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Job Descriptions and Other Works of Fiction

Leon Adato on March 07, 2024

Last week I was talking about job applications and not holding yourself back by saying “no” pre-emptively. I started to dive into job descriptions ...
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Rachel Fazio

In your job hunt, your job is to apply.

Happy to see this, job hunting can be so mentally draining, it is helpful to sometimes see how thinking about it in simple terms can help alleviate stress.

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Leon Adato

Thank you. It (job hunting) is really REALLY hard - especially now, but even in the best of times. And sometimes you just have to take it one step at a time or it all becomes far too overwhelming.

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Cesar Aguirre

I’m not going to sugar-coat it: Job descriptions are often a complete work of fiction

Back in the day, at one place where I worked I remember someone from HR entering the Dev room and asking what we used to put in the job description. It ended up being a meaningless list of libraries and tools

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Leon Adato

It's still like that in a lot of places. either because of the process you describe, or because HR doesn't even bother asking the staff - they just do a search on the job title and strip out every single technical term and put that in the JD.

And that's the point. It goes beyond the now common disclaimer: "we recognize every candidate may not have all the skills listed. if you don't check every box...". It's an almost willful intention to put an utterly unrelated description on a job and just see who applies and use the interview process to figure out what you want the job to be.

Coupled with automated resume scanners, the entire process becomes demoralizing and infuriating.