Better job descriptions. “You are…”

Following some advice that Kris Dunn offered a while ago about making job postings more like what a real person might want out of a job than what you would want out of the person, I’m posting a job for which I’m the hiring manager and sharing it through social nets I belong to. (For those of you who just came back from HR Capitalist, No, I can’t find the HR Capitalist post that I’m thinking of…or dreamed…either.)

Maybe the best part of the exercise was that it allowed me to to include all the aspirational qualities that the right person could exercise in this role. I know, it’s a lot.  But they are certainly the things that keep me going strong.

Let me know how you’d improve this or if you’re interested in striving for “better living though performance-based training” and whole lot more.  And if you want to see the official posting, click this.

You are a SENIOR TRAINING SPECIALIST…

…who is eager to bring better living through performance-based training, which you do by practicing instructional design, program development, and delivering instructor-led training. What really jazzes you up is the chance to tie learning to strategic objectives. It gives work a real sense of meaning and value.

Then again, your feet are solidly on the ground. In fact, nobody knows better than you that day to day, you are constantly working to influence others and make steady progress toward more effective training for the right target audiences. Meanwhile, you are quickly mastering the business content and dynamics of the area you serve, even though that content is devilishly complicated and not well documented. It’s not, but if it were rocket science, you’d persist in learning it, not just for training, but to be a partner to front-line managers. When you have a free moment, it continues to bother your conscience that the effect of training isn’t measured more often. But you patiently look for opportunities to define performance so that you can measure learning. And you continue to propose realistic ways to measure learned whenever the opportunity arises.

You have worked in a number of different groups, cultures, and subcultures. You relish the challenge of learning a new culture, but you try to stay attentive so that you never fully assimilate. You’ve have developed an ability to interpret and appropriately raise issues that will make you and your work effective: how ready are these folks for change, how much will debate and dissent be valued, how much should I compromise, how much should I try to educate folks, and how much should I change my vocabulary so that we can understand one another better.

You adapt yourself to most settings in which you need to work while staying true to your goals. You look for opportunities to raise the standards of performance and training without judging the current state of affairs to be inadequate and benighted. In fact, more often than not, you discover that you need to learn more if you’re going to be excel at this work in this context. You assign yourself and challenge yourself to learn those things.

You believe that you can make a difference. You’ve had some success doing so in a number of places you’ve worked. You stick to your own high standards most of the time, even if leadership is not there to back you up. You have your sights set on what this organization can look like when it’s a very high performing organization. So while you may feel daily setbacks sharply, you bounce back. You are eager to work with those who have a similar vision. You work to influence those who don’t share that vision, aiming to raise their sights through practical, concrete actions and initiatives whenever you get the chance.