Today’s companies operate in very competitive business environments. No corporate CEO would approve of a badly composed sales letter in an age when global communication travels instantly, and social networks can make mistakes in communication viral news within hours. In most markets, companies also need to compete to attract technical talent, so most employers can’t afford to make mistakes in the hiring process.
Crafting IT Job Descriptions That Attract, Not Repel
Because of the competition for IT staff, job postings should be regarded as a type of sales letter. It’s important to make sure that job descriptions attract qualified prospects and don’t contain errors that could frighten off the best people. To understand how bad job descriptions can frighten off IT talent, it might be helpful to look at an example.
Consider a recruiting email that Information Week reported on. This email was intended to get passed around by IT people to attract candidates for a job position that might become vacant soon. The problem is that the email described the current employee in the job as terminally ill and mentioned that the department needed to fill the position before he got too sick to work or died. The email also mentioned that the individual still made it into work each day and would be around to help train his replacement.
It’s not inappropriate for a company to take proactive measures to find and train an employee to fill a soon-to-be-vacant position. At the same time, many people who read the email thought that releasing this information publicly was insensitive. It reflected poorly on the way the company treated their loyal employee. A better solution could have been to mention the situation to qualified candidates during a personal interview and leave it out of a public message.
At iTech, We’re Proud of Our Recruiting Process
At iTech, we work hard to run an employee- and client-centered IT staffing company. We help our clients avoid mistakes when they need to hire all kinds of IT employees. We also get the job done in an efficient and cost-effective way. Download our free guide about hiring mistakes to avoid, and contact us for a chat about your recruiting needs.