Do Your Job Titles Drive Away Younger Candidates?
As we all know, the job hunt frustrates in myriad ways. For me personally, one of the most annoying things was the fact that I seemed to repeatedly come across job titles that made no sense. Case in point: “content specialist.” What the heck was a “content specialist,” and why did it keep turning up in my searches for writing jobs?
As it turns out, “content specialist” is just a needlessly jargonized term for “writer who works with a particular kind of content.” (Thanks, wiseGEEK.) But I didn’t know that during my job hunt. Instead, I just assumed job advertisements calling for “content specialists” were calling for people who weren’t me: if I didn’t know what the title meant, how could I possibly be qualified for the role?
According to Tom Borgerding, CEO of college-marketing agency Campus Media Group and creator and founder of college-recruiting database Mytasca, this kind of thing is incredibly common, especially among younger, college-aged job seekers.
“That’s a hurdle that I’ve seen on a pretty regular basis,” Borgerding says. “We have to get over this [problem] of college students … opting themselves out [of job opportunities ] because their vocabulary is different from what we’re using in the business world.”
What Borgerding means is that many companies drive away younger candidates when they post job advertisements filled with esoteric titles and industry-specific lingo. Candidates who are new to an industry will take a look at the job title or description, find themselves baffled by the language, and decide they aren’t qualified for the role because they can’t understand what, exactly, the job ad is saying.
If companies used more common, casual language instead, many of these candidates might not only find that they are definitely qualified enough to apply, but they may also realize that they’re passionate about exactly the type of job a company is advertising.
Case Study: ‘Outside Sales’ Vs. ‘Account Development Manager’
As an example of how industry- or organization-specific job titles can cause candidates to self-select out of job opportunities, Borgerding offers a story about his own company, Campus Media Group (CMG).
CMG has a position that it calls an “account development manager” (ADM). An impressive title to be sure, but what, exactly, does it mean?
According to Borgerding, the ADM’s responsibilities include things like business development, outside sales, lead generation, and customer support. The ADM, then, is essentially an outside sales person — and that’s a title that people are more likely to understand than they would ‘account development manager.’
“Even for us, when we’re recruiting, if we’re looking for a new outside sales person, we need to be using job titles – at least in the job posts – [that are written in] more common language, rather than industry-specific speak, or things that are too specific to our organization,” Borgerding says.
Borgerding also offers insurance industry job titles as an another example of how impenetrable jargon needlessly limits talent pools. In Borgerding’s experience, insurance companies are not often at the top of many college students’ short lists of places they’d like to work. In part, this is because many of the job titles used by insurance companies are real head-scratchers for the uninitiated.
“In a lot of cases, the job titles used in insurance agencies and insurance companies aren’t necessarily mainstream. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term ‘underwriter,’ I’m not even necessarily sure what that means,” Borgerding explains. “Those are really difficult titles for a college student who may not be familiar with the industry [to understand].”
And if a college student sees a job title they can’t quite comprehend, they’ll likely decide not to pursue the position.
Want to Attract More Talent? Keep It Simple
Given the ways in which unfamiliar job titles and needlessly complicated job descriptions can turn away young talent, Borgerding offers companies some important advice on how to remedy the situation:
1. Ask Your Employees How They Would Describe Their Roles
“My first recommendation is to start conversations with people that have been hired for the position and ask them what words they would use to describe the job,” Borgerding says.
The idea here is to turn to the people who are most familiar with what the job entails and find the layman’s terms they would use to describe the role. Then, you can use that language in your job advertisements.
Once you’ve found suitable candidates through your common-language job titles and descriptions, you can take some time out of the interview process (or onboarding process) to explain the company- and industry-specific jargon related to the role.
2. Add a Cover Letter to Your Job Descriptions
If you’d rather include the company- and industry-specific jargon in your job ad, Borgerding suggests including a cover letter of sorts with each job posting. This cover letter should act as your chance to explain the terms contained in the ad with which candidates may be unfamiliar.
3. Experiment With Different Job Titles
Maybe you know your organization-specific job title isn’t readily understandable for the majority of candidates, but you’re not sure what to change it to. In these cases, Borgerding suggests taking a number of different job title options out for a test drive.
“I would test out variations of [a job title] and use those variations within the job descriptions,” Borgerding explains.
Post different job ads for the same position across different job boards and use different titles and language in each job ad. Then, analyze which ads bring in the greatest response from candidates. This will let you know what kind of language best attracts the talent you seek.
4. Keep It Simple
Ultimately, this is what all of Borgerding’s advice comes down to.
“There’s no reason to make the job titles more complicated than they need to be,” Borgerding says. “People are going to opt out if they don’t understand [the title or the job description]. They’re going to assume they don’t qualify if they don’t understand the words that you’re using.”
So simplify things. Use common, easy-to-understand language. If industry- or company-specific jargon is that important to you, there’s always time to explain it later. The main focus of job advertisements should be to attract qualified candidates — not drive them away because they don’t know what “content specialists” are.