Author: Jon Beck

In today’s competitive job market, attracting and hiring top talent can be a daunting task for employers. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), it becomes even more crucial to craft unique and thoughtful job descriptions that capture the attention of both human candidates and automated systems. Gone are the days of generic, one-size-fits-all job postings. Done right, you set yourself up for growth. Done wrong, and you may be up hiring the wrong people, paying unfairly, and spending thousands of dollars retraining and re-hiring.   

Prior to the arrival of ChatGPT estimates showed that the average job description was the result of on average 17x cut and pasted prior versions lifted off the internet or shared by a colleague.  This copycat behavior will only get worse with rise of AI generated job descriptions.   If everyone is using ChatGPT to write a job description for example, a .NET developer, how is your company’s job posting going to stand out amongst the dozens if not hundreds of similar job postings?   If your job descriptions uniquely capture your company the opportunity, the “tone” of your business and is constructed properly, candidates will notice the level of detail and thought about the job and your company versus your competitors.  

Some important considerations to consider while writing your job descriptions.  

Reflecting Company Culture: 

A well-crafted job description serves as a window into a company’s culture, values, and overall brand identity. It should go beyond a mere list of requirements and responsibilities and instead reflect the unique attributes that make an organization special, your origins and history, culture, community involvement and diversity initiatives with published quantifiable results. With AI playing a growing role in recruitment processes, candidates are often inundated with impersonal job descriptions that fail to capture the essence of a company. By investing time and effort into creating thoughtful and personalized descriptions, companies can stand out from the crowd and attract individuals who align with their core values. 

Attracting Diverse Talent: 

Diversity and inclusion have rightfully become top priorities for companies worldwide. However, traditional job descriptions have often unintentionally perpetuated bias by using generic language that appeals to a limited pool of candidates. AI-powered hiring systems can inadvertently perpetuate this bias if fed with biased job descriptions. Do you even know the origin of the content generated from the AI engine?  Employers must consciously strive to craft inclusive descriptions that appeal to a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. By utilizing thoughtful language, emphasizing inclusion, and avoiding gendered or biased terms, companies can cast a wider net and tap into a more diverse talent pool. 

Optimizing for AI Screening: 

As AI plays an increasingly prominent role in candidate screening, it’s essential to optimize job descriptions to enhance compatibility with automated systems. AI algorithms analyze various factors to match job descriptions with applicant resumes. By using targeted keywords, relevant industry terminology, and specific qualifications, organizations can increase their chances of being matched with the right candidates. However, caution should be exercised to strike a balance between tailoring descriptions for AI and maintaining an authentic and human touch. Never, ever forget, humans buy from humans.  

Showcasing Opportunities for Growth: 

Job seekers, particularly those who are motivated and ambitious, seek growth opportunities in their careers. A unique job description should not only outline the responsibilities and qualifications but also highlight the potential for professional development and advancement within the organization. You want to attract candidates that are looking for a career not just a job.  Emphasizing training programs, mentorship opportunities, or a clear career path can attract candidates who are eager to learn and progress. By demonstrating a commitment to employee growth, companies can attract top talent who seek long-term opportunities and can contribute significantly to their success. 

Enhancing Candidate Experience: 

Crafting unique and thoughtful job descriptions goes beyond attracting candidates; it also impacts their overall experience with the hiring process. A well-written description sets clear expectations, provides relevant information, and engages candidates. By presenting a comprehensive and appealing overview of the role and the company, employers can create a positive impression from the initial stages, fostering enthusiasm and encouraging candidates to invest in the application process. This can result in a higher-quality applicant pool and a more efficient and effective recruitment process.

Adhering to pay transparency and avoiding legal exposure:

Job descriptions can defend the reasoning behind why a position is exempt or non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). By outlining a job’s requirements and defining performance standards, the job description will help to justify your employment decisions and reduce your organization’s exposure to costly litigation.  A job hierarchy is the foundation of your pay structure. By listing out the duties and requirements for a specific role in your job description, you explain why a position is compensated in a particular way. You can also easily compare roles in various pay markets to price competitively to help attract top talent. 

With the spate of recent full time employee layoffs in the technology sector, many candidates are now starting to entertain contract opportunities given that fewer full time or “permanent”, (is any job permanent in this market?), roles are available. Despite the contingent labor market representing over $200B in spend last year, our sales and recruiting teams frequently engage with hiring managers and job seekers who are not familiar with the contingent or contract model.

For those job seekers weighing their options or choices, assuming you are lucky enough to have a choice, we thought it would be helpful to outline the pros and cons of each engagement model. There is no better or worse here, just different.

Full-time Employment:

Pros:

• Benefits: Employers often provide benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off to their full-time employees. However, established contingent staffing firms, like Ursus, do over comparable healthcare insurance and retirement benefits.
• Job Security (maybe see recent headlines): Full-time employees traditionally have held job security as they are less likely to be laid off or lose their jobs unless the company undergoes significant changes or restructuring.
• Opportunities for growth: Full-time employees have more opportunities for growth and development within the company, including promotions, training, and learning opportunities.

Cons:

• Lack of Flexibility: Full-time employees have less flexibility in their work schedules and are required to work set hours.
• Limited autonomy: Full-time employees may have limited autonomy and control over their work, as they are often required to follow the company’s policies and procedures.
• Limited earning potential: Full-time employees are limited to their salary and may not have the opportunity to earn more unless they receive a promotion or raise which can often take years via promotion cycles.

Contract Work:

Pros:

• Flexibility: Contract workers have more flexibility in their work schedules and can often work remotely. Many contractors work for a one or two years, then take longer stretches of time off, that may not be acceptable as a full-time employee.
• Higher Earning Potential: Contract workers can charge higher rates for their services and have the opportunity to earn more money. This is especially true of highly skilled workers that complete projects at a faster cadence than may even be available to a full-time employee who is limited by the organizational structure of their employer.
• Autonomy: Contract workers have more autonomy and control over their work, including time off, location and choosing what projects and companies they want to work and for how long.
• Variety: Contract work provides the opportunity to work on different projects for different companies, which can be more interesting and challenging. Engineers and designers are typically drawn to working on the latest and greatest, coolest stuff!

Cons:

• Cost of Benefits: Some contract workers pay for their own healthcare insurance out of pocket to ensure continuity as they move from project to project. However, established contingent staffing firms, like Ursus, do over comparable healthcare insurance and retirement benefits.
• Project Length Uncertainty: Contingent labor is just that, contingent. Many companies leverage contingent workers to take advantage of the flexibility of scaling headcount up or down quickly without incurring severance or payouts to full-time employees. But again, is any job permanent, safe or guaranteed in this market?
• Fewer Growth Opportunities: Contract workers may have limited opportunities for growth and development within a specific company compared to full-time employees. However, it is very common companies to convert contingent workers to full-time employees at any time during their engagement or even setting up “try before you buy” engagements with the contractor often referred to as a “contract to hire.”

Full-time employment and contract work both have their pros and cons, and the decision of which to choose ultimately depends on your personal preferences, career goals and the number of job opportunities at any point in time. Job seekers should always explore both options and consider career goals, short- and long-term financial needs, and work-life balance when deciding between full-time employment and contract work. One is not better than the other….just different.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shockwaves throughout the startup community. With down round valuations and full-time layoffs becoming the norm, it’s more important than ever for startup companies to find ways to develop, support, and sell their products while operating on a lean budget.

Traditionally, startups would shirk at the idea of contractors, preferring to hire full time technical and creative talent and ideally those with pristine pedigree from other well-established companies. As of Monday, this operating model may not be realistic as venture firms tighten funding and, in some cases, become more involved, or at least aware of their investments.

Labor costs are typically the single largest cost center for any company, startup, global enterprise, and everything in between. One-way startups can reduce burn rates while still building, supporting, and selling products and services is by leveraging contractors, instead of relying solely on full-time employees. For the uninitiated startup founders, below are some benefits of using contractors and how startups can effectively manage them to ensure success.

Benefits of Using Contractors

⬤ Cost-Effective: One of the most significant benefits of using contractors is the cost savings. Unlike full-time employees, contractors are not entitled to benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, or paid time off. This allows startups to save a considerable amount of money on labor costs.

⬤ Flexibility: Contractors offer startups the flexibility to scale their workforce up or down as needed. This is particularly useful for startups that are just starting out and may not have a clear idea of how many employees they will need in the future or if they need to pull back on resources due to delays in funding or even down rounds. The “try before you buy” model provides the opportunity to evaluate talent in your real-world environment versus via resume, interview, code challenges and references.

⬤ Access to Top Talent: By leveraging contractors, startups can tap into a vast pool of talent. Contractors are often experts in their field and have a wealth of experience that can be invaluable to startups looking to develop new products or services.

⬤ Reduced Legal and Benefits Management: Hiring full-time employees comes with a host of legal and benefit obligations, such as complying with labor laws and providing competitive benefits. By using contractors, startups can avoid many of these legal obligations as they are now managed by the staffing provider who serves as the employee of record.

The recent report by staffing firm Robert Half, found that more than half of US companies plan to add jobs in the first half of 2023 and two-thirds of those polled will leverage contract talent. This is not only a positive sign for the overall U.S. job market, but the fact that companies are increasingly turning to contract workers to meet their staffing needs also indicates a shift towards more flexible and cost-effective solutions in the workforce.

The startup world has changed overnight, those companies that adapt, stay nimble by responding to the new market conditions will prevail while those who continue to run the “old’ playbook may fall behind or even fail.

At Ursus, Inc, we believe in eating our own dog food. We understand the importance of providing our clients the best technical, creative, professional talent possible to enable their digital initiatives. That’s why our clients choose to partner with us! By using external recruiters to find talent, our clients can focus on their core business.

Similarly, finding great talent is not only crucial for our clients, but it is also critical for our own success. That is why we use external recruiters to find sales talent the same way Ursus clients leverage Ursus to find great technical and creative talent. In other words, we eat our own dog food or drink our own champagne, pick your preferred metaphor.

An effective recruitment process is rigorous, and we hold our external recruiter partners to the same high standards that we have for our internal process. We want to ensure that the candidates they present to us are the best of the best. Could we source sales candidates ourselves? Afterall, recruiting is our business! While we are always searching and sourcing on our own, there are three key reasons why we look for help from a handful of great partners.

1) Subject matter expertise: Our team is comprised of technical, creative, and business professional recruiters. Identifying, screening and deep dive vetting is just different. We partner with staffing sales subject matter experts the same way a client looks to us for a data scientist or a UI Visual Designer.

2) Candidate depth and breath: Our partners, who specialize in staffing sales candidates have significantly wider and deeper and deeper reach than we ever could generate on our own.

3) Time: When a recruiting process is done correctly, it takes time; sourcing and outreach, resume review, screening, and screening again, candidate presentation, reference checks, continued feedback to client and candidate, and close…the great candidates have options. How well does your external recruiter represent your culture, your mission, and your goals?

Fortunately, our sales and recruiting partners check all the boxes above which helps us scale and grow faster. By using external recruiters to find sales talent, we can focus on our core business while still finding the best talent available. It is a strategy that has worked for us and one that we will continue to use in the future. Dogfood never tasted so good!

Thank You. Two little words. Two very powerful words. We use them a lot in conversation. The art of writing a post interview thank you note, thank you email, heck even the thank you text is being lost.I remember back in the “olden days” – before the Internet – when you interviewed for a job, you followed through with a handwritten thank you letter sent via the postal mail. The idea was to show the people you interviewed with that you were listening and that this job was important to you. Now that we are in an age of instant communication, it’s even easier to do this,yet so often it is a step that is missed.  Spoiler alert: if anyone on my staff interviews a candidate that does not send a thank you note within 48 hours (within 24 or less is even better), it’s an immediate pass!  I can say with 100% confidence I am not alone in this policy.

If you are on board with bringing this back into your processes, and you should be, or want to stand out to recruiters and hiring managers which in the wake of layoffs and more competition on the street is kind of important these days, here are a couple of things to consider when writing the email, handwritten note or both!

1. Don’t wait! This doesn’t mean write something poorly just to get it out there. Try to send your email within a day of an interview. Everything is still fresh in your mind as well as the interviewer’s. You want them to remember you! If your interview is virtual on Zoom or Teams, write it within the hour!  The hiring manager has you on their mind and what better way to leave a positive impression.  Some managers and recruiters interview up to 6,7,8 people a day, tomorrow you may not be as memorable or even forgotten!
   
2. Email notes are fine, texts are pushing it.  Is it really that hard to open a mail client or web mail to write in a more traditional, dare I say formal format?  Text messages can often be clunky, prone to spelling and grammar errors, and are hard to reference or find later.   You have already put in the time to apply and participate in that interview, so take the extra step to distinguish yourself from other candidates. Don’t be lazy, send an email.
   
3. Personalize and BE AUTHENTIC. Make sure you point out something specific that you discussed during that interview to help show that you’re listening and engaged. Also, remember that the interviewers will likely come together to discuss their meetings with you. If you send a generic email to everyone you spoke with, it will not come across as genuine. Take the time to personalize each thank you. It is worth it.
   
4.  Title the email with “Thank You: Job Title, Interview Date”. I know this part seems impersonal, but remember, the interviewers could be meeting with many candidates. This will remind them of who they met with and when.  They may also put your email in a folder and then have to reference it days later.  Make yourself and your correspondence easy to find! 
   
5. Get to the point and CHECK GRAMMAR. Be clear and concise. Just a couple of paragraphs is all you need. Highlight a couple of points from the conversation, common ground where you connected with the interviewer or reference recent company news that you are excited to read about.  Lastly, check spelling and grammar.  With spell check and free tools like Grammarly there is absolutely no excuse for spelling or grammatical errors.  If there are errors, it shows your lack of attention to detail and that you don’t care enough to be thorough.

In what has quickly become a more competitive job market, the little things can make the difference between a job offer or not.  Letting someone know that you appreciate the time they have taken to speak with you with a thoughtful, well-written thank you email can be the differentiator between you and another candidate.