I read this article on Twitter. The writer is Liz Ryan, CEO and Founder of Human Workplace.
If I hire someone to work for me, it's because I have a problem. If we were more honest than we are in corporate, institutional and start-up America, we'd tell the truth about that.
The only rational reason to hire a new person is that we have an expensive problem only a human being can solve.
If we fill a job opening merely because the budget allows it, because the latest organizational shift gives us a project that has headcount attached to it or because one of our employees retired, we are doing our customers and our shareholders a disservice.
A business like any system is constantly evolving. Needs ebb and flow, but we've trained managers to crave bigger teams to supervise, so who could say how much of our work is critical and how much is made-up fluff? Who knows how much bureaucratic waste burdens investors, taxpayers and customers with unnecessary cost just because hiring managers view more headcount as the surest path to more personal and pay-grade-lifting power?
Anyway, let's assume that I'm ready to hire hire someone and that I have a real problem. Not only do I have the problem, but I know what it's costing me, too. If I didn't, how could I size the project to determine how much I can pay the new arrival? We should do these calculations every time we add a person to our teams, but we don't, because pea-brained Godzilla runs the show and tells us that when we hire someone, there's a chart in HR that'll tell us how much to pay.
If I have a business problem and I know what it's costing me, then I'm well acquainted with the obstacle in my way. That's good, because when I write a job ad I'm going to focus on describing that problem. Smart people get excited about solving thorny issues. They want to know what they're going to be hired to do -- no different than the guys in "Mission Impossible" or "Ocean's Eleven." Who gets excited about sitting at a desk and filling out forms? People get excited about exciting missions, so my job ad is going to lay the situation out.
When we write jobs full of requirements and Essential Qualifications, we're announcing to the talent community "I, hiring manager Liz, don't have the guts to tell you what's really going on in my company." That's beneath you. Only fearful weenies write job ads that try to make it seem as though a company is perfect and has no problems. Any ten-year-old could see through that ruse. Given that CFOs these days are throwing around salary nickels like manhole covers, it doesn't take a genius to see that the issue for employers is not "How can we possibly choose between all these perfectly-suited, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed candidates?" but rather "When will heaven take pity on me and deliver to me someone who can ease my pain?"
The typical job ad is a keyword-encrusted spit in the wind. When I was an HR person, I'd say to managers "We're losing at least half of these bullets, so you can choose which ones to nuke or I can." I told them "We have to get rid of half these bullets, or be without this person for an extra three months." If time really is money, that's too expensive a proposition.
