How honest/glossy are job adverts?

Ath_Wat

Andy_L said:

The, late, journalist Simon Hoggart coined the phrase "the law of the reduculous reverse" where the pointlessness of a (political) statement can be judged by how likely it is that someone would say the opposite

I find it works well for job adverts "we want a dynamic hard-worker" is pointless because you would never ask for "a lazy, idle shirker"

On a similar note you rarely see a classified ad that says "Timewasters welcome".

eamon

Conversley you can spend hours tweaking your CV & Cover letter to try and cover every aspect of the job advert only to never hear anything from the recruiters/employers. Thanks a bunch for wasting my time

Gavin83

Andy_L said:

The, late, journalist Simon Hoggart coined the phrase "the law of the reduculous reverse" where the pointlessness of a (political) statement can be judged by how likely it is that someone would say the opposite

I find it works well for job adverts "we want a dynamic hard-worker" is pointless because you would never ask for "a lazy, idle shirker"

I take that phrase to mean the sort of company that’ll take the pee and expect you to be grateful. “What do you mean you’re upset you’re covering 3 different job roles and working 20 hours of unpaid overtime a week. You said you were a dynamic hard worker!”

Ultimately employers will embellish the truth in the same way that employees often do so on their CVs. In either direction it’s all about selling yourself and it’s unlikely the negatives will be listed. The only real way to know the truth is if you know someone who works there or just try it out.

B0bbyEwing

I think you're probably spot on with your closing comment there @Gavin83. 

In summary, people aren't to be trusted lol. 

DullGreyGuy

I think there are lots of issues here...

1) How many people are involved in writing job adverts and how close are any of them to the realities on the ground? In some places I get a blank sheet of paper and say exactly what I want whereas others I have no input to the job advert and they have a stock advert for each role even if what a Business Analyst on one project may be could be very different on a different project

2) Use of imprecise wording thats open to interpretation... if the ad says occasional weekends does that mean 1 in 8, 1 in 4? Is 1 a quarter the same as 4 a year but they may be consecutive? Some would say doing 4 weekends in a row isnt occasional even if thats all the weekends you do in a whole year whereas others may say 4 weekends in a year probably doesnt even need to be described as occasional but could be "rare"

3) Managers blindly repeating the company stance... a former manager, back when they were a candidate, asked what the maternity leave policy was at interview any the hiring manager answered "world leading" which is what HR always said. In reality he didnt have a clue and she was then annoyed and considered a complaint when the reality turned out to be much more average than she'd be advised (but then took only 2 months off anyway). 

4) There can often be a difference between a company stance and a managers, though it can go both ways. Pre-covid a former company had a policy of allowing people to work from home if they wanted to and there was no detriment in them doing so. The manager we worked with however felt people werent as productive at home so would agree an occasional WFH but not those that wanted to routinely work 2-3 days from home. So advert would say flexible work location but the manager would be expecting you in the office. 

I think the key however is that an interview is a two way process, if that flexible work location thing is really important to you then you should be asking about it in the interview to ensure (as far as possible) that the hiring manager and the advert align.

eamon said:

Conversley you can spend hours tweaking your CV & Cover letter to try and cover every aspect of the job advert only to never hear anything from the recruiters/employers. Thanks a bunch for wasting my time

There is a balancing act to play on quality -v- volumes and how much tweaking is necessary will depend on the breadth of roles you are applying for. 

As a hiring manager there are plenty of candidates that waste my time too claiming to have various skills or experiences which get them an interview and after asking them basic questions it becomes evident that their "extensive experience" was more like they saw someone else having done it once over their shoulder.

Jaybee_16

DullGreyGuy said:

As a hiring manager there are plenty of candidates that waste my time too claiming to have various skills or experiences which get them an interview and after asking them basic questions it becomes evident that their "extensive experience" was more like they saw someone else having done it once over their shoulder.

That reminded me of the time I was part of an interview panel for a management post. One interviewee claimed management experience but when prompted it appeared they had attended a management course but never managed anything in their working career to date. 

DullGreyGuy

Jaybee_16 said:

DullGreyGuy said:

As a hiring manager there are plenty of candidates that waste my time too claiming to have various skills or experiences which get them an interview and after asking them basic questions it becomes evident that their "extensive experience" was more like they saw someone else having done it once over their shoulder.

That reminded me of the time I was part of an interview panel for a management post. One interviewee claimed management experience but when prompted it appeared they had attended a management course but never managed anything in their working career to date. 

At least they'd been on a course!

These included people who listed skills that they simply didnt have... like someone who's only french is knowing the word café but claims they're fluent in french. When questioned effectively one said they knew how to use Google Translate, one said they'd worked on a french project but it was someone else doing all the language bits and the other maintained they knew a bit and are a quick study so could pick it up. 

walwyn1978

Just been interviewing today and as part of the interview  (for an operations admin) there was a small  exercise - read these 5 emails, order them in response priority, do a few things with the spreadsheet in one of the emails. Standard stuff, and we’d put ‘good level of digital skills/digital literacy required, need L2 standard qualifications as minimum  or be prepared to work towards them as priority’ and one candidate on their statement had gone to town about their experience and expertise with Office products in general and how they’d been the Excel trainer in a previous role. Fine.

Jump to today and the task, and they could barely do anything with the S/S, let alone the basic formula work or formatting. We concluded that their application was basically a falsehood.

74jax

I once interviewed someone and during the interview when I asked for the name of their lecturer at uni, they stumbled.... Something didn't seem right. They never went to that uni.... 🙄

Thing is, they did have the degree they said, just not from that particular uni. 

'I didn't think you'd check'.......

The seed of doubt on everything else that was discussed/written had been placed. 

Gavin83

DullGreyGuy said:

I think there are lots of issues here...

1) How many people are involved in writing job adverts and how close are any of them to the realities on the ground? In some places I get a blank sheet of paper and say exactly what I want whereas others I have no input to the job advert and they have a stock advert for each role even if what a Business Analyst on one project may be could be very different on a different project

2) Use of imprecise wording thats open to interpretation... if the ad says occasional weekends does that mean 1 in 8, 1 in 4? Is 1 a quarter the same as 4 a year but they may be consecutive? Some would say doing 4 weekends in a row isnt occasional even if thats all the weekends you do in a whole year whereas others may say 4 weekends in a year probably doesnt even need to be described as occasional but could be "rare"

3) Managers blindly repeating the company stance... a former manager, back when they were a candidate, asked what the maternity leave policy was at interview any the hiring manager answered "world leading" which is what HR always said. In reality he didnt have a clue and she was then annoyed and considered a complaint when the reality turned out to be much more average than she'd be advised (but then took only 2 months off anyway). 

4) There can often be a difference between a company stance and a managers, though it can go both ways. Pre-covid a former company had a policy of allowing people to work from home if they wanted to and there was no detriment in them doing so. The manager we worked with however felt people werent as productive at home so would agree an occasional WFH but not those that wanted to routinely work 2-3 days from home. So advert would say flexible work location but the manager would be expecting you in the office. 

I think the key however is that an interview is a two way process, if that flexible work location thing is really important to you then you should be asking about it in the interview to ensure (as far as possible) that the hiring manager and the advert align.

eamon said:

Conversley you can spend hours tweaking your CV & Cover letter to try and cover every aspect of the job advert only to never hear anything from the recruiters/employers. Thanks a bunch for wasting my time

There is a balancing act to play on quality -v- volumes and how much tweaking is necessary will depend on the breadth of roles you are applying for. 

As a hiring manager there are plenty of candidates that waste my time too claiming to have various skills or experiences which get them an interview and after asking them basic questions it becomes evident that their "extensive experience" was more like they saw someone else having done it once over their shoulder.

Out of interest as a hiring manager what percentage of applications would you say are completely unsuitable?

I’ve had some experience in screening CVs for roles when sitting on interview panels and in some cases they had none of the requirements listed and I sat there wondering why they applied!