Poorly Advertised Job Role?

[Jon Malbon]

OK, Job names at one company mean something totally different to another. For example, Account Manager at one of our client companies means 'The person who won the business over the phone through a cold call !'. At our place though it means 'Very senior manager with 4 middle to senior managers (with teams of around 20 each, team leaders, programmers, analysts etc.) reporting directly to him/her'.

So we have a job open now and all we get is recent graduates, IT Support technicians, call centre staff etc..

We can't advertise it as a Senior Project Manager (or can we) as the Senior Project Managers report into the Account Manager so what to do ? Any tips folks?

PS - if you're a senior project manager/account manager with experience of website shopping systems, have worked in a similiar role for a simliar sized company then me a shout so we can fill this role !

http://careers.next.co.uk/headoffice/VacancyDetails121824.aspx?

Cheers

Jon

[Peter Gold]

Jon

Can you mention Ecommerce Expert or Next Website in job title? I personally think the AM title is a red herring and not an issue; the more important issues are that the job title attract the right people and the job desc gives the right kind of detail. The job at the link you have added does not in my opinion appear to be much like what you describe and needs to have an intro paragraph that is less formal/HR and tells the applicant what you want and what they will do.

Hope that helps.

Peter

[Jon Malbon]

Cheers Peter. I've changed the job title now! The problem is that we have an E-Commerce Account Manager too which confuses things slightly. 2 or 3 good applications anyway out of the... 20 !

[David Graham]

Hello Jon,

We have similar problems with job titles in Orange, especially in our sales and IT&N teams. I once in interview an 'area manager' at Macdonalds for a CSR job, for them to point out that they managed a small area of the restaurant, not sure if thats MacDonalds or the candidate with some creative thinking.

In the job descriptions we quite often put alternative job titles so that we can give the candidate a feel of what level the role is at. Adding the number of direct reports we find also helps. We also add quite a few screening questions relating to the role, to keep the applications relevant.

I noticed the new launch of the new next site, I have to say it looks great. We are relaunching www.orange.co.uk/jobs in the next month or so. Which agency have you used out of curiosity? Would love to meet up sometime to discuss how you recruit for your retail store, we have 250+ across the country.

David

[Jon Malbon]

Thanks David. Im glad im not alone !

Re: agency stuff, meeting up etc send me a message through here and ill get back to you when im back off holiday in a fortnight !

Gotta rush !

Cheers

Jon