Me: Hope you\u2019ve had a discussion with Ms.ABC (our HR) regarding the Roles and Responsibilities. If there are questions on it I can answer them, or we can get into the agenda.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Candidate: Yes I had a discussion with Ms. ABC. But, quite frankly it was your boilerplate JD. I\u2019d actually want to understand what exactly I\u2019d be doing. What will I be in charge of? What will I move?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Needless to say, I spent the next ~30 minutes walking through the current team structure, where he\u2019d come in, what will he own, what the growth trajectory looks like etc. Ultimately, we did 2 more calls before both of us were satisfied that there are mutual synergies and went ahead. It made me reevaluate all of our Job Descriptions over the weekend and rewrote almost half of them to include factual details on projects, outcomes expected, tools available, glimpse of growth among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After this, I asked the HR to send this \u201crevised\u201d JD to the candidates once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the result was visible from Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either candidates that the HR thought super suited started dropping voluntarily from the process or candidates started expressing interest, doing more research on our stack, infra, product proposition and competitor benchmarking, before the call. Some even did a cold reach-out on Linkedin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I wanted to share the small titbit here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most Job descriptions barely resemble \u201cspecifications<\/em>\u201d at all, but feel more like generic stubs. Sort of like the equivalent of shopping for a car with as much details as \u201cred and goes fast\u201d or \u201cblack and built to last.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0It leaves too much open to the imagination for it to be a successful criterion to enable fitment. With criteria as broad as this you\u2019ll end up spending an inordinate amount of time executing the search, since so many things appear to be a match. For me, Red and goes fast is always a 1971 Ford Mustang<\/a>, for you it could be a 1998 Ferrari 365<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is that statements like the above \u2014 or its equivalent in engineering hiring \u2014 \u201cGet me a backed dev with OOPS in Python\/Java\/Go with 5 years experience\u201d \u2014 guarantee a similarly frustrating shopping experience. You\u2019ve made it needlessly difficult for yourself and your HR\/TA team to identify the specific talent you want. In this trite example you\u2019ve indicated that you\u2019re looking for a mid-level engineer that knows OOPS, but that basically includes everyone that ever graduated with a CS degree in the past 5 (to 10?) years. Surprisingly, many job \u201cspecifications\u201d we see contain rarely any more info. These are the \u201cBoiler Plate\u201d Job Descriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I understand why hiring managers do this. Sometimes they\u2019re not exactly sure what they want \u2014 after all, it takes real time and effort to work out the specific vision for the role. But instead of acknowledging this and then solving the real problem (their own laziness), they delegate the JD writing to their Team\/HR and it turns into generic tech JD. But the hiring manager is unfazed \u2014 \u201cI\u2019ll know the right candidate when I see them,\u201d they say. Really? It could be true in some instances. Sometimes, we start with a Backend developer, then we come across a candidate with experience in building a full pipeline or a payment system. Then we expand the role to cover wider scope and evaluate against it. But generally, How will they know the right candidate if they can\u2019t write down specifically what the candidate looks like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another reason for generic job specs is because a hiring manager is recruiting in a talent-constrained market (sound familiar?), and it feels like a smart move to cast as wide of a net as possible. Theoretically, one should be able to get more candidates into the top of the funnel this way, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps. Theoretically. But in my experience, this approach usually, and utterly, backfires. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy General Descriptions Don\u2019t work?<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.10.118.248\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/bright_red_1971_mustang_mach_1.png\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.10.118.248\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/1971-Ferrari-365-GTB4-Daytona-20-1024x644.jpeg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.10.118.248\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Dodge_Ram1998-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.10.118.248\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Jeep_cherokee_1998-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>How did we find ourselves in this mess?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Boiler Plate Job Descriptionsaren\u2019t designed to appeal to any engineer in particular<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/7tP-urXknbHTGdjzRbUZTOLn6mLo8bmEFeQENeyVtFpd_BqHafa6vfXcBQUgJikUD3Gss4jfw4lcKE-28b29I8I4Z5eUsUbhETt0k50kolodMARCxNACY9rxdd0eeptk8XwPoSMMWStRwoAtG6rVMgg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.10.118.248\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/JD_Cloud_Arch.png\")