Over the past few days I’ve been reviewing our current job ads. Partly I’ve been doing so to think more about the way we frame our positions, and partly because we’ve wanted to tweak a couple of them and continue advertising positions that haven’t attracted the kinds of applicant pools we are hoping for.
One thing that I’ve noticed in looking at several ads at the same time, rather than serially, is that while they have a reasonably consistent pattern of institutional boilerplate, they are not all in a uniform format.
This situation springs from several causes. First of all, each search committee can draft its own ad. While they all come through my office and the human-resources office, we primarily consult on content and add the requisite institutional language, rather than dictate the form of the ad itself.
As a result, some of the ads have long, bulleted lists of preferred and required qualifications. Others lay out those qualifications discursively in paragraphs. The order in which they present information is not uniform, though they are all quite thorough in explaining with as much precision as the position dictates what we’re hoping to find.
For days after noticing the differences in these ads, I was berating myself for not imposing more discipline on the way we develop and format our job advertising. On further reflection, though, I’ve decided that since each job is different, it’s not a big issue that the ads, too, are different, except insofar as each one actually does explain the requirements and desiderata for the position, the process for applying, and other important matters.
I am, however, an audience of one and in this instance occupy an unfortunate and difficult role as my own editor. So I’d like to ask the readers: Does ad format matter to you at all, as long as the ad contains all the information you want to know about the job-application process? What information is often missing from job ads (aside from salary, which we’ve discussed before) that you really wish was provided?
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2 Responses to Building a Better Ad
jizbetty - December 6, 2010 at 3:03 pm
This is interesting. I have always located teaching positions under the heading of education in various sources. I agree that the descriptions are vague and are not detailed. It would be great if hiring sources would give more information on the type of candidate being sought. However, I understand that brevity is less costly.
this_beats_research - December 8, 2010 at 10:50 am
I’m a B-school faculty, and have sat in on some searches. We write part of the ad, and HR ads in the institutional language. I would look at ads of other schools as we wrote our ad. I tended to pay attention the amount of “institutional language” vs. the amount of departmental language (yes, it is reasonably clear which is which). I prefer the institutional language to be the last section of the ad. If the majority of the ad is institutional, that would be a red flag to me that the particular searching unit wasn’t putting much time and effort into the search. Oh it costs too much to take out a bigger ad? You just credibly signaled to forget about asking for conference funding or access to databases!
I am happy where I am, and have not applied elsewhere since arriving (please don’t tell my dean that!). The ads that are tempting stress the quality of the culture, and why it is a great place to work. Ads that stress it’s a great place to live actually could be a concern. When an ad identifies the names of research active faculty, that is also a plus, for me.
Specificity is always good; it is best to explain if your unit is trying to bulk up in a given research area, or filling a gap, or just wants high calibre people. Ditto for teaching.