HN Explorer

Why don't job descriptions explain what the company does, and how?

31 points by lowry ↗ HN
Reading endless job descriptions is painful. Lists of tools and technologies are followed by phrases void of meaning.

Why don't companies articulate what the candidate is expected to do? Like... «You will be maintaining a 10-years old codebase of a high-value low-traffic website built on JavaEE and EMF with guice and Lombok all over the place. It's a no-frills job, but we pay well».

24 comments

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QuinnyPig
To be clear, your headline and description disagree. Do you care more about what the company does, or what the job will be?
mooreds
Because things change. What you are hired to do may change the week you are hired (or even the week before).

So a company is going to tread the line between a job description that is so vague it won't appeal to anyone ("we build stuff ... using computers") and one so specific that it won't be accurate after the candidate accepts the offer.

codeulike
For the same reasons that CVs dont say what people actually did in their previous jobs.
kanox
They don't?
system2
No, they don't of course. Maybe 99% (or more) resumes are full of fake info or included what entire department did. I help our clients to find the right people for positions and this is a daily challenge.
Kagerjay
What metrics do you use to filter this out (e.g. someone claiming credit for things they did not do)
perl4ever
I don't believe that, or at least I think 99% is a considerable exaggeration. My resume has never been based on anything but what I did, because every person I've worked with in a department has a different role. I couldn't take credit for their work because it's palpably not what I do. And if I did, I'd end up doing similar things, which is not what I want or I already would've been doing them.
tonyedgecombe
I think you might be surprised, I have had people standing right in front of me take credit for my own work. The reason we have such byzantine interviews in this industry is because you cannot trust what most people put in their CV.
itronitron
I need a service that will take my accurate resume and inflate everything so that it aligns better with what is available in the market.
codeulike
Haha yeah that would be great. "Resumflate" or something. Get an AI to read billions of resumes and then insert buzzwords.
bestCauliflower
Nor should they, they put you through too much bullshit to deserve honesty.
jeffreportmill1
The real reason is that most job descriptions are posted by recruiters, and they don't want you to find the company without going through them. They scrub them of any info that could be used to locate the careers page of the company.
pmiller2
Not really. Googling key phrases frequently lets you find the company anyway.
gargarplex
Moreover, the recruiter has an economic incentive to shepherd you through the process
perl4ever
In practice, they don't make it very hard to find out who it is, even if the job is not in the careers site of the employer.

However, it's courteous to work with the person who brought it to you, and I assume it's to your advantage, since they have an incentive to get you past the gatekeepers.

debacle
In practice, the recruiting company does not want you to know who they are recruiting for, but the recruiter themselves will do anything they can to place you.
lowlevel
How they make the sausage doesn't really seem appropriate for job descriptions to me... but as far as filling roles goes I find that more often than not the people writing the job descriptions simply have a poor understanding of the role and the requirements needed to ensure success in that role.
debacle
A large part of pre-interview hiring is handled by nontechnical individuals making 1/3 to 1/2 of what a software developer makes.
[dead] 20180918
On the boards I look for jobs this is a problem. Many are posted by recruitment agencies that don't want to leak information that would allow someone to apply direct and bypass the agency (meaning they will lost their commission), and as such they try to be vague, maybe citing the sector at most.

Also there is a sense of salesmanship in the ads, and telling you that you'll be grinding out JavaEE isn't what they'd like to highlight, but they'll find some distinguishing features such as 'casual dress', or 'why commute to the city when you can work around the corner' or what not.

sloaken
To simplify your question:

Why does Bossbert write the Job Description - because he thinks he knows something.

Why does Catbert edit the Job Description - because if they do not then they have a hard time justifying their value.

Why does not Dilbert write the job description - because a job description that reads 20 pages is a bit much.

I recommend a website called Glassdoor. I used them to avoid a job, I was unemployed, and this company was interested in me. Reading on glassdoor, everyone thought it was the best place to work. Everyone except the IT people. They thought it was just atrocious, and the turn over rate was over 100% in IT. No thanks - I would prefer to remain unemployed verses entering that mess.

Alternatively you can go on linked in, see who works there, hopefully you know someone who knows them, get an introduction, and find the real dirt.

itronitron
The job descriptions are vague so that the interviewers can insert arbitrary requirements during interviews in order to mask their bias.
rahimnathwani
Most people writing job ads spend far too little mental effort to figure out how to write a job ad: they don't read 100s of existing job ads, they don't read a book or blog posts, they don't reflect on what they're trying to achieve at that stage of the process etc.

Instead, they copy and paste phrases from existing job descriptions (internal and external). The more specific the phrase, the more likely it's not relevant to the new job, so the less likely it gets copied.

So what does the job ad contain? The most abstract and meaningless phrases collected from a bunch of existing job descriptions.

Rinse and repeat, and you get to the situation we have today.