Do Your Job Descriptions Make Unicorns Weep Tears Of Joy?

Vu Le has many, many bones to pick when it comes to the finer points of nonprofit admin job descriptions. He’s been focusing on specific items over the past few years at Nonprofit AF (formerly Nonprofit With Balls), but he recently packed everything together in a single post that includes some new, and highly useful, guidelines.

Le includes a paragraph or two to elaborate on each point so by all means, take the time to read his post for the full info. But here’s his list of 19 tips for making your job posting so amazing, unicorns will weep tears of joy:

1. Sound like a human being
2. List your salary range
3. Be realistic with job duties
4. Do not force people to send a resume and ALSO fill out an application
5. Do not ask for references with initial applications
6. Accept equivalent experience for degrees
7. Talk about your org’s values, culture, and what makes it awesome
8. Describe your hiring process and timeline
9. Describe the work schedule and flexibility
10. Break down responsibilities by percentage
11. Ensure requirements match the level and pay of the position
12. Stop requiring a car, driver’s license, car insurance, etc.
13. Knock it off with “must be able to lift 50 pounds.”
14. List reporting relationships
15. Spell out benefits
16. No more “other duties as assigned”
17. Don’t surprise people
18. List a contact, in case people have questions
19. Have a thoughtful statement of equal opportunity and non-discrimination

I found two items from his list hold special applicability to the orchestra field and as such, marked those with bold formatting.

7. Talk about your org’s values, culture, and what makes it awesome

Workplace satisfaction is a long running topic here at Adaptistration and to make a very long story short, the vast majority of orchestras not only undervalue their workplace culture, they tend to ignore it and sweep the results under the nearest carpet. If the field as a whole spent as much time focused on workplace satisfaction as it does on crafting mission statements, we would be in a much better place.

In the end, a mission is only as good as the people implementing it and the first orchestras that take culture and workplace satisfaction seriously are going to be the ones who leverage it to attract managers that would otherwise be beyond what they can pay.

15. Spell out benefits.

I have a feeling this one is going to become increasingly important by the end of the 2017. The American Health Care Act (Trumpcare) is already proposing massive changes to how health insurance is regulated along with providing the ability for states to implement additional restrictions and limitations. If that bill becomes a law, it will become more important than ever for orchestras to list benefits with as much detail as possible.  The alternative is to risk losing good candidates who can smell a bad benefits package by way of nebulous descriptions.

Speaking of job descriptions, drop by Adaptistration Jobs after perusing Le’s article and look at the current crop of arts admin listings with that new filter.