How to consume a job advert, pt 1
Why adverts are the way they are
Happy New Year!
We’re coming into a natural time of year where new roles get signed off, and many will be advertised.
Typically this starts in the second working week of January, given the first is written off by many employers with catch-up work, admin and firefighting. Though the more senior a role is, the later these seem to get started.
This chapter of Jobseeker Basics is about job adverts, what they are and aren’t, how you might consume them, how they might inform your decisions and your responses.
Bear with me - there’s a lot of information that relates to how you should consider an advert.
So I’m starting off with this background on adverts, with a couple of tips which may reframe how you look at them.
Next week’s will be on how you can respond to an advert with improved odds.
What’s a job advert?
I say consume, rather than read because a job advert isn’t just what you see on a job board.
A job advert is the first step in a multichannel commercial approach to filling a vacancy.
It’s the first step, because it’s the first thing you experience of that vacancy, irrespective of whether it’s a:
Listing on a job board
A post on social media
A DM from a recruiter
A phone call from a hiring process
A referral
Or any other means by which you become aware of a vacancy.
Each of these is a marketing or sales channel that may result in a candidate's application.
However, employers don’t necessarily see it this way, because of the transactional nature of much recruitment process.
They, like you (probably), think it’s a posting stuck up on LinkedIn.
The reason to define an advert in this way is because the strategy for promoting a vacancy mirrors your strategy for promoting yourself.
And because employers forget that when you experience such an advert, you first make the choice to entertain that advert, rather than a yes/no to ‘Should I apply?’
Indeed, much advertising neglects the psychology of a job move, which principally relates to problem awareness.
How you experience an advert, what may encourage you to progress an enquiry, and what you are prepared to put up with in the process, relate to your situation and the problems you currently face.
Are you out of work, needing any job to pay the bills?
Are you in work, desperate to escape a toxic culture?
Are you gainfully employed, but wouldn’t mind a bit more flexibility to pick the children up from school?
Are you apparently smashing it, yet are missing something you don’t even know about, that just the right vacancy might improve your lot with?
And everything in between.
The answer to these questions informs your experience of any advert.
But because most employers don’t consider what informs an experience, and because many think people would be lucky to work there, it’s rare that more than the minimum skill will be applied to an advert.
Indeed the onus is on more, rather than better, because it’s often thought that ‘if we can just reach more candidates, we might fill the job’.
This means that the system of advertising is geared towards maximising the number of applicants.
Not appealing to the right people for the right reasons.
And so we are in a market where an advert attracts hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, most of whom are wholly unsuitable.
What isn’t a job advert?
For the purposes of this article, a job advert isn’t a fake job, although many of these are advertised.
Read this article, if you’d like to learn about why many vacancies don’t actually exist: Fake jobs.
Another thing an advert isn’t is a Job Description.
A Job Description is a formal document that lists the responsibilities a vacancy entails.
Often it will include a specification for what’s required from a candidate (sometimes this is a separate document).
Often it will include other items like dimension, company information, team structure, compensation & benefits.
In the UK it’s a form of promise and ties into employment contracts. You are obliged to fulfil a job description, and if you don’t this may relate to how your performance is perceived, with further ramifications.
Of course, job descriptions are often generic, outdated or misrepresentative.
But their purpose relates to employment, not attraction.
Think of it as the ingredients of a meal, with how it’s presented as the advert. Both key pieces of your experience, with different purposes.
The fact that most adverts are based on job descriptions, especially those which are generic, outdated or mispresentative - this is relates to a misunderstanding of what candidate attraction should be.
Why this background matters
A lack of awareness and skill, combined with an ecosystem that has evolved around transactional speed and volume, is why most adverts are the way they are.
Irrespective of the intent of an employer.
Indeed, while you may spend much time perusing job boards, and talking with fellow job seekers, reading their posts on LinkedIn - I’d expect most employers have little awareness outside of their own sphere of what happens in the job seeker community.
They’ll advertise how they advertise, instruct agencies how they instruct agencies and run their process how they run their process.
I wonder how many great employers use Workday as an ATS, fill their jobs suitably, and have no knowledge of how Workday is viewed by job seekers who have dozens of Workday accounts, one per application?
Conversely, terrible employers might do the same.
“They know not what they do”.
One of the services I offer is to write or audit job adverts for employers, and I provide one free review as a way of starting good conversations:
A little while back, I had a detailed conversation with a Talent Acquisition Manager of a local technology consultancy. I can say that they are a jewel in the crown of technology development in the UK, have top 1% compensation, offer great career development, and are a fantastic place to work.
I know this because I have spoken to many people who have worked there, and all speak highly of them.
Yet the advert we reviewed had a number of systemic issues:
£Competitive salary
Generic company first text
Confusion around job titles
All of these might be discussed as red flags if you’ve ever had a bad experience with such.
If you were an ideal candidate who decided not to apply because of these red flags, you’d have missed out.
Employers in the main aren’t aware of candidate resentment and its consequences.
And even if their hiring process has issues, they may hide an excellent job.
So if you experience a bad advert, and you need a job, try not to dismiss them out of hand.
Instead, a healthy balance is to reciprocate their level of care.
Treat transactional experiences transactionally (fire and forget); put your efforts into the ones that show you why you are an excellent candidate.
If you see a generic job posting, or receive a generic outreach, reply, then hear nothing - simply follow up and move on. It’s the nature of the beast.
Consider red flags as points for exploration, rather than something that makes your decision for you. In case these are just careless rote statements, and not representative of the employer.
That’s the end of part 1. Next week’s will look at how adverts are put together, and how you might put an improved application forward.
Thanks for reading.
Greg
Great article and background insight! It's interesting hearing you talk about how employers don't know about the jobseekers experience.
Having worked on implementations of recruitment systems in the past I know HR departments most certainly are well-intended.
How much actual research do you think they do to confirm what they think is a good experience?
Such a shame and a missed opportunity. Costly too, if you consider the re-recruitment costs when candidates bow out of the process or leave disappointed.