Effectively deliver your message when writing a job opening (part 2): the candidate profile

So you decided to hire people to work for your company or project, as did we. In a previous post we talked about identifying the target audience for your job opening, we'll now deal with the profile your ideal candidate should match.

Think about what you find really important

Instead of writing down a long list of required knowledge, to us how you work is more important. We like the getting-things-done mentality, but the quality of work delivered is equally important to us. It's mandatory you think about the design and architecture of software, and not just to start coding. Modularity, scalability, reliability and other -ilities will come back to haunt you if you don't pay attention to them. This is also the experience we were talking about earlier.

And of course we can't afford to ignore all of this, since this is the core of our business. We are a team of highly specialized experts providing real quality solutions to our customers. This is the way we work, but it's also who we are and how we are known in the market. So this is also our way to check if you'll fit in in the team, and match the philosophy of our company.

So when composing the ideal profile of our candidates, we don't list required knowledge of this or that framework. We do however provide some pointers that should give you as a candidate an idea of what knowledge we think is required to do the job we have in mind for you. Don't worry if you don't already know all of it, that's ok. But some topics at least should ring a bell, and ideally these are exactly the things you already knew a little bit, but always wanted to know more about. As a consequence, your ability and willingness to continuously learn is very important to us.

So think about what you find really important aspects for the profile of a candidate. It's easy to write and entire page of must-have knowledge and experience, it's much more difficult to bring a consistent message of what your requirements really are and at the same time effectively deliver your message as a future employer. It should breathe the culture and atmosphere of your company, and even this profile part of a job opening should offer a clear view what a candidate can expect when actually working in the company.

We'll talk about this perspective and what to think about when formulating your offer as an employer should in the next follow-up post.