Great, detailed information for us Recruiters, thank you! -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adam Compton Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 1:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] What attracts your attention?
I'm also pretty late to the party, but I wanted to chime in. The one, single thing that I wish more job descriptions had is, for lack of a better phrasing, "what's in it for me?". You can safely assume that any desirable candidate is deluged with recruiter emails, gentle queries from friends, advertisements on many websites they visit, etc. If they decide to start looking for a new job, there's lots of jobs waiting for them. The way to distinguish yourself in such a crowded field is to explain what your environment has to offer that a candidate couldn't get anywhere else. What characteristics separate your company from competitors in your industry, or in the system administration field as a whole? What do you have to offer to candidates _besides_ a paycheck? Some suggestions for things that might appeal to people: - You have a large and heterogeneous environment for people to experiment with, so a candidate might reasonably expect to gain experience with a lot of different systems quickly. - You have some specific significant project that you're planning to start up, so a candidate might be enticed to get in on the ground floor of such. For example, "We're going to stand up configuration management from scratch on all XX of our servers" would be very attractive to some people I know. - Perhaps you might pay at- or below-market, but you have a large budget for new hardware, so a candidate could work with the newest bleeding-edge technologies (100-gigabit Ethernet!). - You expect candidates to wear DevOps hats, so you might emphasize opportunities to do development or systems programming in addition to the usual IT responsibilities. Most job descriptions I encounter are just a word salad of "innovative", "intriguing", "cutting-edge", and other such superlatives; I would personally be much more intrigued by an ad that gave me a solid sense of what I could learn and how I could improve myself by joining your shop. - Adam Compton On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 03:59:06PM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote: >> [I *think* this is the right list. Arguably, lopsa-profession would >> be better, but it appears to be completely defunct, or so the archives >> would have me believe. Please redirect me if warranted.] >> >> I'm the lead sysadmin, network engineer, and occasional HVAC tech at >> a small software shop near Boston. We're a combined IT and operations >> team of three, and we need to be four, and that means writing a want ad. >> >> The majority of want ads fall into a few easily sortable >> buckets: >> >> - the large company where everything about hiring is controlled >> by HR. The ad features an acre of boilerplate text, legal reassurances >> that mean nothing because violating them really would be illegal, and >> ends with an invitation to submit a resume at a website which either >> asks you to complete a dozen-page profile or mangles the parsing of >> your uploaded resume... or both. >> >> - the startup buzzword factory looking for a SuperNinjaRockStar DevOps >> person. >> >> - the non-technical company which wrote a job description by >> summarizing what people think Bob did, and wants somebody just like Bob. >> (Sometimes this works out well. Other times, it turns out that >> the reason Bob left is that nobody recognized what he was really >> doing to hold the company together.) >> >> - the recruiter who has a list of technological skills that must >> be checked off, but no actual understanding of the company or the job. >> >> Please assume, for the sake of discussion, that we can avoid >> most of the above traps. >> >> What, as an experienced systems administrator, could actually attract >> your attention to a job ad? What holds your attention long enough for >> you to write a thoughtful cover letter and update your resume? >> >> Suggestions from this thread are likely to be used in an ad on >> sajobs in the near future. >> >> -dsr- >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >> This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators >> http://lopsa.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/ -- Mail scanned by iCritical. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
