
Why don't job descriptions explain what the company does, and how? - lowry
Reading endless job descriptions is painful. Lists of tools and technologies are followed by phrases void of meaning.<p>Why don&#x27;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&#x27;s a no-frills job, but we pay well».
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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?

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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.

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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.

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codeulike
For the same reasons that CVs dont say what people actually did in their
previous jobs.

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kanox
They don't?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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gargarplex
I just wrote a job description.

[https://codefor.cash/sally](https://codefor.cash/sally)

Feedback welcome.

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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.

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pmiller2
Not really. Googling key phrases frequently lets you find the company anyway.

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gargarplex
Moreover, the recruiter has an economic incentive to shepherd you through the
process

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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.

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itronitron
The job descriptions are vague so that the interviewers can insert arbitrary
requirements during interviews in order to mask their bias.

