Position Descriptions
While job-hunting as of late, I’ve been seeing a lot of poorly-written lists of IT skill sets in position descriptions, such as:
Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, Salsa, Drupal, Adobe, or similar databases and technologies
None of these things are databases. Sure, Drupal and Salsa rely on databases, but databases they are not. Adobe is, of course, a company and not a product. People still seem to conflate the company with Acrobat or the (ISO-standard) PDF file format, but even that is entirely vague. This has been a problem I’ve seen with contract work, and is a problem I continue to see in position descriptions – a lack of input from people who understand the technical needs of a position leads to an application process that is confusing at best and more commonly inaccurate and misleading. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to gauge my qualification for positions that theoretically involve work within my realm of expertise as well as potentially tailoring CVs for these applications.