What are you looking for?

Before you take issue with this article, I’m owning up to being curmudgeonly about job ad jargon.

How many times have you read….

• an exciting opportunity for a driven and high-performing professional to contribute their expertise
• passionate
• a champion
• the ability to form effective working relationships with people at all levels
• an interesting, fast-paced and challenging workplace
• professional and supportive team
• focus on learning, new experiences and professional development

Exciting by whose definition?

How do you measure passionate?

What do you mean by fast-paced and challenging workplace?

Oh so dreary and jargon-filled.

Two organisations that do it much better

Here are two examples of organisations whose job ads hit the mark in my book.

The first is for the mSupply Foundation on Do Good Jobs – NZ's #1 ethical jobs board

Hello!
Well, before we launch in with what a great role this is, even more important is that you care about what we’re doing. We’re making software for use in about 30 countries that manages the health supply chains for about 100 million people. We’re rebuilding from the ground up, and this time we want you to help us make it soooo nice to use, and beautiful to boot.

Skills
All the technical stuff, of course.
We work with people for whom English isn’t their first language. You’ll need to be empathetic, and also able to consider interfaces that work well in other languages. (No RTL at the moment though!)
You’ll have to be organised and very good at communicating in English both verbally and in writing.
Our guess is that to do the job well you’ll need some experience, but if you don’t have a whole lot, we’ll still consider your application seriously.
Our own websites need some TLC. If you’re good at that, that’s a bonus. If you are comfortable with writing CSS yourself, then great.

Our team
We have the best team. They are amazing. You’ll love them. That is, you’ll get lots of friendly support and have fun working with them. We do need to warn you about the worst puns ever that are made by our People manager. You’ll be shocked. We’re sorry.
We’re all doing this out of a sense of purpose. We want to make the world a better place, so you need to share that with us, else you’ll be a fish out of water.

What are we making?

• Software for managing health supply chains. Currently it’s a desktop app, but more likely to pop out of the redesign as a web app / desktop hybrid. It’s big, sprawling, complicated. It needs taming!
• Software for managing all interactions between the countries we work in and their suppliers. This will have different kinds of log-ons, depending on the role.
• If you search for “mSupply mobile” you’ll find our current mobile app. It needs some work.
• Software for the registration of medical products. It allows applicants to submit an application, and government staff to evaluate it.

Boring Background stuff
We’re called The mSupply Foundation. The Foundation has multi-year funding agreements to produce Open Source software that transforms how medicines are supplied around the world. It’s 40-ish hours a week, and you need to be able to get to our office on K’ Rd, Auckland, New Zealand. We don’t work long hours except in the odd exceptional circumstance.

The contract
We have enough funding for 18 months of work, so we’re offering that long as a contract, but TBH, we can hardly keep up, so there’s every possibility that there will be more work available after that. We’ll work out a fair pay rate with you.

How to Apply
Send an email to jobs@sussol.net which includes all the usual stuff, but that also answers these questions:

• Tell us how you see the world, society, and people. (As long or short as you like)
• You have $100,000 to spend on improving the world. How would you spend it
• Tell us a story of some experience you’ve had that helps to show how you have the above skill(s).
• Hit us with a poem. Write one or find one you like.

As long as you answer the questions, we’ll reply to you to acknowledge receipt, and then we’ll let you know whether we decide to ask you to come in for a test and an interview or not. We know that applying for jobs is a PITA. We’ll try to not waste your time. Thanks for getting this far. We know it’s a lot.

That just sings to me. I get a real flavour of the organisation, what they do and what they’d want me to do. Note the lack of jargon.

And here’s a killer intro from StopPress:

Hey, who wants to run StopPress?

By STOPPRESS TEAM  August 14, 2020

StopPress is a fantastic beast. A true voyager in the seas of the marcomms industry. But now, this ship needs a new captain.

That’s right folks, our current editor is off, and to replace her we need a candidate with minimum 40 +years experience, 3 PHD’s, who is also a telepathic millionaire and can read the minds of clients.

But in reality;

We’re casting our net to find a new Senior Digital Content Producer to champion the editorial vision and team. The role requires exceptional writing ability; the ability to make sound editorial decisions; confidence to engage with marcomms industry leaders; attention to detail; and commercial thinking to optimise revenue performance.

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate the experience and aptitude to deliver so most likely you will have had at least 3-5 years experience crafting quality content that is proven to deliver both engagement and commercial success.  

Accountabilities or responsibilities:

• Source and write newsworthy stories daily, and ensure they are in a clean state ready for publishing online
• Build relationships with industry representatives: This includes regular face-to-face meetings with the aim of sourcing and producing exclusive interviews and content
• Take responsibility of the generation of ideas from your own research to create original and engaging stories.
• Formatting of content using the StopPress CMS, producing weekly newsletters and posting content to social media pages.
• Work within a team to construct a cohesive editorial plan for each quarter.
• Create commercial content in support of the Advertising/Commercial Manager including copy writing, sourcing photography and liaising with clients for approval.
• Sub-editing of all content or commissioning where applicable.
• Assist with content creation, curation and production across sister titles/platforms.

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience:

• Formal journalistic qualification or journalism experience.
• Strong writing and editing skills.
• Proven track record in creating commercially sound projects.
• Digital and social media experience.
• Open to collaboration and teamwork.
• Knowledge of and love for the marcomms industry will be a big plus.

Personal Attributes:

• Most importantly, a keen interest in current affairs and the happenings of the advertising, media and marketing industry.
• Hard working and deadline focused.
• Able to turn copy around quickly and cleanly.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Commercial thinker with good customer service skills.
• Interested in and committed to the concept of “commercial content” and how that drives both audience engagement and commercial outcomes.
• Strong communicator.
• Sense of humour.

Send written applications to: david.nothling@icg.co.nz

Think about that intro

StopPress is a fantastic beast. A true voyager in the seas of the marcomms industry. But now, this ship needs a new captain.

That’s right folks, our current editor is off, and to replace her we need a candidate with minimum 40 +years experience, 3 PHD’s, who is also a telepathic millionaire and can read the minds of clients.

That tells me so much about the organisation I’d be working for, so I kept reading. A few bits of jargon and I wanted to edit out all those awful capitals, but that’s just me.

The rest of the ad describes what they want the applicant to actually do between 9am and 5pm. I may yet apply.