If you have read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know that we are consistently reading sales employment ads looking for strong formats. Unfortunately, the majority of our reading reveals poorly constructed ads. I personally believe these ads are the starting point for companies who end up criticizing online job boards.
They pay the exorbitant fee to place the lousy ad and then receive a lousy response. Their defense mechanism is simple – the online boards are an unproductive waste of resources. As I’ve stated before, if you don’t catch any fish in a lake renowned for good fishing, it doesn’t mean the lake is inferior. The first place to look is at your bait.
I give you this long lead-in due to the ad I just read. It starts out with this bullet (I edited the ad by inserting widget):
Must have at least 10 years of prior experience in selling widget-related products to OEM widget engineers and / or widget distributors
The questions that always enter my mind when I see this statement in an ad:
- Is 10 years the magic threshold for sales success in this position?
- What if the candidate has had 10 years of mediocre success in the industry?
- If a salesperson has 10 years of experience and verifiable success in this industry, why would they want to leave their current employer and potentially risk their established customer base?
I could keep going with the questions, but you get the point. The ad spirals downward from the opening bullet. There is not a single word describing the skills and talent needed for success in the role. There is an entire paragraph copied and pasted from the marketing materials that describes their company’s products. Now, they may find the right salesperson, but it won’t be because of their ad. My hunch is that they will settle for recycling mediocrity by hiring the candidate with the most experience in their industry . . . but not necessarily the candidate with the best skills and talent for their position.