The Shocking Truth About Job Descriptions; Recruiter Reveals It All
Time to start reading between the Lines, Let’s get to it
- “Please apply in Person” – This is my favorite and probably the most discriminatory one to watch out for. Basically this means that if you are overweight, ugly, old, have an accent, or walk funny then you will be told that this position is already filled or they will tell you that they will call you at which point you will never hear from them again.
- “Competitive Salary” – This may sound like a good deal too many but essentially this means that the company pays slightly more than the competition. If the competition is paying minimum wage then expect to get the same or 50 cents more. I have seen some jobs pay less but still include the term “Competitive Pay”. It essentially means nothing more than we try to keep the wages down so that we can stay competitive.
- “Career Minded” – We are mainly looking for male candidates, Female candidates should apply only if they don’t have kids and don’t plan on having kids. Additionally if you are over 40 don’t bother applying… Forget vacation time
- “Duties vary” – Anybody and Everybody is your boss and they will expect you to do their work for them so that they can focus on wasting time
- “Good Communication Skills” – Your supervisors talk, you sit back listen and don’t ask any questions, then go out there and figure out what they meant. Certainly do not talk back or say things like “This doesn’t make sense” or “I don’t understand why…” That would mean you’re a bad communicator
- “Fast Paced Company or Entrepreneurial Environment” – We don’t care about training you, nor do we have time, however we will complain about the things that you don’t know how to do and will question our hiring decision on a daily basis for the first 6 months … if you survive that long
- “Detail Oriented” – Our quality is bad because we have no safe checks in place, we will yell at your for making mistakes and constantly say annoying things like “The devil is in the details”, “Details … Details … Details.
- “Casual Work Environment” – The pay at this company sucks so we don’t expect you to dress accordingly, also some of the people who work here wear earrings and have tattoos. We will make fun of you for going to Collage to make ourselves feel better that you are doing the same job we are doing
- “Previous Supervisory Experience required” – You’ll have the quasi duties of a supervisor, however we will not pay you a managers salary nor will we give you the title of a “Manager”, the best we can do is something like a “Team Lead” … you will still get paid what everybody else is getting but with more work of course
- “Some overtime possible” – You will stay late every night, your weekends are our weekends and of course you will work on all the major holidays… we will call you in on you days off.
- “Quick Learner” – We have no training in place, this job description was made up, we will show you how to do things on your first day of work
- “Exceptional problem solving skills” – Please run away… This is a chaotic work environment where nobody knows what the other business units are up to, there are 5 managers all working against each other, expect to have five different answers to a simple question
- “Candidates with a wide variety of experience are encouraged to apply” – We just fired four people so we kind of expect you to replace them all.
- “Pay is based on Experience” – We have already figured out how much we want to pay you, during the interview we will ask you how much you want and if this is below our already determined amount then we will pay you less of course.
- “No phone calls please” – We have terrible customer service and hate talking on the phone, our receptionist is incredibly rude. By the way this job is already filled and probably just a formality on our end
- “Strong Team Player” – Be ready to work in an environment where nobody does their job right, be prepared to do your own work plus pick up the slack of two other people so that the job gets done and nobody gets into overtime issues
- “Looking for a High Achiever” – Get read to brown nose your way through this job, laugh at your bosses jokes and treat everybody else who does not as an outcast
- “Works well under pressure” – Every mundane and irrelevant task is treated by management as highly urgent, we will micro manage you and look over your shoulder throughout the day. If you do something right we will not praise you instead we will ask about the other things you still have to finish, … because they are very important
- “Multitasking or Flexible” – We don’t know where we are heading so make sure to do the things that you are told. We will yell at you for doing the things that you were told and then tell you to do things differently. We will not train you but will expect you to do them yesterday… You don’t’ get it and you need to pick up the pace.
- “Technically Savvy” – We have about 20 useless programs that were developed in 1995 but we don’t want to spend money upgrading or changing the way we have done things for past 20 years. Errors come up on a daily basis that we don’t know how to fix nor care to. Just get the job done and learn all 20 of them anyways
Some of the questions I have received regarding Job Descriptions from our community
Why don’t they list the company on the Job Description
This is an advertisement by a staffing agency and they don’t want you to directly apply to the company as this would make them go out of business.
Why don’t they list how much this position pays
This pay is terrible and they don’t want to discourage applicants because that would ruin their candidate pipeline
How come the same Job description is posted every week
Again this is probably the work of a staffing agency. They are simply building up their resume collection. That way they can line up interviews for positions that will come their way in the future
Recruiters advise:
If you see a job description that is less than a single paragraph then most likely this is a dead end position that pays less than what you need to live on. Also these little short descriptions that I mainly see on Craigslist are very likely written by staffing agencies in order to build up their resume bank so that they can call you when they find a position that matches your skill set.
Especially Beware of these phrases in Job Descriptions
Unlimited Earning Potential – You will be paid commission, and most likely commission only, don’t apply to it because you will not be able to make a living
Rapid Advancement – Unless you can sell we will not promote you, we are looking for clueless recent grads… Turnover is crazy
If a job description is really trying to sell you hard and you notice a salesy pitch that is similar to an infomercial “Tired of a dead end job” things like that then please stay away as these positions are worthless and most likely will have you selling knives door to door.
I know times are tough for many right now but please keep in mind that you will not do yourself any favors by jumping into a work environment that will suck the life out you. Besides the stress and low pay you may be doing yourself even more harm in terms of career advancement. Companies will not hire you because you have inadvertently narrowed your scope for the type of positions that you can get hired for. A resume with 3 positions in sales will make it very hard for you to do something other than sales down the road.
The things I have listed above should not deter you from applying to a job; they simply should make you think about the type of environment that you may get yourself into.
Read the Job Descriptions and then ask yourself “can I do this job for at least one year without going nuts” and “Will this position help me land a better job a year from now” if the answer is yes then by all means apply.
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