Realistic job ads get more applicants. Who knew?

We’ve all seen the newspaper ads looking for people who know PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Python, Django, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax, Flash, multimedia reporting, photo editing, video editing, Incredible Hulk strength, etc.

Except most of us have never really seen those people in real life. Hmmm, what gives? Colleen on Careers over at Poynter says that newspapers need to start having more realistic job ads if they hope to actually get applicants:

The market has changed. We know the kinds of people we need to address these changes — and we want the “walk-on-water” candidate with all the Web and interpersonal skills to help us achieve our goals online.

A dose of reality: Ask for too much and you may find that too few candidates respond.

Some ads for online positions list an unrealistic range of qualifications for a single position. For example, seeking candidates who have expertise in PHP and Web development, as well as multimedia production, is asking for a lot.

Instead, focus on what you really need in the person who will fill this position. Define the goals for your new hire and determine the basic qualifications and the top five necessary skills.

If someone really had all those skills, do you think they’d be applying to a newspaper, making substantially less than what they could be making in other industries? In reality those skills I listed above can be broken down into distinct areas and positions. If newspapers have proper job ads (and positions to go with those ads) they’ll get better applicants who can help make their papers better.

First, Web development is usually broken down into front end and back end programming. Front end is the user interface and what a person interacts with, while the back end is the guts that makes a database driven site work (and anything with a CMS). Front end programming requires expert-level knowledge of HTML and CSS (and all the browser compatibility issues surrounding CSS), with some or a lot knowledge of javascript and Ajax.

Back end programming requires a high-level knowledge of a database language like MySQL in addition to at least knowing one language like PHP, Ruby or Python very well. The thing is, if someone knows PHP they can easily learn Python and Ruby. These languages share a lot in common, and programmers are constantly learning new languages.

I’d be more impressed with someone who knew one of those languages very well than someone who know all three languages at an intermediate level. Depth is more important than breadth for certain positions. If you need a programmer to learn a new language, he or she easily can.

Many front end programmers know some PHP and MySQL, while many back end programmers know some HTML and CSS, but few really know both well. They are distinctly different tasks. That’s why Web development companies have both front end and back end programmers.

Web companies don’t realistically expect people to know both well. And Flash? Well, many Web development companies have people whose only job is to work with Flash and ActionScript 3.

Multimedia reporting, whether it be with photos, audio or video, is distinctly different than Web development. It generally requires a strong grasp of journalism, whereas Web development just requires a strong grasp of Web development. You’re not going to find many people who can do journalism and Web development well.

And you certainly aren’t going to find many people who can do multimedia reporting, front end development and back end development. I do know both multimedia reporting (and traditional reporting) and front end development, but I don’t know much back end development. I always work with people who specialize in back end development.

I’ve also been doing Web work a lot longer than I have been doing journalism, which is why I have a varied skill set, but I still look at a lot of job ads and think to myself, “I’m not remotely qualified for this position based on the laundry list of things they want a candidate to have.” Yet, I know my skills and knowledge would be a big asset to most journalism companies.

Newspapers need to stop with these ridiculous job ads that ask for the moon, because they’re going to find it hard to find applicants. The ironic part is that I usually see these ads from smaller papers or papers that aren’t doing very well. I rarely see ridiculous job ads from a newspaper that gets new media or from the really big newspapers — the kind of big-time papers you would think would go after these mythical dream candidates.

This leads me to believe that the people hiring new media talent at many newspapers don’t have a clue about what they are looking for. It’s also important to know what a position is supposed to do. Are you hiring a back end programmer? Are you hiring a multimedia reporter? Are you hiring an online journalist? Are you hiring a front end programmer?

Or are you just trying to find someone with some fancy acronyms on his resume so you can feel like you are trying to improve your newspaper with a fancy new hire?

If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll never find what you need.

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  • http://patrickbeeson.com Patrick Beeson

    I wrote a similar post about an actual position a recruiter e-mailed me about last year.

    I think your premise is correct, though I’m finding it more common to see Web designers with some programming experience thanks largely to frameworks like Django and Ruby on Rails.

    But a journalist/Web designer/programmer is a rare find indeed!

  • http://www.patthorntonfiles.com pat

    Patrick,

    I am finding it more and more common to see Web designers taking on some of the light-end programming work. Django and Rails will also make it possible for more people to make more complex sites.

    I am personally working hard to learn PHP and MySQL. I hope to start looking into Rails later this year (I’d want to do some Ruby work first). But I’ll never be nearly as good of a back end programmer as some of my friends with their fancy Comp Sci degrees.

    That job recruitment e-mail you received is ridiculous. I monitor journalism job boards because I think that the amount of openings and the kinds of openings are an important window into the state of journalism. I see plenty of ridiculous job postings all the time. I’m not sure who they get to respond to them.

    I really think the problem for many newspapers is that they don’t know what to look for, so they try to find it all in each candidate. This is really an issue of not having the right managers in place to lead Web teams at many newspapers.

    You can’t expect one person to do it all, and you’ll never be able to find anything if you don’t know what you are looking for.

  • http://patrickbeeson.com Patrick Beeson

    @pat

    PHP and MySQL is so 2006! (Kidding)

    You should definitely check out Django if you’re familiar with the basics of programming (experience in JavaScript, PHP, etc). It’s a wonderful framework that is really easy to use for a variety of publishing-related tasks.

    And it’s got a great following with plenty of documentation.

  • http://www.patthorntonfiles.com pat

    Ha ha. It’s kind of true that PHP is yesterday’s flavor, but it’s still great for me to learn, especially for freelance Web clients.

    I wanted to use Django at my newspaper, but the IT department won’t support Python. I can use, for whatever reason, Rails.

    So, I’m taking to learning PHP and MySQL first, because we do support that, and then later on I’m going to look into Rails.

    I wish I could use Django. I wonder how many newsroom are blocked from trying something like Django by the IT department? My IT department just loves ASP. Yuck. I’m not learning that anytime soon.

  • http://www.howardowens.com/ Howard Owens

    Obviously, you don’t see the resumes I get.

    Really good programmers know more than just a handful of languages/technologies.

    It’s not unusual for me to get resumes from graphic designers who know PHP.

    It’s hard to build a modern web site yourself without some scripting language capability, so designers learn JavaScript.

    Doing Flash well requires ActionScript, which is much like JavaScript.

    Many, many young programmers and designers come from the open-source, DIY background and often have outside clients, and for them, they provide full service — design, PHP, CSS/DHTML/JavaScript, etc. … and the best are very standards-compliance oriented so they know XML and XHTML pretty well.

    This broad range of ability usually doesn’t apply to the .Net/Microsoft-centric types, and I don’t hire those types … never have anywhere I’ve been a hiring manager.

    Also, if your resume comes to me and shows only limited knowledge (say, you only do design, or you only do PHP (or even Python/Django), I question your self-motivation, and I only hire self-motivated people. Real geeks are hungry to learn more and have been since a young age. They know a lot and want to learn more, and those are the kinds of people I hire.

    We want people who love to learn, because this is a fast moving world and you have to keep up. If you want to be a nimble, innovation company, you need to have nimble, innovative people.

    Most newspaper companies pay programmers and designers competitive wages, especially for the best talent, otherwise they risk losing them.

    FWIW, We’re a Zope and Drupal shop.

  • http://patrickbeeson.com Patrick Beeson

    @pat

    IT departments are right to only support certain environments for development. Usually, you stick with one (maybe two) because the ops folks need to be comfortable supporting that environment.

    ASP.NET was the flavor of the day when I was in Roanoke. A lot of what makes this environment attractive is the development software (Visual Web Developer) that provides a Dreamweaver-like interface.

    The code it renders by default is horrible, and it takes some wrangling to past the Web standards test.

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