How to create a vacancy correctly?

Tanya Evdokimenko

When you prepare the text of a vacancy, you need to understand that this is a selling text. Even if we are talking about filling out a ready-made form, as, for example, it happens on App2Top.ru .

The candidate, after reading the vacancy, ideally, should immediately decide to send you his resume, and also be ready for a test assignment and for several rounds of interviews.

This means that you are selling a vacancy right now. Not on an abstract company website, not in response to the first letter of a potential employee, not in a face-to-face conversation during an interview, but at this very moment when a person’s gaze slides over the lines of a vacancy.

The success of the sale depends on the clarity of the offer. It should be clear from the vacancy:

• who is looking for;
• for which project;
• for what tasks;
• who is he looking for;
• what does the company expect from the candidate;
• what the applicant will receive.

The answers to these questions should form a clear and attractive picture, demonstrating why a person will be better off with you than where he is now. We will try to describe all these aspects, and at the same time consider the description of the company profile.

For the structure of the vacancy itself, there are many templates that can be followed. Almost every job portal offers its own approach, although they usually do not differ much from site to site. They have to be followed. It is ok. But as part of working with any template, it is important not to forget about the answers to these questions.

Company profile is the first step to attracting a candidate

Most of the resources that allow you to publish a vacancy, employers usually have a profile. This is true for both App2Top and HeadHunter and LinkedIn.

It is necessary to write about yourself in it “as for the first time”, even if you have been on the market for many years, “everyone knows” about you, and the resume stream consists not only of former masseurs and graduates of vocational schools.

It is important to formulate the first sentence well with the main message on positioning. For example, such a company has been doing this for so long with so many employees and has achieved this. Decide how you differ from other companies and use it in the description.

All applicants want (at least minimal) guarantees of stability, so it is important to indicate how old the company is. Young studios can tell you how long their tops have been in game development. List the main projects of the company. Make it clear that you have a flow of investments or nursing products, that this is not a job for three months with a subsequent salary delay, but a guaranteed income and a beautiful entry in the portfolio of a potential employee.

It’s a good idea to write some of this information or duplicate it completely in the “Conditions” column in the vacancy itself, because we remember that we want to help candidates make a decision about sending a resume here and now.

Important: do not praise yourself, no one likes it.

It’s a good tone to indicate the project for which an employee is needed

It is very important when writing a vacancy to indicate the project for which you are looking for a candidate.

It doesn’t matter if you are a product company, an outsourcer or a service provider, the main thing is to help your candidate make a decision by telling about the project.

If possible, write the name of the game and give us a link to the landing page, to the store, to the page in social networks, a presentation in PDF. If you can’t disclose the name, specify the genre and platforms, whether it’s a new project or an existing development.

By the way, for a new project, you can specify at what stage of development you are now – alpha, beta or softlonch. In addition to the project itself, it would be great to write what tools you use: trackers, task managers, messengers, Wiki, Confluence, Google Docs. But keep silent if you set tasks in a Skype chat.

Decide on the tasks when deciding on hiring an employee

Looking for an employee based on the abstract “need a programmer” is not the best idea. Even before the mechanism of “I’ll go to HR, let him find a person” has started, it is necessary to formulate in detail the pool of future responsibilities for a new team member.

The title of the position does not imply an answer to the question of what tasks the specialist will have to solve. Two game designers will have different responsibilities on the same project. For example, one will deal with the balance of events, and the second with the elaboration and introduction of new mechanics. Both are game designers, but the requirements for them are different.

Think about it and list exactly what a beginner has to do. It will take you 5-10 minutes, but it will save a lot of time when selecting both you and the candidate.

Formulate who you need

This is a logical continuation of the previous paragraph. After compiling a list of tasks, it is not so difficult to specify the position and role of a specialist. After all, while the company is looking for a messiah or does not know who it needs, there is a risk of spending a lot of extra effort. The most suitable candidate may be rejected, or even not respond to the vacancy at all.

At the same time, it is important to keep in mind what place a newcomer should have in the company structure, to whom he will obey and whom he will lead.

Do not embellish reality, otherwise you risk not only not finding an employee, but also harming your own image. For example, when looking for a designer for an advertising creative, you should not write that you are looking for an artist. And the vacancy itself will lose a lot if there is one thing in its name, and another in the list of specified tasks.

Having decided on the position, you can proceed to the requirements.

Don’t look for the perfect candidate, look for someone who will solve your problems and fit the team

Sometimes it is physically painful to read the requirements for candidates. It may seem as if recruiters copy the description of requirements from each other, and then give it to a conditional specialist, who is not a customer either, so that he adds “something interesting” to the list.

This gives rise to long and frightening lists, which can be satisfied at best by Superman or Green Lantern, capable of turning any part of the body into one or another tool.

Do not demand from candidates what you do not need, even if it is important for other companies. Let you have one item in the mandatory requirements, but it will meet the real needs. Specify everything else in the desired skills and qualities. Massage therapists and insurers will write to you in any case, but you will not scare away intelligent and suitable people.

Important: the recruiter must know what kind of behavior is welcomed and encouraged in the company, what kind of atmosphere has developed in the team, what kind of management style on the project. And that’s what it’s all about, how you want the employee to treat the project, plan his time, build relationships in a team, communicate in a team, convey his vision to technical and non-technical specialists, solve conflicts and develop professionally.

What should I offer an employee?

Imagine that the order in which bonuses and compensations are listed in your job description is a hierarchy of priorities for potential employees.

Are you ready to put the words about the fee in the first place now?

Money is important, but it is not the main thing for our industry (I hope). They are not the first to motivate and inspire.

Before listing all the components of your compensation package, it would be good to spend time figuring out what exactly the current employees value in the company. Conduct a survey, arrange a small brainstorm to find out what is so good you offer, what pleases your colleagues now, what distinguishes you from previous employers?

After you decide on this list, you can think about things more material and traditional. For example:

• full-time or freelance work;
• hourly pay or rate;
• work in the office, remote or the ability to combine;
• flexible schedule or tight hours, from how many to how many;
• registration in the state or by a contractor;
• completely white PO or “options” (subject to options, it is better to skip this point);
• medical insurance;
• transport interchange, distance from metro/public transport, availability of parking spaces;
• the ability to organize your meals;
• encouraging sports and/or English;
• payment of vacations and sick days (especially important for those who are not registered in the state);
• trial period;
• pegging to the dollar.

Do not write about buns and cookies, it is no longer youth, stylish and fashionable.

Additional tips for writing a job

The customer must take part in the preparation of requirements for a specialist. A customer is someone who desperately needs a new specialist, that is, a team leader or a project manager, a department or the entire company. It is the customer who can help the recruiter understand what skills a newcomer needs in this team on this project.

If you do not have a multinational team and daily communication does not take place in English, write a vacancy in Russian. You will still have to check the level of foreign language proficiency in the further selection, and so you will avoid annoying mistakes and will not weed out the specialists suitable for you.

Give the vacancy to a competent and well-written employee for proofreading, show it to a technical specialist, let the PR man take a look, show the main keeper of “memas and accordion” in the team so that he finds what could be ridiculed there in theory.

Read it again after all the edits and comments.

Now you have a beautiful, competent, selling description written in human language. Feel free to post a vacancy.