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Job Descriptions: Consistently Bland, Frequently Horrible

As a recruiter, you read a LOT of job postings. You see everything from the amazingly brilliant to the average to the depressingly...depressing.

For whatever reason, recruiters really like to use dating analogies. Trainers and speakers really like them a lot. We use them mostly because they work and I can say that I have yet to see them swerve into cheap smutty jokes even once which is truly remarkable.

So let me start with the inspiration for this post which is the following job order I found online today:

                                   

City	Austin
State	Texas [TX]
Title	AIX SADM
Position Overview	The services to be provided include, but are not limited to the following: A. Responsible for all AIX OS administration tasks. B. Perform AIX installations, upgrades and apply vendor patches. C. Write and edit shell and Perl scripts as necessary. D. Provide documentation for all maintenance conducted. E. Diagnose and address UNIX alerts and issues during system restarts. F. Work with HHSC Enterprise IT, ESP staff to create, edit and delete user accounts and security profiles as needed. G. Work with ESP staff to ensure compliance with agency security policies. H. Work with ESP staff to address any network issues associated with UNIX environment I. Other reasonable services as necessary to ensure that the tasks listed above can be successfully performed.
Requirements	II. WORKER SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS A. Proficient with basic and advanced system administration tools and processes. B. Fundamental understanding of operating system including file system concepts. C. High level of skill with most UNIX operating system commands and utilities. D. Thorough understanding of AIX 5.2/5.3. E. Work experience performing AIX installations, upgrades and apply vendor patches. F. Ability to write and edit shell and Perl scripts. G. Ability to diagnose and address UNIX alerts and issues during system restarts. H. Experience with server performance and tuning. I. Specific experience with creation of NIM Master for AIX required. J. Experience with AIX SAN connectivity. K. Experience with Solaris 9/10 is preferred. L. Experience with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9 is preferred.

After I thought about it for a minute, I realized that the reason there is no context or story is because the person that wrote the description probably assumed that the mere existence of the job was what made it inherently worthwhile. This used to be true about most jobs and might still be true about some jobs but people, especially younger people, are demanding more out of work and their employer. The best and the brightest will not make it through the third line before they lose interest.

Still, another thought occurred to me. Imagine you are looking for a mate. You do what a lot of single people do: you use a service and post a profile. You post what you are (or at least what you think you are) and you post what you want (or again, what you think you want). Imagine the kind of results you would get if you went down the same road as the job description above and instead of focusing on the kind of person you wanted, you simple focused on what you wanted them to do:

                                   

City	Austin
State	Texas [TX]
Title	Female Companion (Adult Human)
Position Overview	The services to be provided include, but are not limited to the following: A. Perform all standard girlfriend duties. B. Attend occasional social events as a couple or in a larger group. C. Express sincere emotions on a regular basis with minimal negativity. D. Prepare, provide or suggest acceptable meals on alternating weekends. E. Initiate DTR procedures at intervals not to exceed more than once every 180 days. F. Cooperate with and promote existing friendships and family relationships. G. Maintain facades and secrets to the degree allowed by law and your religion. H. Avoid all contact with previous Female Companions, I. Other reasonable services as necessary to ensure that the tasks listed above can be successfully performed. .
Requirements	II. COMPANION SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS A. Proficient with basic and advanced beauty products, techniques and service. B. Fundamental understanding of typical male operating procedures and concepts. C. Maintain personal health remain free of all communicable disease (exceptions include: cold/flu, etc). D. Thorough understanding of modern dental hygiene. E. Ability to maintain current wardrobe and personal sense of style. F. Ability to maintain a personal domicile and all applicable utilities. G. Ability to avoid intimate contact with other male humans without supervision. H. Experience with basic sports terminology. I. Maintain personal vehicle including spare tire and auto club membership. J. Experience in gift and card selection strongly desired but not required. K. Experience coping with male inhabited apartments. L. Ability to male companion feel like "the man".

If you actually posted something like that and sincerely expected to find "good candidates" it would not be hilarious, it would be pathetic, perhaps tragic. What about the dream? what about long walks on the beach? Don't you want to know if they like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?

Are you a homebody? do you like to party or are you a health nut? People want to know these things about you and they want to know a little bit about your company and the job and why it might make a compelling human adventure.

What will it take to stop the madness?

Updates Three

First, I was very saddened to see www.Belisarius.com go dark - it looks like they are probably not coming back. A lot of obscure but very interesting articles on Col. John Boyd, Sun Tzu and modern strategy.

Second, I mentioned our Bullhorn (www.Bullhorn.com) implementation back in January. Questions about recruiting software are one of the more common topics on recruiting forums. I am sure you can find lots of in-depth information, but the bottom line is that we love it. The software is excellent, performance is between acceptable and good and the support is the best I have ever seen on any product in any industry, ever.

Third, I am using Twitter. (twitter.com/davidrees). I would call my use experimental as I am not entirely sure what the value is beyond being "more connected". I am mostly just connecting with Austin people right now with a few exceptions (like Penelope Trunk). The one thing I have noticed - the more someone posts, the less likely I am to pay attention. Short, concise, interesting - thats what works. What is the point of being limited to 140 characters if you are just going to make 12 successive posts about the same subject? Still, I press on in the name of science.

From the "Because Thats How We Have Always Done It" Department:

I was talking to a corporate recruiting Director the other day and he related a very interesting story. How many times have you taken a new job only to find out that your benefits do not start until the following month or maybe even 30 days after your first full month? It's obnoxious and I have never heard a good reason for this.

It turns out the Directors team had identified a high value candidate and made him an offer. This candidate, being of keen insight, inquired as to when benefit coverage started and as it turns out, company policy was that it begins 30 days after your first full month. If you start on April 10, then your benefits begin on June 1st. Of course you can pay $900 per month for COBRA in April and May if you absolutely must, but what a hassle.

The candidate asked a simple question: "Why?"

As it turns out, our hero, the Director, is a man that is very interested in the "why" of things. We should all be as interested in the "why" as we are in the "how". He called the HR person (I was going to say underling, but I resisted). He asked: "why do we make people wait for coverage?

The answer is that is someone were to start and then leave within a month, it creates an administrative burden and it ends up costing a few hundred extra dollars. Well it is easy to imagine the sort of person that would be intensely concerned with additional paper work and fees but if you are imagining such a person, you are not picturing the Director:

"in the last 2 years, how many times has that happened?"

"once"

The Director then called the benefits broker and asked if there was any reason they could not make the benefits start on the very first day of employment? Aside from a little extra paper work, there was no reason.

The broker went on to say that about 32% of their clients had their benefits setup to start immediately because they saw it as essential to their talent strategy. The Director had the policy changed on the spot so that all new employees would have coverage on their very first day.

The Director then called the VP and told him that he had made this policy change and the VP said he had always wondered why people had to wait.

85 minutes after the candidate had asked the question, the policy had been changed. The Director had the Sr. Recruiter call the candidate and let him know the good news. The offer was accepted on the spot.

The next time someone asks you "why", ask yourself if you really know the answer.

The Heist

There was once a knight who went to a week long tournament.

Each day during that tournament he would come in and tell the guard at the door:

“I am a famous thief and this tournament will not go unplundered”

These words disturbed the guard deeply as the event was full of valuable weapons and equipment.

Each day the guard would watch the knight carefully and meticulously search him after the games were over, but to no avail.

At the end of the competition the knight told the guard that he had plundered a vast supply of booty.

Greatly perplexed, the guard asked what booty was the knight talking about, since nothing was found on him.

The knight smiled and said: “I’ve been stealing strategies”


This is apparently a derivative work from one of the many  "Tao of" pages.

How to Sell Recruiting Services (Job Opening)

This is a strange follow up to my last entry: We have an opening for someone who wants to sell technical recruiting services in Austin. You should have experience doing this and our preference is that you actually enjoy your work (this will help you fit in with the rest of us).

We are seeking an experienced account management/sales person with technical contract staffing experience. We are looking for someone to help us build our contract and direct hire business in Austin and beyond. We have offices in Austin, Houston and Beaumont. The ideal candidate will have experience in building a contract technical staffing business.

 
Our firm is a vibrant organization that values and rewards hard work.  We offer an equity program for our most successful employees. If you or anyone you know may be interested please forward this email or a resume. Resumes can be sent to david_rees@hotmail.com

We are located in North Austin, near the Arboretum. I have not seen our firm pay relocation, but it would be worth it to move yourself (that's what I did).

How Not to Sell Recruiting Services

A corporate recruiting manager here in Austin sent me this today. Names are changed to protect the witty and the hapless.

From: **** ***** [mailto:*****.*******.**.**@[ACME RECRUITING].com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 10:32 AM
To: *Recruiting Manager*
Subject: Are you still hiring for your Senior Sales Executive opening

Hello,

Hope you are doing well!

Did you ever fill your Senior Sales Executive position?

If so, great!  Do you have other positions that we can help you fill?

If it is still open, we can help!  We have great candidates who you may want to interview.  Your company only pays a fee if you hire our candidate.

[ACME RECRUITING] recruits exceptional candidates for some of the best companies nationwide and we would be honored to recruit qualified local candidates for you as well!   

There is no charge to interview our candidates and we stand behind all of our candidates and will replace them if for any reason they do not work out.

What does it cost?  Our standard fee is 30%.  However, we would like to offer [NAME OF A DIFFERENT COMPANY] our discounted rate of only 25%. 

How do I get started? Attached is our discounted agreement.  Simply review, sign and fax it back and we will get started!  J

Any questions?  Just email me and I’ll get right back to you.

Of course, there are no fees unless you decide to hire one of our candidates.

Looking forward to working with you!

****
[ACME RECRUITING]
 

Recruiting Manager
We focus on great local candidates!
***.***.**** [West Coast phone numbers]
***.***.**** Fax

I was surprised to see that they left the name of another company in the email when they mailed it to the person that sent it to me. Corporate recruiters and HR people are flooded with these kinds of solicitations on a daily basis. You get a sense of the frustration when you read the reply but the point of posting this is not drama, but to illustrate how important it is to pay attention to details when you are trying to earn business:

****,

Thank you so much for the email. Unfortunately, for 25%, I expect a level of service not reflected in your communication.

    * First, you did not address the email to me even though you had my name. If you did not have my name, a very simple search would’ve turned it up. This shows lack of effort and initiative.
    * Second, the benefits of your service that you list are no different from standard industry practices, so I do not find them compelling reasons to select your company over your competitors.
    * Your use of platitudes through such words as “great”, “exceptional”, “best”, and “honored” reveals that either you do not understand the meaning of these words or do not apply the same value to them that I do. I can only conclude that you will use the same subjective value judgments about of the candidates you represent. I would prefer a more objective judgment with the firms I work with.
    * You addressed your discount offer to [SOME OTHER COMPANY], not my company. This shows me that you are not detail oriented and are likely to overlook important details.
    * You gave no explanation as to why the discount was offered. You asked for nothing in return for it. This tells me that you do not believe your service is worth 30%. If you do not believe it is worth 30%, why should I believe it is worth 25%?
    * Your tag line in your email signature reads, “We focus on great local candidates!” Yet, your phone number and company headquarters are not local. I can only conclude that either a) you focus on candidates local to [WEST COAST CITY]; b) you focus on candidates local to Austin, even though you are in [WEST COAST CITY]; c) this is an empty brand promise that goes to every one of your prospects around the country. Of the three options, option c seems most likely to me.
    * The attached fee agreement is pre-signed, yet it is not a locked document or a PDF, which opens you up to risk if an unscrupulous client were to change the language and print it out. This demonstrates poor risk awareness and foresight in the management of your company.

Based on this analysis, I would like to offer a counter of a 3% fee reduction for each of the bullet points above. That takes the total fee to 4%. If you and [name of CEO who pre-signed the agreement] are agreeable to this, please send an updated agreement for my signature.

Regards,

[Corporate Recruiting Manager]
Austin, Texas

I am sure not everyone will have the same reaction, but the point is that details count. They count because they show that you think and you care.

Work, Music and Books

The last 2 weeks have been some of the busiest since I started with my current agency. I filled the VP of Sales role and my candidate started today so that was excellent and to date, it was the largest billed fee at our company.

Tomorrow our company is going to the Rodeo to see Willie Nelson in concert which I am pretty excited about. Not only is he a local legend, but he is an actual music legend and word is he puts on a phenomenal show.

I am finding it very hard to read lately due to lack of time. Since December I have been listening to several audio books (www.audible.com) on my Zen V. So far, I would say that Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite both in terms of his books and his voice. I listened to "Blink" and "Tipping Point" and I am finishing up "The Art of Woo" (spun from Buckinghams "winning over others") which is not a direct counter point to Art of War, but an interesting study in persuasion.

Since I am on the topic, I highly recommend you own at least one MP3 player. I am very product agnostic so I won't go on about how good or bad the ipod is or is not. I have nothing against the ipod, but I have not been able to make myself buy one as I find I can get more storage space in a device for less money by going with other brands.

About a year ago, I bought a Sansa e260 which I generally loved save for two things: first, it did not support audible.com and second, it did not have any kind of sleep timer. I used it heavily for most of last year until it developed a problem with the jog dial. The mechanical dial is a great feature when you have a lot of music to scroll through as it is much faster and more accurate than a single speed scroll button. In early December I contacted Sansa to get an RMA on my player and I nearly waited too long to send it (mostly due to traveling back to California and then forgetting about it). Long story short, Sansa replaced my unit inside of 1 week and they replaced it with a factory sealed unit that included new headphones and accessories. Not only that, but I got their revised model that now supports audible.com and includes a sleep timer! The new model boots much faster and generally feels "snappier" - highly recommended.

The Zen V I picked up just after Christmas. It is also a 4GB player but about half the size of the Sansa. There are trade offs but I would say the two devices are both very good and I like them equally. I use the Zen V to commute and listen to books (thanks to its better book mark system) and the Sansa more for music (due to the jog dial).

How to Build a Huge Linkedin Network without Really Trying

This week my Linkedin network broke 1700 connections. That does not make me the most connected person (by a long shot) but it puts me well past the average user with 100-400 connections. Several people I know have commented on my growing network and have come to some inaccurate conclusions.

First, they think that a large Linkedin network is the sign of a hard core networking maven. I do try to stay connected within the Austin recruiter community and I do what I can to help recruiters find new opportunities but the bulk of my energies are spent focused on recruiting.

Second, they think that I spend a lot of time building my Linkedin network. The truth is - last March I has 135 connections and set a goal to get to 500 by Summer. Since reaching the 500 mark, I have not sent near as many invitations - maybe 10-20 per month at most.

A lot of people do not understand the value of building a large Linkedin network. For recruiters, the benefit is obvious - I have over 7 Million people in my network that I can access as potential clients or candidates. For people in other professions, you could be contacted by people wanting to do business, companies looking for new partnerships or old colleagues looking to reconnect. Maintaining relationships with people you have worked with in the past is one of the best ways to hear about a new and exciting opportunity that could advance your career.

One thing to keep in mind is that finding people on Linkedin and then contacting them outside of the Linkedin network is a violation of the terms of service and if someone complains, your account could be suspended.

There are two schools of thought on Linkedin. The original vision of the system was that people would use it to stay in touch with people that they knew on a personal basis. The alternative view is that connectivity is more valuable than familiarity and there is utility in connecting with everyone. If you subscribe to the former view, you will probably not find much value in the rest of this post. The latter view is called "open networking" and there is but one rule - if you call yourself an open networker, you should act like one. Open networkers make it easy for other people to invite them to their network usually by making their email address readily available.

(the rule of open networking is: if you represent yourself as an open networker in your profile, you must accept or archive every invite - never use the "I don't know this person" button. It only takes five such responses to get an account suspended)

So how do you quickly build your network? You could probably Google a better explanation, but here it is in a nutshell:

Search for people using the keyword "LION". Most of the people that turn up will have their email address visible in their profile. LION stands for "LinkedIn Open Networker". There are a lot of SEO'd imposters and wanna-be sites so follow that link for the real deal.

At this point, it is easy - grab the email addresses, paste them in the invite screen (you may need two browser screens open) and when you get six of them, send the invites. Don't worry about the first and last names - a few of the invites will fail without that info, but just move on - you want volume and quantity. Send ten invite screens and you can get up to 60 new connections. With just a little time and effort, you should be able to built your network up to 500 or so in a few weeks (or a few days for you impatient obsessives).

Take the time to go through the LION registration process - its a little inconvenient, but worth it. Next you might want to look at TopLinked and MyLink500 as getting setup on those lists and adding the right keywords to your profile will cause you to generate a lot of passive invites every day. That is the real mojo - every day I log in and accept between 4 and 25 invitations that I did not have to actively seek out. In fact, out of the 1700 people in my network, over 1000 of them were the result of other people sending me an invitation.

Bear in mind, this does not make you "networked". That is an entirely different activity. I will say that I have been surprised at the number of business opportunities that have come from people finding my Linkedin profile. Make sure your profile is up to date and accurately describes the type of contact you might be interested in. I certainly do not know each of the 1700+ people in my network, but I know quite a few and I make it a point to look at each invitation. I send a personal note to everyone who lives in Austin or who works somewhere I used to work or has some other point of interest.

Your Linkedin network is a tool. It is something like a personal search engine and everyone uses it in a different way. A significant portion of my traffic is driven by my profile and I am sure there are other interesting ways to use it.

Sales People: You Really Can't Sell "Anything"

This comes up a lot when we work on high level sales positions. Normally I like to source through my network, work for referrals (I am currently 7 referrals deep with some of these people) and sniff out people from competitors.

Well, last week we got a very urgent search directly from the CEO of a hardware company. I wrote the job description and because our time table is so constrained, I put it on a couple of job boards.

In a nutshell, we need a VP of sales who knows computer hardware and how to sell through retail channels. The job is here in Austin - you either need to live here or move here.

Despite the clear description of the product line and the type of sales and the level of the position, I have received over 100 resumes and not a single one of them has been qualified enough to present to our client. I have people selling everything from diesel engines to time shares to paper bags to bathroom fans and everything in between. I have called a few of them - partly out of courtesy and partly out of curiosity and one or two because I thought their resume might just be unclear.

The response I get is almost universal: "How hard can it be? I can sell anything!". Whether it is true or not, it is not a credible statement.

I realize this post is in danger of becoming a rant. I do think it is important for people looking for a job to understand how they present themselves. Telling a recruiter you can "sell anything" completely misses the point that it does not matter what you think - it matters what the hiring manager thinks. Hiring a truck sales person to sell your line of new fangled nano blade servers is paramount to career suicide.

When I talk to people who are qualified to do the work, they ask questions. They consider and they muse. Pretty soon, I start selling them (just a little). They resist. They are currently successful and a move is always risky - the wrong move could set their career back by years and cost them hundreds of thousands in lost income. Most of them take the graceful way out and refer someone. I walk away impressed and the search continues.

Talent War Tactics: Start Date Incentive (SDI)

A recruiting manager sent me a very interesting little nugget this morning. The following was part of an actual offer letter that went out to a project manager in October of last year (it worked, they started early):

In consideration of the value of starting earlier than anticipated, you will earn a $2,000 signing bonus payable within your first two months of employment, if you are able to start on or before 10/22/07.  This offer is not contingent upon that start date and is still valid for a start date as late as 11/5/07. This signing bonus is optional and only for consideration of an early start date.

I posted on the soon to be extinct custom of giving two weeks notice last year (ok, it was barely 3 weeks ago) but this is the first actual example I have been able to verify. The company that used this tactic was in a lot of pain and needed this person to start as soon as possible.