What’s In It For Them?💼

And how quickly can you communicate that?

What’s In It For Them? 💼

This is Part 2 of a series on Job Descriptions (you can read Part 1 here).

My aim this week is to get you to do two things:

• Write short job descriptions, and

• Lead your job descriptions with a direct appeal to the applicant’s interest

Why? Because, as we will see, brevity and “here’s what’s in it for you” sell. You’ll need both to attract the best candidates in a hot job market.

Let’s Play Guess the Length of the Job Description

Here is a random list of jobs. See if you can put them in order of word count from shortest to longest (answer at the bottom).¹

• Senior Analyst, Strategic Growth at Disney

• Nurse at CVS

• Line Cook at Applebees

• Investment Banking Mergers and Acquisitions at JP Morgan

• Account Executive, Retail at Google

• Community Manager at Open Sea

• Dominos Delivery Driver

There aren’t too many surprises in these, but I do have a few comments:

• One of the common criticisms I get about Lying to Ourselves is that it’s too long. Fun fact: the JP Morgan job description is roughly 100 words longer than my longest post.²

• Props to Dominos for the shortest JD. Additionally, all but one of their requirements is a binary yes/no or has a metric assigned to it. Either you’re qualified, or you’re not to deliver pizzas. Kudos to them for being upfront about it.

• Way to put the sign-on bonus in the job title CVS.

• Only CVS and Dominios lead with the “here’s what’s in it for you” pitch. The rest start by talking about themselves and introducing the company or team. Hilariously on-brand for a lower-level investment banker gig, JP Morgan doesn’t even bother with a pitch; they lead with “Duties.”

• A bit over 400 is the sweet spot for most of these companies.

A lesson in brevity from Apple

Do you know how many words Apple, a company with one of the best marketing functions on the planet, uses to describe the iPhone 13 Pro? Three. Three words.³ Here’s the screengrab. See for yourself.

Source: Apple

Does Apple’s site copy effectively capture all the context and nuance of the tech behind the iPhone 13 Pro? No. How about diving into a multi-sentence description of the company’s history? Also no. Do the people who visit Apple.com care? Probably not. If you have enough awareness to see Apple.com, you’re likely to have lots of context on the company and its products. 

And, when you think about it, is that so different from the job seekers going to Applebees, Open Sea, or JP Morgan? What about job seekers who don’t have specific company awareness but stumble across a job post? I’d argue that no, they aren’t that different at all.

It is in your best interest to be brief, direct, and talk about solving a potential candidate’s problem in a competitive talent market. The ideal job description should read like marketing copy, not a cut and paste of your competitor's job description.

Job Descriptions as Marketing Copy

I realize that job descriptions aren’t marketing copy, but in the most competitive talent market in decades, maybe they should be? The best marketers are brief, but what else can we learn from them?

Read this tweet.

Alex Garcia 🔍 @alexgarcia_atx

Bad Marketing Copy: - This is what I do - This is what it does - This is why it's cool Good Marketing Copy: - This is what you're facing - This is how I can help you solve that - This is what differentiates me - This is why this product is right for you - This is my promise

If you replaced the word “product” with “job” and applied those principles, wouldn’t you dramatically improve your job descriptions?

Further, if you can’t articulate how you can help candidates solve their problems, what differentiates you as an employer, or who is right for your open positions, do you think most candidates will figure it out? I’m doubtful they would.

What’s Next

Next week, we’ll examine how and why two similar companies write very different job descriptions. Until then, thank you for reading, and please send me any good (or bad) JDs you come across.

1

1. Investment Banking Mergers and Acquisitions at JP Morgan - 953 words

2. Nurse at CVS - 691 words

3. Line Cook at Applebees 454 words

4. Community Manager at Open Sea - 436 words

5. Senior Analyst, Strategic Growth at Disney - 432 words

6. Account Executive, Retail at Google 386 words 

7. Dominos Delivery Driver - 290 words

2. The bulk of the J.P. Morgan description is a list of topics covered in an upper-level finance class with no indication that you have to know those subjects well (just that you have “experience” with them).

3. And yes, there are more words on the site. But the primary message is three and the supporting copy is roughly twenty words (or 1/20th the length of your typical JD).