Do the words you use confuse or clarify?

I remember the very first engineering design course I took, when slide rules were still used to build rocket ships to the moon. The professor showed a picture of a bridge that didn’t meet in the middle and said something like, "In this course, you'll learn how to make sure this never happens. It starts by communicating exactly what you want, first in words, and then on paper." The course itself was less inspiring than the concept, but the point was made: if you can’t describe exactly what you want, don’t be surprised if you don’t get it.

With the professor’s admonition in mind, and on a more immediate level, I’m going to suggest that most job descriptions don’t define the work that needs to be done, and most resumes don’t define the work that people can do. As a result, it’s no wonder people can’t find jobs, and companies can’t find enough people.

I must have looked at 10,000 resumes and 5,000 different job descriptions in the last 10-15 years, and most of them were nothing more than a bunch of generic and lofty statements that said very little. Following are some classics. Can you figure out if they’re for a product manager, accountant, sales rep, VP Operations, or bank teller? As you’ll discover, without describing how they’re measured, they’re just words filling up space.

The role requires excellent communication skills, ability to see the “big picture” and ability to direct efforts appropriately on prioritized tasks.

Good organizational skills and ability to meet tight deadlines in an environment of competing priorities.

This role demands strong leadership while also recognizing the sensitivity of working through a customer-facing partner, and requires strong relationship skills to demonstrate this on a situational and strategic basis.

Self-starter, with ability to thrive in a dynamic business environment that requires rapid learning, multitasking and prioritizing under tight deadlines and with minimal direction.

Demonstrated superior quantitative and qualitative research that provide business insight and support decision-making processes.

Through face-to-face interactions with customers, you will have the opportunity to provide top-notch customer service.

Here are some equally meaningless statements found in some form on most of the profiles on LinkedIn.

Experience in product planning, brand strategy, product marketing, and management consulting.

Successfully built high performing business team that created and maintained systems and tools, drove sales strategy and tactics, defined and implemented sales processes, created and delivered training programs for on-boarding new people and ensured quality assurance.

I am a driven, high-energy marketing executive with a passion for bringing ground-breaking technical solutions to market, starting from the concept to launch and through rapid growth.

Sadly, most of these jobs are great, and many of these people would be perfect, but the mixing and matching of skills and generic, no-nothing words prevent them from ever crossing paths.

One way to bridge this communications gap is by defining the job before defining the person doing the job.

One way to bridge this communications gap is by defining the job before defining the person doing the job. This can be as simple as a series of 4-5 SMARTe performance objectives, rather than the traditional list of skills, experiences and generic statements like the above. A SMARTe objective is Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, includes the Result (the deliverable), is Time-bound, and describes the environment. The environment covers the pace and culture of the organization, the resource restraints and any unusual challenges. This approach makes great business sense, since clarifying job expectations this way has been shown to be the primary factor driving interviewing accuracy, on-the-job performance, job satisfaction and motivation.

Here’s a sample job posting demonstrating how SMARTe objectives can be used to both define the work and attract the right types of people. (Note: as part of the research for The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, David Goldstein of Littler Mendelson provided a validation of this approach. Here’s a link to his white paper and a recent webcast.)

To increase the probability of being interviewed, candidates should describe their accomplishments using the same SMARTe structure. Here's one I found that demonstrates how accomplishments should be described:

Promoted within peer group to head up 7 member product management team for company’s high tech, operations, and distribution product lines, representing $65M+ in annual license revenues. Consistently ranked in Top 5% of company’s employees for product management excellence and revenue growth contribution.

Ask SMARTe Questions and Give SMARTe Answers

In The Most Important Interview Question of All Time post I suggested that interviewers describe each performance objective and have the candidate provide an example of a comparable accomplishment for each one. The SMARTe acronym can be used to guide the subsequent fact-finding to clarify the answer, e.g., what was the result, when did it happen, what was the environment like, etc. If you’re the candidate and the interviewer doesn’t use this approach, you can force the question by asking something like, “What are some of the big challenges in this job and how will the person’s performance be measured?” Then structure your response using the SMARTe format. This approach ensures both the interviewer and the candidate fully understand what needs to be done and if the candidate can do it.

The words people use matter. Generic statements and skills-based words don’t matter much, especially when looking for a job or for someone to hire. The first step in bridging this gap starts by defining the work that needs to be done, not the person doing the work.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the creator of Performance-based Hiring and the author of the Amazon Top 10 business best-seller, Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007). His new book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, (Workbench, 2013) has recently been published. Feel free to join Lou's new LinkedIn group and his Wisdom About Work series on Faceback.