What Lies Beyond the Job Description

Yesterday we heard from Florence Richard, the director of Human Resources (HR) at an asset management firm in California, on the topic of job descriptions. Today we’ll hear more, specifically on treating a job description like an opportunity to express your company’s culture.


Companies tend to focus on describing the position and expertise needed to perform the job and often overlook the soft skills that would make a candidate ideal for the culture.
Hiring managers need to envision the type of candidates they would like to see apply for the open positions and highlight within the job description those desirable personal attributes, in addition to referencing the culture and value statement(s) on the career page of the company’s website. This is a vital way to connect with a prospect who, in turn, sees himself or herself as being attuned to those attributes.
For example, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which for 7 straight years ranked among the top five in Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list, had a job posting for an HR manager that listed the following soft skills needed:
“… good judgment, professionalism, strong interpersonal skills and a collaborative style, High integrity, tact, a positive attitude.”
Another BCG posting for an analyst position listed:
“… establishing positive and productive working relationships; able to generate trust, Ability and willingness to give and receive honest, balanced feedback. Demonstrates competence and character that inspires trust.”
LinkedIn, whose culture was very much set forth by its founder Reid Hoffman, and is reputed to truly value its employees (according to a Glassdoor 2017 employee survey), stated the following in a recent a job posting:
“Our ideal candidate is someone who can work hard, have fun, while dreaming big. Confident, self-aware team player, open to receiving/providing feedback. Possess influential and welcoming communication style.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a review of some old Uber job postings readily reveals its values of Let Builders Build, Always Be Hustlin’, Meritocracy and Toe-Stepping, and Principled Confrontation.
In a posting dated March 21, 2017, for a sales manager position, the first two bullet points in the “Who You Are” section read:
“You are driven, Self-driven and goal-oriented. You are resilient, mentally tough.”
Other bullet points also read:
“You don’t wait for anyone to give you anything—you make it, build it, finish it. You know opportunity is disguised as hard work.”
The way the ideal candidate is described reflects the egotistical personality and self- serving approach (as opposed to a collaborative one) needed in order to succeed according to Uber’s standards at the time. It is important to note that those are soft skills/personal attributes and not technical skills.
On May 16, after its debacle, Uber posted a job for a global claims director.  The “What You’ll Do” section of the position read in part as follows:
“Foster a culture that values critical thinking and problem solving, and encourage constructive feedback, engagement, inclusion and diversity at all levels.”
This indicates a bottom-up shift that one hopes will be applied throughout the organization going forward.
It is important to think about the type of people you want to recruit and not just the skills they need to possess to do the job. Describing these attributes within the job description is a powerful way to attract those candidates with the soft skills your company needs. The candidate who does not have the personal attributes suited to the company’s culture will not be good fit.
One can only hope that Uber’s new management will genuinely empower and support its HR team in the areas of hiring and accountability so that it can recruit the right kind of employees and exit the detractors.
An employee who meshes well with the company culture will be more likely to stay longer and have a lasting positive impact on the organization—and will most likely not wind up becoming an HR problem.
As of this writing, after some additional scanning, it appears that the Uber recruiting team has yet to update all of its job postings to reflect more clearly its new values, but doing so represents a vital start toward driving change from the top as well as the bottom.
Florence Richard is a director of HR at an asset management firm in Sausalito, California. She has 20 years of HR experience.