not sound cookie cutter
3. Name names and titles. What is the title of the person who the job reports to? What is that person’s name (top candidates want to do a search of their potential manager before responding). What is the name and title of the person who will be receiving the resume? If this is a managerial position how many reports are there? What do these people do? Are there any open reqs?
4. Accept candidate resumes from everywhere…do not geographically restrict where the candidates currently live. Offer a relocation package if you can, but since most companies cannot, offer even a small cash stipend for relo. The best candidates do not all live in Silicon Valley/NYC/Boston/Austin/Los Angeles/San Diego and so on! People will move for a variety of reasons. But if you say “local candidates only” non-locals won’t even bother to apply. What I suggest is saying “some relo” which could be anything from $5K to whatever. Also if the job can me done remotely (virtually) then that is a great benefit.
5. Target where you post the job. If you get 250 resumes that is NOT GOOD. You will have a very difficult time finding the top candidates in such a flood of resumes. Ideally you want only ONE resume from the BEST candidate! So target your job posting as much as possible to job boards and colleagues that are in that space.
6. Format beautifully, use good grammar, use color and logos. Make the job posting visually stimulating.
7. Include the URL of the company website. This is usually easy to figure out but not always!
8. Don’t attempt to exclude experienced people. People in their 40s, 50s, and 60s include some of the most brilliant, talented and creative professionals.
9. If the job posting is distributed via email use a short, compact subject line to entice the candidates to actually read the email. The format we use:
   
   SPM Jobs standard format for subject line:
   job title, market space, company name or type, location, any relo ?
   Prod Mgr, security sw, Company Name, Boise, ID, USA, relo yes

I didn’t mention describing the job duties, requirements, experience, education, etc. Doing that is a given and most job posters actually do this pretty well (except sometimes it is really boring!)