bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Leaders.

Seth wrote a post a couple of weeks back suggesting what graduates can do if they can’t get into the workplace.  You can read it here.  Essentially he is saying have some fun, learn something new and be interesting.  Jobs will follow.

I couldn’t agree more.

In an evolving business you strike problems or challenges that you cannot even quite describe – let alone find a solution.  What do you do? You can’t place an ad or ask your friends.  You talk to local leaders in that niche.

Have a Twitter problem? You talk to that person whom you see as a thought leader on Twitter.

If you are one of these graduates doing something interesting that’s how you get these jobs.  And at the moment this is a huge market – the market of ill defined problems.

So as critical as people have been on Seth, he couldn’t be more than right, the problems are evolving and so are who we are hiring.

Probably a couple of times a month I get a job description or two across my email, to forward to friends, field interest etc.

I always have a flick through and to be honest I don’t think they ever put enough effort into a job description.

A job description should communicate a story;

• This is the story we want the employee to make happen in our organisation
• The story as to why you should work for us
• A story about the ideal candidate

Honestly if you have an uninspiring job description with mediocre (more often than not) copied/pasted descriptions your going to get average employees.

Few start ups have videos, showing the team, where you’d work, what you’re expected to do, sure I bet the results are lower but the quality would be much much higher.  That’s a story that will be perfect for one employee.

So if your looking to bring someone on board, remember its as much a marketing decision as a culture, strategy and organsiational one.

Have you ever been put off a job just by the description?