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Ask a talent acquisition professional who writes their organization’s job descriptions and you won’t get a straightforward answer. When posed to the CareerXroads eXchange we heard comments such as:
- HR writes the official job description and the recruiter creates a summary that is more candidate-friendly
- HR and Hiring Managers create job descriptions together and our recruiters translate that into a job post.
- We need to do a better job at this – our job descriptions aren’t sexy.
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When posed to our Branding Colloquium we found shifts from even a year ago…
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Who (usually) writes the job descriptions that are visible to external candidates?
2018 Results
Who (usually) writes the job descriptions that are visible to external candidates?
2017 Results
This year, just over half the group said the Hiring Manager takes on the job description responsibilities. That’s an increase over what the group stated in 2017. Perhaps the more interesting increase, however, was in the “I’ll explain” option — the small group of employment brand managers who have inserted themselves into the process, most often writing some sort of an intro to the job description but sometimes even taking notes from the hiring manager and writing the entire thing.
Employment Branding wants these job descriptions to be consistent with their brand but, more than that, they want these job descriptions to do a better job selling their organization and the position itself.
[You might also like A Recruiting Utopia: How to design a recruiting process that removes all unconscious bias]
Gaps between employment branding and job descriptions
In looking at the poll results it is clear that employment branding is still fighting the good fight in an attempt to have more control over the job description. With that in mind, we asked our Branding Colloquium to do a small team exercise focused on two aspects of the issue:
- How does employment branding currently influence the writing, presentation and messaging of job descriptions?
- How SHOULD employment branding be involved?
