How honest/glossy are job adverts?

55ryan

From one of my old blogs I did which is apt to this thread. 

when applying for jobs i want to see several things. in no particular order i’ve set these out below.

salary – nothing mentioned at all is very annoying, as is ‘competitive’ or ‘negotiable’. competitive with who exactly? when i once had an interview, i had one just like that. at the interview they were still very cagey about the salary offered and even went on to say ‘we will tell you if you are offered and accept the job’. erm excuse me. anyone applying for any job needs to know how much is being paid. whether companies like it or not or recruitment companies who say ‘never ask that’, prospective employees need to know this important piece of information. also if the salary is ‘too high’, it is most likely commission based with a poor basic salary or dodgy.

not all specific jobs are paid generally the same. a good example of this are office managers. important job within a company. yes i have seen salaries of over 45k offered. i also though saw one with a long list of requirements and experiences yet it only paid 16k a year. that latter one was being advertised for some time. 

another annoying one are those that give wide rates of pay ‘according to experience’ ie 16k to 50k. this is just as bad as not giving the actual salary.

in all cases, stop wasting everyone’s time and tell the candidate how much you are paying. people have bills to pay, they will need to pay for travel, eat lunchtime etc. there is no point keeping the salary secret if it turns out that what’s being offered isn’t ‘competitive’ and all you have left at the end of the month is enough for a tin of beans. everyone’s circumstances are different. tell them what you are paying.

the hours of work – now although offices are typically assumed to be 9-5 i rarely see that anymore. in one job i was working from 7am. in another i was still there at 9pm. as with the salary, everyone is different. i could have 14 children, 7 cats and 3 girlfriends who need me after 5pm. ‘hours advised at interview’ tells me it isn’t straight forward. any company who is vague or who do not give simple information in their job advert likely has trouble filling the role/people who keep leaving/they keep sacking. be honest and stop wasting everyone’s time including that of the recruiters. if the hours are 3am to 11am then say so. those that could not do those hours are immediately eliminated. those it would suit are applying straight away.

location of job – obviously an important one. there is no point living in london if the job is 9-5 working in the centre of carlisle. most of course give a location, some though will just give the county. i have had my time wasted looking at one job that stated it was in my area but, ‘you will be working at our head office in ‘edinburgh’. 400 miles away from where i am. that was hidden in the job spec.

the experience needed – there is no point you applying if the job spec says you need a degree in something you do not have. i have seen a job advert just today which gave no information at all about experience required apart from ‘strong admin skills’. this is far too vague. administration covers many things. that job is another applicant time waster.

the daily duties – another thing sometimes lacking in job adverts. ‘you will have a varied role’. doing what? ‘things will be different each day’, doing what? a job title is not always the same duties in every job. for example, administrator could be just filing all day. in another administrator job you are ‘on reception regularly’. just tell people what they will be doing every day. one job i saw a while back was for a senior administrator. sounded good to me. unfortunately, 2 of your 5 over 7 days would be working on the production line in the factory! not quite putting cherries onto cup cakes, but at least they put that in the job advert. the job title needed adjusting, employees knew from the start though that the job was not as initially advertised.

perks – i’m not talking about a company car necessarily, but things like subsidised canteen or ample parking or good pension scheme. too many job adverts say nothing. one job i got previously had a fantastic benefits package. none of that had even been mentioned in the job advert.

when i see a job advert i am in effect interviewing that advert. there is no point a job saying ‘senior admin’ ‘salary competitive’, ‘hours to be discussed’ ‘based in your county’ ‘exciting benefits package’ ‘varying admin duties’ all of that means diddly squat. i have seen jobs just like that. they are one of the few people should avoid like the plague. if things are missing/not disclosed there is usually a good reason, particularly where the salary and hours are concerned.

Dakta

Good post agree with a lot there

TELLIT01

I've been retired a few years now, but 'flexible working' used to mean a bit of give and take.  As an example, I wasn't paid overtime because I was on a management grade, but that didn't stop my boss telling me I could leave early one day when things were quiet.  Unfortunately, it would seem that 'flexibile working' now is more likely to mean you work until management allow you to go home.  That's not an environment which would be acceptable to me.  I always worked to live, never lived to work.

theoretica

Some jobs will be better than others in how they treat staff - and I think the job ad is probably not the best way of trying to tell the difference.  Large companies will have a footprint in things like online reviews, local companies may have the word on the street.  How often have they advertised before compared to the size of the company?  Can you walk past in the evening/weekend and see if the lights are on?

robatwork

"Flexible" is a weasel word - really has no meaning in a job advert.
Likewise "Team Player" and "Self-Starter".

No company will employ someone who claims to be inflexible, works badly in teams or lacks motivation to work alone effectively. 

55ryan makes some nice points too. 

In effect if you go for an interview with one of these "glossy" companies, you're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.

B0bbyEwing

55ryan said:

From one of my old blogs I did which is apt to this thread. 

when applying for jobs i want to see several things. in no particular order i’ve set these out below.

salary – nothing mentioned at all is very annoying, as is ‘competitive’ or ‘negotiable’. competitive with who exactly? when i once had an interview, i had one just like that. at the interview they were still very cagey about the salary offered and even went on to say ‘we will tell you if you are offered and accept the job’. erm excuse me. anyone applying for any job needs to know how much is being paid. whether companies like it or not or recruitment companies who say ‘never ask that’, prospective employees need to know this important piece of information. also if the salary is ‘too high’, it is most likely commission based with a poor basic salary or dodgy.

not all specific jobs are paid generally the same. a good example of this are office managers. important job within a company. yes i have seen salaries of over 45k offered. i also though saw one with a long list of requirements and experiences yet it only paid 16k a year. that latter one was being advertised for some time. 

another annoying one are those that give wide rates of pay ‘according to experience’ ie 16k to 50k. this is just as bad as not giving the actual salary.

in all cases, stop wasting everyone’s time and tell the candidate how much you are paying. people have bills to pay, they will need to pay for travel, eat lunchtime etc. there is no point keeping the salary secret if it turns out that what’s being offered isn’t ‘competitive’ and all you have left at the end of the month is enough for a tin of beans. everyone’s circumstances are different. tell them what you are paying.

the hours of work – now although offices are typically assumed to be 9-5 i rarely see that anymore. in one job i was working from 7am. in another i was still there at 9pm. as with the salary, everyone is different. i could have 14 children, 7 cats and 3 girlfriends who need me after 5pm. ‘hours advised at interview’ tells me it isn’t straight forward. any company who is vague or who do not give simple information in their job advert likely has trouble filling the role/people who keep leaving/they keep sacking. be honest and stop wasting everyone’s time including that of the recruiters. if the hours are 3am to 11am then say so. those that could not do those hours are immediately eliminated. those it would suit are applying straight away.

location of job – obviously an important one. there is no point living in london if the job is 9-5 working in the centre of carlisle. most of course give a location, some though will just give the county. i have had my time wasted looking at one job that stated it was in my area but, ‘you will be working at our head office in ‘edinburgh’. 400 miles away from where i am. that was hidden in the job spec.

the experience needed – there is no point you applying if the job spec says you need a degree in something you do not have. i have seen a job advert just today which gave no information at all about experience required apart from ‘strong admin skills’. this is far too vague. administration covers many things. that job is another applicant time waster.

the daily duties – another thing sometimes lacking in job adverts. ‘you will have a varied role’. doing what? ‘things will be different each day’, doing what? a job title is not always the same duties in every job. for example, administrator could be just filing all day. in another administrator job you are ‘on reception regularly’. just tell people what they will be doing every day. one job i saw a while back was for a senior administrator. sounded good to me. unfortunately, 2 of your 5 over 7 days would be working on the production line in the factory! not quite putting cherries onto cup cakes, but at least they put that in the job advert. the job title needed adjusting, employees knew from the start though that the job was not as initially advertised.

perks – i’m not talking about a company car necessarily, but things like subsidised canteen or ample parking or good pension scheme. too many job adverts say nothing. one job i got previously had a fantastic benefits package. none of that had even been mentioned in the job advert.

when i see a job advert i am in effect interviewing that advert. there is no point a job saying ‘senior admin’ ‘salary competitive’, ‘hours to be discussed’ ‘based in your county’ ‘exciting benefits package’ ‘varying admin duties’ all of that means diddly squat. i have seen jobs just like that. they are one of the few people should avoid like the plague. if things are missing/not disclosed there is usually a good reason, particularly where the salary and hours are concerned.

Jesus, I can't agree with you enough.

The salary & hours thing reminded me so much of our place. They're so vague & there's reason for being so vague.

In 20+ years I've lost count of the amount of people who've left because of those two things
1) sick of the low pay when they can move to another job (same or similar role) elsewhere and get considerably more.
2) Sick of never knowing when they're going to finish work & being given literally zero notice that they're to stop on an extra 3 hours, finish at 8pm from a 6:30-7:00am start, get home at 9pm maybe but be told they're needed to start early in the morning - 6am.

HR sometimes in the past has told me more than they should. I remember one driver leaving, complaining about wage. I can't remember what they were pulling at ours at the time. Maybe £400 per week in their pocket. 
HR told me, basically complaining that this guy was unhappy with the pay "and they think they can go to <other company> on £700 per week". 
I said, they probably can. It's certainly possible to earn that per week driving.

They wouldn't have it - "I am always having a look and we are VERY competitive with our pay".

Well no that may be in your opinion but at the same time it's also irrelevant. If the person has chosen to move on then they've chosen to move on. What does it really matter if you believe them or not? Also, just because you say you're competitive and pay well, doesn't mean that you actually are. I can say I'm going to beat Usain Bolt in a race but unless the guy blows his hamstring, which he wouldn't need to do as he could beat me while hopping backwards, no I'm not.

DullGreyGuy

Gavin83 said:

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!

Thankfully these days I cannot answer that as we exclusively use recruitment agents and so never get to see the 200+ CVs they receive for a senior management job. Last time someone had the bright idea to cut out agents the job spec wanted 10 years at senior management level, responsible for budgets over £50m and a qualification like an MBA or ACCA. We had over 300 applicants in the first 48 hours, most had simply ignored the job ad and sent a generic application, one woman with 20 years experience as a lunch lady did point out that her budgeting experience was much lower limits but how difficult it is to feed the kids for £2/day made up for the lack of scale etc. Similarly a police sergeant in Zimbabwe applied saying he hoped to do an MBA or ACCA after he comes to the UK and could we sort out a visa for his interview.


My industry is fairly close knit and so its rare to have an applicant thats been screen by an agency that isnt a 2nd degree connection on LinkedIn and so often before deciding who to interview I can have an informal call with an ex colleague to get a view on the candidate. Some however you have to seriously question their claimed experience after you see them in person... unfortunately we dont routinely set tests for the type of folk I hire.