Hiring Managers Shouldn’t Write Job Postings
Who should write a job posting? Well, let me ask you this.
We submit receipts to accounting to file taxes. Customer service presents ideas to the product team, and then they build the software or whatever it is you sell. We let the experts do the work.
But for some reason, hiring managers write job postings, not the recruiting team. These are the currency of recruiting. The first impression of your company, recruiting, and this job, yet the expert isn’t creating it.
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Leave It To The Experts: Who Writes The Job Post?
While a hiring manager may be an expert in creating whatever widget, they are not expert job post writers. They start like many recruiters who are not expert job post writers (yet): copying and pasting a “cool” job post they see online.
Yes. That’s what always happens if you ask someone to write a job post who doesn’t know how. Anyone with 0 expertise is either going to the deepest, darkest corners of their Google Drive or copying and pasting the first posting they see that looks ok.
That gives me a little heartburn to write. I won’t lie.
Most of those job posts are awful, even if they sound good to someone casually scanning for something better than average (which is way below par). Plus, if you start writing something by copying and pasting it from someone else? It’s going to get worse, not better. It’s tough to take something that’s already bad and make it good. You’re better off starting from what you know instead of a competitor’s template.
Who Should Own Writing Your Company’s Job Postings?
If you’re looking at redefining your job post process, trust me on this. Your hiring managers shouldn’t be writing job postings. Your team has to own this first impression, and the impression isn’t just on candidates. It’s on hiring managers, too.
We constantly talk about building trust between talent teams and hiring managers but often let others do our work. Recruiters are supposed to be hiring experts, and that includes writing job postings. If we want to become the hiring experts in our organizations, we must create exceptional hiring manager intake and masterful job postings.
Hiring is hard no matter where you work because:
1) We work with the most unpredictable variable in the world – people.
2) We can’t control most of the variables when it comes to hiring.
Why not control the one variable you can? That variable: how you ask. How do you ask? With a job posting.
Now, if you want me to teach your team how to be a job post writing expert, you can book a call with me here.
Kat Kibben View All →
Kat Kibben [they/them] is a keynote speaker, writing expert, and LGBTQIA+ advocate who teaches hiring teams how to write inclusive job postings that will get the right person to apply faster.
Before founding Three Ears Media, Katrina was a CMO, Technical Copywriter, and Managing Editor for leading companies like Monster, Care.com, and Randstad Worldwide. With 15+ years of recruitment marketing and training experience, Katrina knows how to turn talented recruiting teams into talented writers who write for people, not about work.
Today, Katrina is frequently featured as an HR and recruiting expert in publications like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Forbes. They’ve been named to numerous lists, including LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Job Search & Careers. When not speaking, writing, or training, you’ll find Katrina traveling the country in their van or spending some much needed downtime with the dogs that inspired the name Three Ears Media.