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.

If you're new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Posted By Derrick Moe | Employment Ads, Hiring Salespeople | |