Writing a job description for a job advert and identifying suitable candidates who are qualified to meet the demands of the position and who will be a good fit in the corporate culture, is one of the most important tasks faced by companies in general, especially HR departments.

To attract qualified applicants, there are several factors which should be considered. Other than the obvious need to pay a salary which is competitive enough to attract skilled candidates in the industry and sector you occupy, people who are searching for employment opportunities need to have a clear understanding of what the position entails.

This is where writing job descriptions comes in ” and it is an area which is neglected by many, to the point where companies have difficulty getting the very people they are looking to hire interested in the available vacancies.

Words are powerful tools. Writing a good job advert is far more important to a companys ability to attract interested and qualified candidates, than many of us realise. The way that a job advert is worded, can make all the difference in the number and quality of applicants you will receive.

Just as the wording of a resume can influence hiring decisions, job seekers will closely examine job descriptions to determine whether or not they are interested in the situation vacant.

When writing job descriptions, a first draft is a must. Many make the mistake of creating a rough description of the position which is far too detailed or alternately and just as damaging to the prospect of recruiting qualified job seekers, entirely too vague.

A job advert needs to convey clearly the important duties of the position without overwhelming readers with a laundry list of each and every detail. Starting with a first draft, list everything you want prospective hires to know about the position; then take a second pass through and rewrite it, whittling away those elements which are likely to be seen as irrelevant.

Remember that writing job descriptions for online adverts requires that you get across as accurate of a description of the positions as possible while exercising economy of language. The idea is to list the most important duties included in the position and to list the core competencies and necessary qualifications.

Clarity is also important. If a position reports to more than one department head, mention it in your description. Writing a job description allows you to communicate to candidates; in fact, this is your first point of contact with job seekers, an opportunity to leave a good first impression.

Some of the essential points to remember when writing a job advert are the title of the position (which will in most cases be the headline), reporting structure, duties involved, qualifications or experience needed for the role and finally the scope of the position.

Despite the repeated advice here to keep job adverts short and to the point, there is certainly a place for longer job descriptions. This is for internal use and also to provide shortlisted candidates with a more in-depth knowledge of what the role entails. Shortlisted candidates will naturally want to know more about the position and the company, to enable them to prepare for the final interview.

You should maintain both short and concise job descriptions (for use in advertising vacancies) as well as longer descriptions for internal use. A detailed, longer job description can essentially be a rewritten and polished version of your first draft, albeit formatted and rewritten to come up with a better finished product.

Tags: B2B, Business Services, careers, Consultant, Employment, Executive Search, HR Services, human resources, jobs, Outsourcing, Recruitment, Scotland, Staffing

More employers are asking “What’s Psychometric Testing, and why should we consider it?” This form of career assessment is an important element in employment strategies.

Bringing in a new employee is a risk, and always has been. Sometimes the risk is necessary – when the expansion of capability needs to happen to meet increased demand. Employers always wonder if they have the right person for the job, or if they have a compatible attitude, or are capable of learning new skills readily and easily. Psychometric Assessment can give those answers.

Test Intentions

Answering those questions about a new hire is a critical data point that may slip past resumes and interviews. The wrong hire can cost the business more than twice what they’re paying him in salary in missed sales opportunities or production failures. Psychometric testing offers ways to get the answers to these questions. While it’s not a replacement for the traditional interview and resume process, it’s a good supplement to it. They’re batteries of standardized tests that have been in use for nearly a century, with continual refinements.

What Kinds Of Tests Are There?

Everyone’s heard of the result of the most common psychometric test. It’s the IQ score, and comes from school psychologists and a lot of internet exams. The IQ exam is derived from the Stanford-Binet test, and that’s been in use for almost a century since it was first put in as part of the immigration requirements at Ellis Island. It’s been the subject of much controversy because of putative racist biases in the test. It’s not the controversy that makes it impractical, it’s the time it takes to administer (anywhere from three hours and more). However, IQ scores are one of the best overall predictors (along with ambition and willingness to work) for generalized success in business and employment.

The most commonly used psychometric test in the business world is the Wonderlic exam, and it’s fairly famous because of the weight the NFL puts on it at the NFL Player Scouting Combine in March. It has a scale from 1 to 50, and measures the ability of a testee to make inferences from sets of data. It’s also used in just about every financial organization in the US as a screening test for potential candidates, most of whom require a score of at least 24 (roughly corresponding to an IQ of 114) to get accepted. More and more staffing agencies are requiring the Wonderlic as well.

What Makes These Tests Valuable?

The primary appeal of psychometric testing, beyond the ability to weed out unsuitable candidates before hiring, is to find out which applicants can reason, draw inferences from limited data, and have mental flexibility. People with those abilities, in abstract reasoning, are strongly in demand in the modern economy, where it’s necessary to be able to reason carefully and quickly.

Other Types Of Tests

Psychometric testing can cover a wider range of personality traits and intelligence traits than just generalized intelligence and the ability to deal with abstractions. They can also be structured to measure social affinity and social intelligence – the ability to associate important details with faces and to adapt to different kinds of social pressure, determining introversion and extroversion profiles, and psychological stress responses (critical for the armed forces, fire-fighters and police work).

Another kind of test that gets used is the basic personality test; whether someone is an introvert or extrovert, whether they’re self driven or motivated by the approval of others. These personality inventories are useful for determining how a candidate will ‘fit in’ to a given team environment.

Tags: B2B, Business Services, careers, Consultant, Employment, Executive Search, HR Services, human resources, jobs, Outsourcing, Recruitment, Scotland, Staffing