A Software List is Not a Job Description

Sunday January 28th • Being in the Industry Category

10 Comments

1. Simon
   January 29, 2007

   You’re welcome… ;-P (thanks to Trev, truth be known)

2. Michael Princz
   January 29, 2007

   I completely agree about the spelling and grammar up to a point:

   1. Generally, it is not the recruiter who produces the list it is HR, just take a look at a government specification online.
   2. Please give me an example of how you would advertise a role without producing a list.
   3. You’d be amazed at how many contractors are willing to go permanent.
   4. If you contract in a different state from which you own a house you are able to get 33% of the wage back in taxes so in other words if you earn $1000 a day it is actually worth $1333 to you hmmmm can you live on $1665 a week.

   I realise there are a million and one bad recruiters out there but similarly you can testify there are a number of IT professionals who have no idea what they are doing.

   Are we money sucking leeches, sometimes but I know a hell of a lot of recruiters who give a crap so this should be a balanced discussion. I realise I’ll be in the minority but hey dancing on the ropes is a weekend pastime:)

3. OJ
   January 29, 2007

   Ello Thanks for posting mate. You should have known better than to post a response to this article as a recruitment agent and make sure that your grammar and spelling is perfect. You’re really setting yourself up for an attack For the sake of the discussion, I’ll refrain from pointing out those errors! Aren’t you lucky

   In respose:

   1. Agreed. Unfortunately, I consider it the job of the agent to actually read what has been given to them, and make appropriate adjustments. Those adjustments should include spelling, grammar and technical correctness. As an I.T. recruiter, you should know just as much about the role and the industry as the people you’re working with, and should have no problems highlighting and fixing the issues with the description that has been sent to you.
   2. Perhaps I didn’t make my point 100% clear here. The issue I have is with there being a list and only a list. A job description should consist of a healthy chunk of information about what makes up the role. A list of buzzwords doesn’t cut it. I want to know about the company, I want to know what kind of people I work with. I want to know how long they’ve been doing what they’re doing. I want to know what is going to make up my day if I decide to work there. That’s the kind of information that a candidate needs. At the end of the description a list of mandatory skills and bonus skills is fine. The key point is that the list is not the core of the advertisement.
   3. Only for the right salary - which reaffirms my other point about not having the salary/rate listed on the ad.
   4. This point really only applies to a very select few contractors who are happy to do it. It’s not a selling point as far I’m concerned.

   There are a million and one bad recruiters. I know that some recruiters out there really do give a shit, and make more effort than most. Unfortunately, they don’t demonstrate their abilities and differences via their ads.

   Yes, recruiters are money sucking leeches - but that’s to be expected. I don’t hold a grudge against them because of their motives. I just wish they’d show a bit more interest in the job that they do by learning about the industry, and actually making it easy for professionals to link up with the jobs that they want rather than the job that the recruiter wants filled.

   If you know people who are keen to talk about this, then point them at the link mate! I’m keen to hear what they have to say.

4. Keef
   January 29, 2007

   I’ve never done contracting, but I know that every IT job I’ve ever had (apart from the very first one when I left uni) I got by applying to the company direct rather than through an agency.

   I was out of work for a few months in 2004, and agencies put me forward for a few places but despite having (what I thought was) good interviews and doing well in any written tests I was given, I never got the job.

   Was this because the companies didn’t want to pay recruiter fees? Was it because the CV the company saw was a poor quality faxed copy with contact details blocked out in black? I don’t know, but if I were looking for work I would rather use friendly contacts within companies than a recruitment agency.

   Back to the main point of the post - If they told you about the role and then said “Experience in A, B and C is an advantage” then that’s fine, I agree that lists of packages they use doesn’t tell the prospective employee much.

5. Keef
   January 29, 2007

   By the way - love the new look of the blog OJ!

6. Gav
   January 29, 2007

   If you’re going to harp on about checking your grammer and spelling before posting make sure you can spell ‘adjustments’ correctly. I.e. it’s not ‘adjustements’ :->

7. OJ
   January 30, 2007

   In a post that long, there was always going to be at least one mistake BTW, you made a spelling mistake too - there is no ‘e’ in ‘grammar’ and ‘ie’ doesn’t start with a capital ‘i’.

   FYI, I’m not posting a job ad on the web - this is just a blog. If I was going to be posting a job ad on the web, then I’d make sure that spelling and grammar was 100% correct before submitting.

   Right, now let’s focus on the point of the post

   @Keef: I much prefer to deal with the company direct as well, unfortunately the nature of contracting doesn’t allow that very often at all.

   You comment highlights something that I missed in my original post as well - most recruiters just don’t care! Their attention to detail is low, and all they are focusing on is getting the CV out the door and the job filled as soon as possible.

   I had an experience recently where a recruitment agent sent my CV to a potential employer. I was offered an interview, and when I got there I found that the CV they had been sent by the recruiter was over 4 years old! How’s that for attention to detail. The stupid recruiter had sent a CV they found on the system from years back instead of the one that I had sent with the initial application. Bloody idiots.

   Glad you like the new look mate

8. Michael Princz
   January 30, 2007

   This is going to be a long discussion on so many counts

   1. If recruiters had the depth of knowledge you were expecting them to have they would work in the industry as a Business Analyst potentially. Remember they recruit Developers, B.A.’s Project Managers, DBA’s the list goes on and on and on.

   2. No your argument is like Microsoft giving away their source code. When you come in for interview I will give you those details because it is my job. The questions I am asking are can you do the job? if this matches apply and we will talk. I DO disagree with the list being the only resource as utterly wrong.

   3. Money- oh boy - yes it is important an overriding non-negotiable elephant; but what someone wants with the same experiences for a wage annually or per hour are different. Moreover, the vast majority of the time it is the opportunity that drives us not the money, so a wage could deter the right candidate from applying. This has a negative for us as well because we have utter nonces applying e.g. yesterday a Senior BA position applied to by a guy who had worked in a computer shop for 3 years before going off to become a barman.

   4. Location and the tax break is a huge incentive for many contractors Australia wide - don’t dismiss it.

   Keef - I agree 100% if you know someone get the job that way - but as far as the company not wanting to pay the recruiter, was it such a good company to work for if they ignored your application based on a few thousand $’s payment, when what they were looking for you to build was worth many more hundreds of thousands of $’s.

   Back on subject the format of the advert also reflects the list format of many CV’s whilst this might be a chicken and egg scenario and referring back to point 2 it is mainly done for contracting positions where the process is - can you do blah, blah and blah if so away we go. However for a permanent role you should expect much, much more.

   Waiting on tenterhooks for your riposte.

9. Keef
   January 30, 2007

   On the subject of recruiters fees. I agree that the few thousand isn’t that much compared to the value of what a prospecitve employee may produce in their time there. However, in my experience management are often short sighted, and saving a few grand in the short term whilst ignoring what may happen a long way down the line is done far more often than it should be. Also wage/fee budgets for a project are often fixed so a few k might make all the difference.

10. OJ
    January 30, 2007

    Yes, but that’s the whole point! We’ve not really had a good lengthy discussion on here so far, so it’s good to see a few people have things to say! That’s the whole idea of the blog

    1. I disagree. I’m not saying that recruiters should have the same level of knowledge as a developer, what I am saying is that they should have a greater understanding of the I.T. business than they do. How many times have you seen ‘dot Net’ written instead of ‘.NET’. Sounds pedantic, but that’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with here. Recruitment is essentially sales, if you don’t understand who your selling to, let alone what you’re trying to sell, then you can hardly call yourself a professional in that industry. I think that the level of understanding is so poor that it’s bordering on an insult to have to deal with recruiters at all. In my time, I’ve only met one or two who actually had sufficient knowledge to be able to do a good job of recruiting. They didn’t know everything in-depth like the developers do, but they knew enough to do their job properly - that is rare. Point being: recruiters could not work in the I.T. industry unless they have sufficient experience and knowledge, which even the best recruiters don’t have.
    2. No, my argument is not like that at all. I think that’s an extremely poor analogy. I think a better one is “it’s like Microsoft trying to sell you software without first giving you access to the EULA.” Why would I even come to the interview if I didn’t know that the job would be along the lines that I’m interested in? It’s a total waste of time for both the candidate and the recruiter if there isn’t a sufficient level of understanding about the role in question. There is no excuse for not giving out enough information in the advertisement. The purpose of the ad is to make sure you get the right candidates applying. The purpose of your interview with the candidate is to make sure that they can do the job that they’re applying for.
    3. Money - don’t get on a high horse about this. Everyone on the planet is driven by income, especially when they have responsibilities above and beyond that of a single person (eg. being a Dad/Husband/etc :)). Admit it, the first question any candidate will ask is “What’s the ballpark rate/salary?”. If it’s not THE first question, it’s one of the first. I disagree since we’re talking about the work force in general. It is not the opportunity that drives most people, it’s the income. There are always exceptions to the rule (hell, I took a £90k/year pay cut to do a job I really wanted to do!), but we have to generalise. Money was, is, and always will be an important point. Hiding it from the candidate is just a bad idea. I can understand that sometimes there are clients who want someone but don’t have an idea about the market rate for the right person and hence put “$NEG” in the salary/rate field. What I don’t understand is that the recruitment agent doesn’t fill that gap for them. That’s their job! They should know the industry and the market. How the hell is a candidate supposed to know if it’s in their range if neither salary nor a decent job spec is given? It’s bloody stupid. At least one, preferrably both, should be specified to give the candidate an idea of the level of the job that the advertisement is for. I do agree that the wage can deter the right candidate from applying, but I think not having the wage is a bigger deterrant as it generally means “underpaid” (ok, I’m bullshitting a bit there). If they don’t want to deter people, then a salary range should be given. This would at least give the candidate a ballpark figure. The example you give is an exception to the rule, and I can’t see how specifying a salary would have put that person off if they had the nerve to apply without having experience. That kind of person is not deterred by a wage figure (unless it’s way too small).
    4. I don’t dismiss anything at all when I consider a job, that includes location. That is the reason I get annoyed with an ad that specifies ‘Brisbane’ as the location when in fact the real location is ‘Goulbourn’ It’s a marketing tactic that I can’t stand as it’s dishonest. I liken those ads to spam! As a final point on this issue, I think that most people who are open to moving already have an incling to browse through jobs in other locations anyway, so there’s still no real need to do it.

    I don’t think that companies avoid recruiters because of the cost. I think it comes down more to value for money, and for the most part, recruiters are not good value for money (at least in my experience). It’s also about the job - how many recruiters do you know that just throw CV after CV at a client in the hope that they’ll just pick SOMEONE quickly and the job can be filled? Almost all of them are like that, and that’s why some companies avoid them. In this scenario the recruiter is essentially getting thousands of dollars to post an ad on Seek when the company could just do it themselves. Considering most recruiters don’t even do a screening interview (and those that do don’t have a clue how to tell if a person is right or not because they don’t know the industry well enough), the excercise is pointless. The net result is that the recruiter becomes an unnecessary link in the chain.

    On your final point regarding CV format, I think you have this the wrong way round as well. I do not feel that the advert reflects the format of many CVs. I feel that the CVs are structured in a way such that the recruiter gets the information they want as quick as possible. As we both know, you helped me restructure my CV not too long ago. That CV was a huge hit with recruiters because it made their job easier. It had nothing to do with the actual content of the CV, it was more to do with the ease at which the recruiter had access to the information they feel they need. In not so many words, the CV is structured in a way which allows the recruiter to easily match skills with the job specification - not the other way round. It’s not chicken and egg at all. The job specs suck, and the CVs are structure to make it easy for recruiters to match skills against the spec. If it wasn’t done this way, then most recruiters would fail to match the CV with the job specification due to the lack of knowledge of the industry itself. If a CV doesn’t have a million buzzwords on the front page that match the job spec, then the CV is useless.

    If you send your CV to a software development business without going through a recruiter, you’d get a different response. Companies tend to examine the CVs a lot more than the recruiters do (when there’s no recruiter involved). That, again, is based on my experience.

    I’m enjoying this discussion I look forward to seeing your response.

    PS. I couldn’t be bothered proof-reading this and making sure there’s no spelling or grammar mistakes in it. So if there’s one or two in there, you can bite me coz I’m not fixing them