Job titles and recruiting. « THE DREAM IN ACTION

September 7, 2010
Posted by Ryan Graves

Job titles and recruiting.

This is going to be a short post, because the reality is that I don’t know a ton about this topic. But I’m right down in the mix of it and I’ve got a few first lessons that I think might be valuable for the folks who are as fresh as I am. I don’t mean to discredit what I’ve learned and I don’t mean to state this as gosspil or any kind of genius, it’s just real and from the trenches.

Title does matter.

In posting a job, it’s absolutely critical that you get the job title correct. It matters for the company to guide the structure of the team, it matters for the individual to provide clarity on what her responsibilities may be, and it matters for marketing and getting people interested in applying for the job. It needs to be clear and descriptive enough that in one glance the persons applying will have a solid idea of the work they will be doing. Similarly, it helps to have enough buzz words that it’s at least some what appealing to an applicant…if not sexy. There’s trends in job titles and as an executive hiring for those roles it’s pretty darn important to understand those trends.

UberCab is currently hiring for an awesome business side startup role that will be responsible for huge growth of our company if executed on correctly. The job started out as ‘City Manager’, thinking that this person would own the overall operations of a city. We thought the generality of the title would imply great responsibility and opportunity, I was wrong. We realized that nobody understands what the hell a City Manger would do. The title had to change.

We rewrote the job post and title to read ‘Operations Mgr’. This seemed closer to what we needed but soon realized that Operations Mgr was attracting a type of person that’s was way off from what we needed. It attracted an older crown who had “operations” experience doing projects with construction companies and the like. Not our target. Operations Mgr could also be misread in the startup world for a technical operations role, which this role is not.

Finally, we’re on Business Operations Analyst, first because it captures the unique business side startup opportunity that we’re offering. Second, the role is heavily operational in that there will be management of our fleets on a day to day basis. And third, the title of analyst implies someone that may be a bit junior but will be data driven and work their ASS off. In the consulting world analysts are the grunts, well in the startup world we’re all the grunts. Our understanding of this role and the title that we’ve chosen to recruit for it are optimized and iterated upon and now we’re really starting to see the type of resumes we originally setup for.

I’ll keep this post update with our hiring status & you can apply here > http://ubercab.com/jobs

0 Comments

Posted Under Entrepreneurship People & Leadership

RenanRodrigues 5 pts

Hello Ryan. First of all I would like to congratulate you for the brilliant idea is UBER. I did live in San Francisco and I was in the limo service business before you started the company. I am living in Denver now and I am about to start a car service business here and I would like to know if you have the intention to bring UBER over to the mountains region. It would be a great pleasure to work with such a company as UBER. Thank you and if you like to contact me, my email is renan.luiz.1983@gmail.com

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IanSiegel 5 pts

Hi Ryan - I'm the cofounder of a startup called ZipRecruiter (http://www.ziprecruiter.com) launched in January of 2010. We enable hiring managers to post to multiple job boards with one submission. Over 10k businesses have signed up so far so we know A LOT about job titles that work and those that don't.

In a nutshell here are two simple rules to live by with job titles:

1. Keep it generic
2. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS

Here is an example of two jobs launched within a week of each other, in the same market, and with effectively the same job description:

Senior Advertising Products Analyst u00e2u0080u0094 (6 candidates)
Marketing Pro u00e2u0080u0094 (33 candidates)

We also found in looking at our macro-data that employers who use ALL CAPS in the job title average 50% less applicants.

patrickjohearn 5 pts

along the same lines as your post, i find it interesting how one-sided many job listings are. most provide an extremely detailed description of what the company expects from prospective applicants (both in terms of desired/required qualifications and duties that one will perform in this role). in stark contrast, however, most of these job listings provide little or no detail as to what the company is offering prospective employees. rather than a vague "salary + equity package" or "include salary requirements", it would be refreshing to see more companies demonstrate greater transparency by putting their compensation package out there. i realize there are concerns with such an approach; many companies may feel that publicizing this information could decrease their leverage in negotiating with new hires, or could give competitors some advantage in recruiting the best new hires, etc. maybe for those reasons, being more discrete with such information makes the most sense, however, i think taking this more transparent approach to hiring - telling potential hires not only exactly what you want from them, but exactly what you are offering them - from the very earliest stage is more in-line with the values of trust, openness, and shared risk that are often championed, at least in the startup arena. just adding my $.02 to the points you've already made (and i agree with what you've said here). good luck filling the position, and hurry up and get ubercab to nyc already ;)

ben 107 pts

Tellin in like it is

THE DREAM IN ACTION

By Ryan Graves

Job titles and recruiting.