How to write a horrible job description

WARNING: if you’re a recruiter who lacks a sense of humour than this article isn’t for you. We created this guide to help you realise some of the mistakes you may be doing using reverse psychology.

First, a quick reminder, a job description’s chief purpose is NOT to outline the primary duties and responsibilities that are involved in a particular job. Job descriptions shouldn’t be based on thorough job analysis and should in themselves be as brief and factual as possible. You can find them on many websites, social media job ads and if you’re old school, in newspapers. In few bullet points, we will advise you on how to discourage potential employees from applying and becoming part of the team! Thanks to that, your career website will run faster, due to lower load and you would save so much by avoiding new hires! Moving on… Writing a bad job description is hard work, so here are some tips to help you achieve your goals:

An inaccurate gibberish filled job title! 

The job title must always be misleading! It shouldn’t give an idea of real duties and tasks that the candidate will be performing.
-Example of a revealing and accurate job title: junior accountant, HR manager or director’s assistant.

Sounds boring, right? Everyone that sees it will get an idea of what the job will be about and no-will be surprised or confused by looking at it.
-Example of exciting job titles: Pokeball coach, unicorn’s manager or rockstar java programmer

Much better, right? The benefits from this are that no qualified candidate will be sending his CV + your HR team will get to look like a bunch of idiots. Be ready for the avalanche of CVs!

Write about the subordinate tasks and forget about the primary functions

Primary responsibilities are so easy to guess, don’t waste your time mentioning them and describing them in details. If your candidate cannot imagine his main tasks in the advertised position, it means just one thing. That person is not good enough for your company! Sorry, not so sorry.

Here are a few examples of some excellent descriptions:

-teacher: “Talk while students sleep”

-accountant: “Take numbers on pieces of paper, rearrange them and put them on different pieces of paper”

-driver: “Spend most of the day looking out the window”

Don’t hold yourself back, when writing about required skills and qualifications 

Kids are so smart nowadays; your purple unicorn is right around the corner… Your potential employee should know a lot and have many certificates to prove it.

-Foreign languages? At least 5!

-Programming? At least in 3 different languages!

-Training courses? Every weekend!

-Soft skills? All of them!

-University degrees? At least 4, but from completely different faculties!

Of course, feel free to add some more.

Don’t forget, that it’s a waste of time and money to let your employee learn at work. If he or she doesn’t know it before employment, it means that person won’t be able to cope with the tasks at your company.

There is no need to mention the location of your company. 

You can provide the address of your company on the first day of work. I mean your candidates don’t care as they’re always excited about riding the bus or tube to work! Public transport continues to be cheap, fast and never crowded. They also have the right to see where their taxes are being spent. From time to time it’s nice to have an hour just for yourself on the bus.

Focus on your company’s history

Every candidate wants to know when the company was established and how it grew over the years. The future is overrated. It is not important for anyone to know what are the targets to complete and plans for the future. Everyone needs a break from the growth. Let’s slow down a bit and recollect about the beautiful past and the company’s culture.

Benefits, and by that I mean gym card, maternity leave and other extras employees don’t need… 

A company doesn’t hire you to work out or give birth to kids. Slow down, you just need to work here, and that’s it. You don’t need to give us further dissatisfaction and jealousy from your shaped body or showing us pictures of your newborn.

Relationships

Love affairs and melodrama? Not exactly. I mean, that can happen, but there’s no need to talk about that in the job description. By relationship we mean, who’s your boss and who’s your boss’s boss. But you shouldn’t describe it. The candidate should do his research and learn it by himself.

When Summer approaches.

The main topic in the company’s corridors is going to be about their summer holidays destinations. When you hire, most of the people are for sure curious to know how many days per year they can slack off on. Just don’t write about it… Be more creative, than to mention the typical “21 days per year”.

Try to use business jargon.

Young people are using slang all the time. Maybe it’s time for you to knock all the youngsters out. For the first time, they won’t understand you. Don’t miss the chance!

Nowadays teenagers and young adults are depressed and sad.

That’s why in your job description you should try to add a bit of negativity and anti-motivational expressions.

Everyone wants to be a rebel.

I can imagine, that when you get older, it’s even more challenging to be one. Especially when you’re working in the human resources department. So, here’s a bit of a piece of advice, but only if you want to go back to your teenage years and the good times when you were going to the hard rock concerts. The tip is, to be a rebel recruiter, write messy job descriptions and act crazy with candidates. You’ll feel young and chaotic again thus you’ll be happy.

So To sum up, if you wish to fail at recruiting follow the steps above and your wish will be granted. A job description is a representation of your company and part of your employer’s branding, and thanks to these tips you will for sure ruin them and get fired.