The job posting. The press release. The “team/bios” page of your website.

What do these things have in common? They’re all false conversation starters - companies offering up some information to reel customers in, then clamming up when customers want to respond or dig deeper.

Very web 1.0 - heck, very pre-web:

• Highly structured: constrained formats, language, and/or length limit creativity. (Customer: “Read one, you’ve read them all.”)
• Suspiciously positive: only successes are socially acceptable in these formats (Customer: “Hmm.. what aren’t they telling me?”)
• Emphasizing the uneven relationship: you only know what we want to tell you (Customer: “I guess they don’t value my input…”)
• Infrequent and static: you only get information when we have enough to it to publish, and then it never changes (Customer: “Is this still relevant?”)

It’s time to give them a social makeover.

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If you are just looking for warm bodies to collect a paycheck, by all means, use that generic job description.

An acquaintance of mine is starting a new job board for software product managers and marketers. Her angle? Submit a job posting and you’ll get feedback on how to make it more compelling. I love it.

Take your average rockstar candidate (as though there were such a thing!) - if a recruiter calls them up with an opportunity, what is their first question going to be?

Why should I work here?

Can you answer that?

Look at your company through the eyes of a job applicant:

• Google your company to see what the first impressions are
• Visit your company website - is it attractive and up-to-date?
• Visit the “careers” section of your company website - does it answer the important “Why should I work here?” question?
• Search job boards to find other companies who are advertising for the same position. Print out their job descriptions and put them side by side with yours. Is yours more interesting? Easier to skim? Does it direct the job applicant to where they can find out more about you?

Most hiring managers won’t have any control over the content of the company homepage - that’s why the job description is so vitally important.

When I was hiring for an interaction designer, I thought to myself, Why would a great designer want to work here versus somewhere else? I jotted down what I loved about our culture, skimmed through the Interaction Designers mailing list I’m on and read designers’ frustrations, and I read through my folder of “happy emails”. (I strongly recommend all product managers and designers have a mail folder where you keep all the positive feedback from your users - some days you’ll need it.)

I wrote a “Why work here” section with 4 bullet points. Then I sent it to some co-workers and asked for their feedback and tweaked it a bit. I sent it to HR to make sure it was kosher, then added it to the rest of the qualifications/overview section. I emailed the whole thing to myself, to see how long it was in an email window, and then trimmed it a bit as a result.

In total, it probably took me an extra four hours of active time versus just going with the generic description. I consider that a non-trivial amount of time. It also landed me with a terrific candidate within a week, one who chose us over several competing offers. Time well spent!