From CareerJournal.com’s Employers Try Plain English To Improve Quality of Job Ads:
Traditional job descriptions, some recruiters say, emphasize qualifications, but skimp on describing the work, the challenges and the company culture.
This topic has been a sore spot for me for many years. I read many sales ads during the week and find many of them lacking. Crafting an effective sales is difficult and takes a fair amount of work. Many ads read like 1980’s retreads.
Some solid advice:
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.
Absolutely love that approach. Too often we see companies state in their ad that candidates must have a Bachelor’s degree. My first question is always why? How is that degree going to help in this position? For sales, I would be more concerned to find someone who is iron-clad strong when it comes to handling rejection. That trait is far more valuable than a degree.
My guess is that many of these poorly-constructed ads are hangovers from the newspaper ad days.