Designing Work Descriptions to Maximize the Utility of Employee Recruitment Efforts

Work descriptions are used for many purposes internal to organizations, but their most transparent use outside the organization’s human resource department is in the realm of employee recruitment. It goes something like this: There is a vacant position that must be filled; the work description is updated and used to advertise the open position internally to other organization members and/ or externally to potentially interested job seekers. The job title and work description are the “meat” of the advertisement and will either catch a job seeker’s eye or not.