Memo to Recruiters and/or Hiring Managers: There is no magic bullet.

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Ever since the Great Recession altered the United States job market and shifted the balance of power away from candidates and towards employers, TheAppliedPsychologist has noticed an unfortunate trend: extremely specific job postings.  One website sums this up nicely: "Job descriptions with impossible skills listing You’ve seen the job descriptions when the skills requirements take up two-thirds of the job description. You must have 5-10 years of experience with every programming language under the sun, the twenty-seven industry certifications found for your work and then match up to the fifty other “desired” qualifications as well."

Here is another requirements example.  It's not lengthy -- but it is extremely particular about a couple of things:

  • NO less then[sic] 10 years of directly related experience in the fashion industry.
  • NO less than five years at director/manager level project learning, training and development experience.
  • Background working directly with Buyers, merchants, agents, members of the product development team and IT.
  • Former experience in application systems support and maintenance and use of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) tools.
  • Must possess a complete and global understanding of the product development process and improving the process efficiencies.
  • Background in gathering data, research and data analysis to build strategies is very important.
  • Keen sense identifying what is working, what needs to be modified and/or added.
  • Former experience in developing pilot programs.
  • Broad base knowledge of IT systems necessary.

What happens if the person meets every other criteria, but only has 9 years of "directly related experience in the fashion industry"?  What if they were only at "the director/manager level" for 3 years and not 5?  Does that automatically disqualify a candidate?  Paradoxically, the rest of the requirements are too vague.

This trend of incredibly specific job postings has increased in recent years.  It's probably due to the bloated labor pool created by the recession.  With unemployment rates higher than what used to be typical, employers seem to feel they can find exactly the right person with exactly the background they want.  Or perhaps this trend is a byproduct of the Internet era -- and era that has given us the ability to satisfy particular shopping requirements to a degree never before seen in human history.  Some job postings look less like an attempt to hire the best candidate and more like someone customizing a car online.  'I need some e-Learning, plus some leadership, plus experience managing people, plus ten years of experience doing the first eight tasks listed in the posting's position description.'

These types of posts look like an overly specific online dating profile: 'The woman I'm looking for has to live within a 10-mile radius, enjoy watching soccer and hockey, be a Cubs fan, and has run no fewer than 2 half-marathons over the past 5 years.'

I can imagine an obvious retort from the hiring organization: "Well, that's our ideal candidate.  We don't expect everyone to meet those ideals." Look, I understand the need to be specific: most job postings suffer from the opposite problem of being too vague.  However!  That doesn't mean the laundry list approach is any more beneficial.  There are several negative outcomes of publishing every possible desirable characteristic of a future incumbent:

  • They turn away people who could do the job, but don't meet every listed 'requirement'.  Some candidates are humble and tend to undersell themselves.  Those who do won't apply to your opening if it's based on a laundry list of idealized characteristics.
  • Skills don't accurately predict how someone will perform on the job.  The longest list in the world won't solve this problem.  Here's a little-understood fact: lack of skills isn't the most common reason for failed hires.  Organizational fit, lack of support, candidate personality/work behaviors, etc. often play a larger role in hire failures than a candidate's skill level or experience level.
  • Your list could be discriminatory.  Did anyone perform a job analysis to determine the necessity of the skills and experiences you listed?  Did anyone validate your analysis?  If members of certain demographic groups are much less likely to meet your requirements when compared to others, you could be setting yourself up for a lawsuit if you haven't taken the time to prove all your requirements are truly essential.

You might be wondering: "How can I look for those qualities that predict job performance?"  There are several different approaches; many of them are ineffective.  Here are a couple that work: formal, validated assessments customized for your organization's open positions, and structured interviewing (which should also be customized, but usually cost less to develop).  Some skills laundry lists make it seem like the employer can't be bothered to schedule a thorough interview with any candidate who doesn't fit their exact mold. This level of inattention to the recruitment process does not reflect well on an organization.

Even with these principles applied, selection is an inexact science.  And I suppose that's our point: there is no magic bullet for selection.  There's no magic list of requirements, tests, or formulas that will enable you to avoid the hard work of applying a variety of validated selection techniques - often including a structured interview - in order to find the candidate most likely to succeed.  There are no shortcuts, no matter how poor the job market is.  Attempts to get around these realities usually leads to the exact outcome employers set out to avoid in the first place. If your list of requirements is the longest part of your job posting (or job description) by a country mile, you're probably doing it wrong.