I am woefully unemployed. Outside of the time spent at my (unpaid) internship, a good chunk of my time is spent applying to jobs and grumbling at the job crunch the new graduates like me find themselves in. Jobs that we would normally be taking now require three years of experience. Jobs that we normally don’t consider taking such as retail but would take because of desperation now see us as overqualified just because of a piece of paper declaring approximately four years of college and plenty of knowledge.
When I’m not grumbling at the job crunch, I’m complaining about poorly written job descriptions. Yes, an introduction to your company is nice, especially if you don’t want to look like a scammer. To be honest, after reading so many job descriptions of jobs that sound even vaguely interesting, most of them have the same basic template.
“We’re a growing company who seeks an A and B employee for position X. This person will play a very important role in our team by doing $FOO, $BAR, and $MOO.
Job description:
*Stuff
*More stuff
*Even more stuff for many more bullets, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, the writer will go on about the job description for an entire very dense paragraph, making it sound like you’re going to solve all the company’s problems just by reading that company’s poorly written paragraph and applying for that job. I don’t know about you, but if the writer can’t make the job sound attractive by making the job description readable, I’m not inclined to apply, no matter how amazing the job is.
Qualifications or experience or requirements:
*This degree is required, but this more advanced one is highly preferred.
*Experience in some program
*Experience doing the exact same thing
*Ability to do Y and Z simultaneously
*Something else you’ve never heard of
Please send your cover letter and résumé to ineedajob@wonthireyouanyway.com. On second thought, make sure the cover letter and résumé are in one document in Word or PDF format and attached to your email. Or just apply on our website since we’ll just send you there anyway when you email or call us. Sure, you’ll have to hop through Taleo and Kenexa and Brassring and those other job application sites from the ninth circle, and we won’t see your résumé as a representation of the unique person you are, but you feel like you’re applying for a job.
Right?”
So what’s to be learned from this? Employers, break the template. No one wants to read what is essentially the same thing over and over again, especially if you don’t have enough pride in your company to proofread it. I’ve encountered job descriptions with typos, and even though I wasn’t qualified, I wanted to apply just to write a cover letter pointing out the typo. Something tells me that kind of brutal honesty in my eye for detail wouldn’t go over very well.
However, if you know anyone who needs an all-around savvy person in Atlanta, please let me know. The new contact page is there for a reason.