On the use of job jargon and on 7 key interview elements

This episode is on the jargon in job adverts and how to avoid the most common mistakes. Besides, we will walk you through the seven key elements to interview guide. Enjoy the video! We also attach the script below! Do you have comments, feedback or ideas on topics we should deep dive into next time? Then don’t hesitate to drop us a message at our host Elena Galli’s LinkedIn.

Transcript

Hey there! Today, we’ll talk about the jargon of jobs and about interview guides, do you use one?

Welcome back to The Tea on Recruiting, where we share insightful and thought-provoking content that can help you shape your recruiting career.

The jargon of jobs

Code-like acronyms, technical babble, and business buzzwords. We’ve had enough.mJargon makes other people feel less intelligent and well, it makes you sound like a liar, and I don’t think that’s what you’re going for. We read the Jargon of Jobs, and let’s take a look at the notes we wrote down.

So let’s start off with something that might make you jump out of your seat.

Sixty six percent of young applicants don’t understand job ads full of jargon, and as a consequence, they don’t feel like they should apply to see how this would be a problem. Especially since in the U.S., thirty eight percent of job ads contain jargon.

What are the most used expressions, you ask? Well… “team player”, “dynamic”, “self-starter”, “empower”, “proactive”, “leverage”, “window of opportunity”, “proven track record”, “core competency”, and “take it to the next level”.

Ok, so I have to admit, as a European, I would also myself be a little confused if I were to read that I need to peel an onion in a job ad for something that it’s not in the hospitality industry. And maybe also “Make hay” or “Blue sky thinking” would be slightly puzzling to me. But to be fair, when it comes to “Open the kimono”, I feel like I should set aside about an hour to just talk about how wrong that is and why. I won’t do that today, but I will definitely set a little bit of time aside in the next episode to talk about this expression that is very much used in the professional environment and why you should not do that anymore. For now, let’s take a deep breath and carry on.

Some industries are guiltier than others, and this is the top five. We see information technology, marketing, finance and business, human resources and media. And now we want to wrap up this section with a quote by Professor Michael Handford: “Language does not only reflect reality, but can help construct it. Business jargon can help construct a particular way of seeing the world. If you use language (especially jargon and metaphors) that is very focused on marketing, profit and growth, then this will prioritize certain practices and devalue others.”

Are you ready for today’s second piece of content?

The 7 key elements to interview guides

Interviews are as difficult as they are important, but you don’t have to feel lost. We read an article about Interview Guides and their Seven Key Elements. So, using interview guides has a specific set of benefits to it. It gives structure to your process. It ensures that all candidates have an almost identical candidate experience and Equal assessment. Cause if you ask the same questions to all candidates and use the same system to evaluate the answers, then you’re going to reduce the risk of bias. And here are the seven main elements to interview guides:

• Invitation and briefing.Now you’re going to be seeing a template on screen, and as you can see, it all starts with a very clear subject line that calls the name of the company into action, and it talks about interview availability. So everything is very clear for the candidate who’s reading this email. Then it talks about once again job title and company name, just making sure that the candidate knows what this is all about. It then shares information about the format, length of the interview, and the people who are going to conduct it. Finally, it shares three different sets of available dates for the candidate to pick, and it tells them what they need to bring. So in this case, documents and work sample test would be the blank spaces for you to fill in with more details. Now what this does is it’s setting expectations of both ends. The candidate knows exactly what the company is expecting of them, and they know what to expect themselves.

• Setting the stage.This is when you take care of technical details, such as the location of the interview.

• Welcoming the candidate.This is when you might want to share the history of your organization or show them around the office.

• Questions.When you determine what kind of questions you want to ask your candidates, you might want to follow the STAR method, for example, which stands for Situation, Task, Action and Result.

• Candidate questions.It’s important for you to prepare for possible questions they might ask you as well.

• Wrap up.This is when you thank your candidates for their time. You also tell them what the next steps are going to be. You ask them for a reference and then you tell them how they can reach out to you.

• Scoring.You want to score your candidate’s evaluations right after the interview.

And now onto the CandE Crash.

CandE Crash

You know it! The more barbaric your treatment of candidates, the more demonic the reviews on your Glassdoor page. Shout out to a company we won’t name. Let’s read this.

“The interview was slightly chaotic. There were five people in my interview, and not all of them spoke (It was done via a video call). Not everyone turned on their video, and it did not seem like they knew what kind of questions they wanted to ask me. At some point, it felt like they were trying to get competitive intel rather than consider me as a serious candidate.”

Got something to say about this? Drop a comment in the section below. We’d love to pick your brains. Help us get better at helping you get better with your help.

If there is anything that you want us to explore further in terms of subjects that we should touch upon or dive deeper into, why don’t you reach out to me on LinkedIn under my name Elena Galli or via email at elena@starred.com.

Now thank you for watching The Tea on Recruiting. Take care, and see you soon!

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