It’s time to shatter the job description paradigm.

A candidate market exists because the demand for talent far exceeds market labor supply. It is partially driven by organizations accelerating their digital transformations to adopt and modernize quickly. This, combined with the pandemic, has elicited a dramatic workforce shift. The last two years resulted in many workers finding new jobs with better pay, flexible schedules, and working remotely. Today, extreme market conditions exist where inefficiencies and deficiencies have materialized in recruiting and talent attraction.

Recruiting is a sales and marketing process; however, most organizations dedicate more resources to customer acquisition than employee attraction. Companies are exceedingly knowledgeable about their customers’ products and services. They know their issues, challenges, and drivers. However, they know little about the fine points of recruiting—what appeals to the candidates? With a sea of jobs, why is yours so special? It is not uncommon to see companies advertise for 10, 20, or even 50+ open and hot positions?

Nearly every job description follows the same outline; what the company needs. Job postings begin with, “the ideal candidate will or must have {fill in the blank}” with headings like qualifications, requirements, functions, and my favorite, additional requirements because the first mention was not good enough.

Perhaps it is time to revolutionize job descriptions into exciting, entertaining, and personalized digital content that emphasizes and motivates prospective candidates. What better way to do this than BLUF writing?!?!

BLUF or bottom line upfront dramatically improves your job descriptions. It makes them more distinctive and memorable than your competitors. BLUF is a pragmatic approach that helps active and passive candidates assess job descriptions and compels them to apply or reply to opportunities faster and easier. How to BLUF:

• Get to the point quickly
• State important ideas upfront to make job evaluations easy
• Start with your conclusion, don’t keep the audience guessing (results, benefits, outcomes)
• Follow up with supporting information (where necessary)
• Leave background information/proof points (where appropriate)

When implementing this approach, a critical success factor is to make it different from standard everyday job descriptions. Use benefits/results/outcomes to help make your job descriptions different. This approach allows you to present expected achievements, projects success, and valuable teamwork experience toward goals. When developing your BLUF, please consider the following questions and do your best to not shoehorn all answers into a single bullet or sentence.

• What expertise will the candidate gain? What will their expertise provide?
• What will this accomplish? Why is it important?
• What will their participation enable or allow? What benefit will it bring to the customer?
• What will they achieve via program management and/or technical skills/tools/practices?

Again, at least up front, each bullet should be candidate-centric, addressing the candidate needs and, subsequently, you or your clients. It’s not about how much work the candidate will do—it’s about the value of their work and the results/benefits/outcomes they gain.

Author: Sean Delaney, GovCon innovator who helps federal agencies with solutions that improve performance, reduce risks, and increase efficiencies, is a Sr. Vice President at MBA CSi

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