

Job Posts That Sell - jamiequint
http://jamiequint.com/123475628

======
tptacek
This post makes an extremely effective point but muddies it a bit by
conflating it with a stylistic one.

If you're recruiting for nerd jobs, your best bet is probably to speak some
nerd-ese. In particular, nerds find the bulleted lists collegial and painless
to read; if they're skimming, they find medium-length well-written prose grafs
slightly (or significantly) more painful. Remember that these are the same
people who will write "tl;dr" comments on message boards.

Having said that, if you're recruiting for nerd jobs, you'd better be selling
from the jump. The lede in this blog post is absolutely correct. There's a
fierce market out there for strong talent. If your job post is a short blurb
about your company and a list of boring requirements, then Jamie is right:
that post isn't doing anything for you.

So I think you take a middle ground: write pithy bulleted text, but make the
bullets sell. Nerds like "concrete". It helps to know that some technical
"requirements" sell a job, and others don't: an "Experience in Java and J2EE
environments" bullet is going to hurt you, but a "Comfortable learning to
build complex systems in Scala and Postgres" probably picks up points.

But the best advice on this thread I think traces to Jamie: whatever bullets
you write, they should _sell the job_. If you can sell the job, you'll get
good candidates, and screening them manually won't be a pain.

Here's how I'd do ours in this hybrid style (we're always hiring, FWIW) ---
this isn't how I'd normally write a job ad (I don't want my postings to look
like job ads), but just to illustrate:

\-------------------------

Matasano is a trusted security advisor to many of the industry's most
interesting companies. We do application security: companies pay us to find
startling new ways to break their applications. We're looking for someone who
could work at any of the best software companies in the world to join a team
breaking apps at all the best software companies in the world.

Things to know about us:

* Founded in 2005 and profitable many years running

* Offices in NYC, Chicago, and SFBA

Specific things we're looking for:

* _Ability and enthusiasm for coding._ Our day-to-day is solving security problems with code.

* _Total lack of fear._ Our teams switch on a dime from attacking electronic trading markets to reverse engineering compiled code on FPGA-synthesized CPUs. We don't need you to know how to write a Dalvik decompiler or write a fuzzer for the MongoDB wire protocol. We just need you to want to know how.

* _Deep interest in appsec._ People who are good at breaking apps love breaking apps.

* _Fluent with web stacks._ From HTTP to Javascript to the rendering quirks of Webkit, and on through Rails and Django, and how their ORMs work. You'd want to to understand low-level web development well enough so that you could figure out a new stack in hours, not days.

* _Comfort with C programming._ Appreciated but not required. If you don't know C, we'll want to teach it to you.

Benefits:

* Working in an office culture with a team of people who write debuggers for fun and leaving the office every day in time to have dinner with your family.

* High probability that you'll learn more in this role than any role you've had prior. This year we've written clients for trading protocols, implemented exploit code for cryptanalytic attacks, exploited browser memory corruption bugs, stuffed Riak clusters full of HTTP requests, built a large scale fuzzing farm for Windows desktop software, language runtimes, linkers, kernel modules, iPhone apps, and chipset fuzzers.

* Unlimited free books. You get an Amazon account. You see a book, you buy the book, it's yours. Write your name on it, take it home.

* Market comp, bonuses for speaking at conferences, medical, dental, 401k

Interested? We wrote down everything we could think of about our hiring
process at <http://www.matasano.com/careers>. Our contact information is
there. YOU CANNOT WASTE OUR TIME. We're happy just to talk to you about our
field.

\-------------------------

Notes:

* This is way longer than I'd write a job post, but in the same word count ballpark as the "bulleted list" example from Jamie's post. (I also wrote it extemporaneously so give me a break on grammar and clarity).

* There are bullets but none of them are intended to screen candidates. It's my job to screen, the bullet's job is to invite.

* There are buzzwords but, like I think every good tech job post, the script is flipped: I'm _selling_ with them, not using them to exclude people with a regex on their resume.

* "You cannot waste our time". #1 thing that freaks me out about our job ads: are people reading them and thinking "These guys won't think I'm qualified for the role so why bother applying". Some of our best hires had no previous professional track record in our field.

* Tech-forward: we're recruiting gifted low-level developers, so we're not talking about changing the world or revolutionizing our industry or the exhilaration of working in a fast-paced startup environment. We're talking (I hope!) about awesome technical challenges.

* Yes, I am totally cheating by sneaking a job ad into an HN comment. On the other hand: HN is one of our top recruiting vectors, and we're bigger than most YC companies, so I think I might have some actionable intel on how to recruit from HN. :)

~~~
jamiequint
Agree with you 100% here, I was not trying to make a point about bullet points
(no pun intended) but rather what they usually represent which is generally a
boring laundry list of requirements and responsibilities.

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stevenj
Off-topic:

I took a look at your startup, Lookcraft. As a guy who likes fashion, it
looked interesting.

But to be honest, I'm tired of having to register for these types of sites in
order to use/try them upon the first encounter.

Most real-life and online retail experiences do not work this way.

If I had to register with Nike.com in order to see its shoes, I'd shop
somewhere else; especially so if I had to do it in-store. (And that's an
established brand. Though, perhaps I'm in the minority.)

I suggest you just let people see what you're offering first. Afterall, what
you want is sales. But because of my initial experience with/reaction to your
site, it's unlikely I'll ever buy something from you.

I know you want to track the number of users, have loyal customers, etc. But
let me see the thing first. Let me easily buy something first.

Then, _ask_ if I'd like to register.

Don't force me to, especially not before I've had the chance to say "hello"
for the first time.

When I see an email registration form before an actual product, the first
thing I think of is: I'm going to get a lot of spam.

I'm sure you wouldn't send that type of stuff to me. But many others have (and
continue to do so), so I immediately think back button when I see it.

~~~
jamiequint
First, thanks for checking out the site. To your point, Lookcraft gives you
personalized recommendations based on your style and fit. As a result, it
doesn't really make sense for us to not collect registration info up front.

As a more general point, the reason you see this kind of stuff all the time is
that it simply converts better. I spent two years working full-time on funnel
and conversion optimization and unfortunately things that many people would
view as 'user unfriendly' are the things that convert the best. This is not
just measuring the next step in the funnel either, you can measure all the way
down to purchase (or whatever your unit of conversion is) and this method of
user interaction just works better. I may lose you as a customer, but the
statistics dictate that I'm going to do much better overall if I do things
this way which is why everybody does. (Groupon, Fab, Gilt, etc).

~~~
sciurus
I don't doubt that if you create a registration barrier, a higher percentage
of your users will purchase things.

I do doubt that if you have a registration barrier, you'll have more users who
purchase things that you would have without the barrier.

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corry
I think it's a fine balance between the two. Unless I'm already hooked into
reading more, wading through paragraphs of oh-so-stylish writing isn't a
pleasant task.

My $0.02 - the trick is to capture the attention with a blurb at the beginning
about the grander vision, give a few high-level bullets to orient / qualify
further reading, and then go nuts with the wall 'o words.

~~~
cdjarrell
Seems like Jamie Quint is following the Simon Sinek Why-How-What strategy. Why
you should look at this job, how you'll do the job and what you'll get out of
it.

I agree that the ideal mix is a combo of the two, highlights at the top and
Why-How-What at the bottom

~~~
jamiequint
I'm not familiar with that strategy but it sounds about right. I'm not
actually claiming that I'm laying out the optimal strategy here, the right mix
is probably somewhere in the middle. This is mostly a reaction to the glut of
bullet-point list job posts I've seen lately. I think people need to think
broader about how to optimize here.

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ecaron
I have a real hard time taking advice seriously from a company that doesn't
have a career page on their own website. It feels like taking stock-market
advice from somebody that only buys bonds.

~~~
tptacek
"Careers" pages on websites are not particularly effective recruiting vectors.

~~~
ecaron
That depends a significant amount on if you're interested in the "I want to
work for company X" crowd.

~~~
tptacek
You should probably have a "Careers" page on your website, because it doesn't
cost anything, but it's not damning not to see one. We have a pretty good
"Careers" page; we get very few inbounds from it.

------
Zikes
I think the first listing style is much better for the sort of jobs I'd be
looking for. Bullet points are great for lists, and I'd want to see a list of
technologies I'd be expected to know and how experienced I'd need to be in
each of them.

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twalling
I think the challenge in writing a good job post is finding your voice and
putting together a concise (balance of bullet points and conversation) writeup
which feels personal. Either approach pointed out here can come off sounding
mechanical, dry and just don't read that well.

I also like when some of the marketing jargon is left out and it reads like a
plain english description of what your company is trying to do. Don't pitch me
with buzz words. Just describe the potential opportunity and the challenges
that might appeal to me.

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sharpshoot
The conversation pieces work very well for filtering - i have had a lot of
success with this method at Quid
[http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?k=Job&c...](http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?k=Job&c=qq49Vfwi&j=oXXLVfwk&s=Indeed)

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mikerice
I dont really agree. I prefer lists and bullet points. Try and sell it to me
when I have the first interaction/interview.

~~~
tptacek
That's a strategy that does pretty well with the kinds of people who will
apply to jobs randomly, hoping that one of them will sell them in the first
interview.

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horsehead
I actually prefer the first listing. Bullet points are a plus in my book. Feel
free to make it a conversation piece during the interview stage.

