If you have ever wondered whether it is OK to be a little bit different, a little bit silly, in a job advertisement, consider this.
We started advertising for an office manager in September last year with a very straightforward, boring job advert. We had five inquiries in four weeks, two of which were standard ‘purple crayon’ applications, two were interesting and one, that came via a recommendation from a friend was outstanding. We offered the latter a job at the end of November and they would have accepted – had she not also been offered a job in an adjacent department in the publicly funded organisation they worked for 15% more money than they were already earning but they only had to work 3 days per week. (Mr Cameron! Over here! We might have found some easy ways for you to make some savings at the NHS…).
Less than gruntled, we retired to the pub. We needed help, The BLN is growing and we are working hard to keep pace with the growth. We had a plan. With nothing to lose, we posted a ‘silly’ advert:
Searching for a superhero admin Ninja to join the team
The upshot was over 70 applications in four weeks. We needed a superhero admin Ninja just to process the applications. We had a huge range of brilliant candidates – some of whom wanted to work part time, some full. We could probably have set up a great recruitment agency off the back of the applications.
So the lesson for us was don’t be afraid to be different, and don’t be afraid to tell it how it is. People seem to be far more interested in working with an organisation that doesn’t take itself too seriously, even if there is too much to be done. I was inspired to have the confidence to do something a little different after listening to this awesome talk by Young Me Moon at Business of Software last year https://thebln.com/2010/10/professor-youngme-moon-business-of-software-different/. I am glad I did.
Today, we are pleased to welcome Helen Leighton to the BLN as our new Office Manager. Welcome aboard Helen.
Now get organising!