Job Descriptions: Not For the Feint-Of-Heart

Thanks to Cincinnati Inquirer music critic Janelle Gelfand for pointing me toward the job description for the President & CEO position at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It just so happens that writing job descriptions is a live-it, breathe-it, and eat-it sort of thing in my Area-51 project so her timing couldn’t be better…

Reading a well crafted job description is always fun and if you know
how to read between the lines, a potential candidate can learn a great
deal about the organization. In the case of the Cincinnati Symphony CEO
job description, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out
what’s going on. Here are a couple of excerpts (emphasis added) to give
you a better idea:

• "Administer, oversee and direct a $34 million arts and entertainment operation and assure financial goals are met through increasing attendance and revenues." – anyone
  care to guess what the organization thinks about the current attendance levels?
• "Proven change management experience." – a quality after my own heart…
• "Resource Management: In a resource-constrained environment"  – that’s a new management-speak term for me…

Give the entire job description a read and weigh-in with your own thoughts and observations.