– By sounding not very sincere at all.

When a vacancy opens up within your team – quite often it’s all too easy to become preoccupied with finding a clone replacement of the person who ran for the hills as quickly as possible.

It’s simple to see the available role in context of what the previous employee did with it. As a manager, you begin to think “I need one of those”. The knee jerk reaction of drafting the previous person’s CV as a job advert is taken up all too easily.

You script your job advert to forward on to your recruiter of choice via speed-dial, or to advertise by whatever other means necessary to find relevant candidates (I’m sure you can understand our well-meant, if not a little self-serving suggestion of the former option as a likely quicker route to success).

Within this advert, you may take your company mission message and use it as an introduction as if that’s good enough to entice some stranger to apply. I shouldn’t have to tell you that alone sounds pretty boring.

But the real job advert crime is within the main structure. Having a long list of requirements is generally off-putting for candidates but is not necessarily the worst thing– take note to keeping it focused on the day-to-day role responsibilities as one way to wean out candidates without the right experience.

The problems arise when you start sounding like some kind of buzzword dictionary fanatic when describing your ideal candidate and/or what they can expect of your organisation.

Moreover, why on earth would that approach bring about a valuable new candidate?

You may roll your eyes at the idea of another article telling you to adopt gimmicky job advert template and question the chance of finding this approach successful in finding a candidate that can objectively appreciate your strained ‘off-beat humor’ whilst understanding that fun and games aside – they have what it takes to get the job done.

But I implore you to take that option over sounding like some kind turn of the millennium self-help book approach that focuses on shouting multiple synonyms as motivation rather than conveying any level of meaning of your actual team dynamic to a potential candidate.

The cyber security industry in particular, is a candidate driven market. Whilst initiatives are underway to improve education opportunities around the subject matter there is still a large divide and those qualified to take on a role, and companies looking for skill sets. Then we get on to the vastly under-represented group of cyber security professionals who have gained skills in different ways, or those candidates that come from greatly diverse backgrounds who may be overlook your long criteria list with the assumption you are not looking for them.

Don’t settle for the mundane – the reality is you are looking for a candidate who is already a highly-driven person with enough smarts to have carved an interest in a increasingly demanded niche area. Don’t hide inside the corporate membrane and forget to show your individuality – or what kind of attitude you need to get the job done.

Leave behind ‘must like working as an individual and in a team’ and the ‘importance of being passionate’ it’s dull. Highlight what your team are motivated by, what interests bring people together and be genuine in the strengths your team has. Instead of the cookie-cutter approach look for the weak spots in the existing team’s skill sets as the base formula for your next ideal candidate.

Get a bit groovy, it will at least catch attention.

If you have any questions on structuring a job advert, or have a role you would like support filling contact Acumin here .