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.

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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!)