Why job advertising is written in cryptic text that does not mean anything?
During my nearly 30-year career, I have recruited numerous people to my own teams in large companies. And as a headhunter for clients' companies, hundreds and hundreds of different hard experts, all the way up to managers. At the same time, writing hundreds and hundreds of different job advertisements.
My hobby is also a non-fiction book author and a writer. In the last 15 years, I have written seven different non-fiction books, and the eighth one is coming, together with two really hard experts, where Tammi, one of Finland's most traditional and respected publishing houses, is the publisher.
In addition, over the past 20 years, I have written dozens and dozens of articles about working life, sales, recruiting, and management for various Finnish media, such as Kauppalehti, Talouselämä, Turku Sanomat, and the now-deceased Markkinointi & Mainonta (M&M) magazine.
At university in London, I majored in communication and minored in social psychology.
Based on these experiences, I feel that I also understand something about how to write a professional and high-quality job advertisement, something about which the reader will also understand something.
Still, you still must wonder how words, terminology, and jargon that don't really mean anything are buzzing around in job advertisements. Or what doesn't really exist.
Here are some examples:
- You get a competitive salary from us???
- And at the same time, the competitive monthly salary is not mentioned in that announcement, or that information is stretched until the very last interview. Which reveals that the "competitive salary" for a management position is €2,400 per month.
- We are looking for our next "guru" or "superhero"???
- Hate to break it to, but the last time I checked, those superheroes only appear in Marvel or DC movies. We haven't heard of supermen flying around here. Or Hulk jumping.
- We offer you a " great viewpoint"???
- Well, the only vantage points are available, for example, in air traffic control towers for air traffic controllers. You can see far from there.
- In general, job advertisements that are filled with jargon that no one understands, let alone the list of requirements for skills and experience is as long as death by starvation...
If you want to get the right candidate for the required job, and the right person, you should write open job advertisements in plain text, at the same time clearly and realistically describing what kind of person you are looking for. That way, the chances of finding the best expert improve considerably.
#hr #recruitment #headhunter #management #growth #jobs
Author Tomi Pyyhtiä is an experienced ex-commercial leader of large Finnish companies (Kesko, RAY, SOK), serial entrepreneur and non-fiction book author. He sold his previous company, Henrico, to the StaffPoint group. In 2022, it was Finland's largest digital and ICT headhunter office. In 2023, Tomi wrote, together with Alf Rehn and Tero Ojanperä, the information book "Vihaan Myyntiä!", which was published by Alma Talent. In the same year, it was one of the best-selling business books in Finland.