Crafting Job Descriptions That Inspire: A Guide to Impact Hiring for Social Good
In the realm of hiring for social impact roles, the art of crafting a compelling job description is crucial. It's not just about listing the skills and qualifications needed; it's about painting a picture of the impact the role has, the mission it serves, and the kind of individual who would thrive in it. From my experience and insights gained from various resources, including an invaluable guide I recently came across, here's my take on creating job descriptions that resonate with potential candidates for social good jobs.
The Heart of Social Impact Hiring
When we talk about hiring for social impact jobs, we're looking for more than just a fit for the role. We're seeking individuals who align with the organization's mission and are passionate about making a difference. This alignment isn't just beneficial; it's essential. It ensures that the candidate is not only capable of performing their duties but is also deeply committed to the cause. This commitment is what drives innovation, dedication, and, ultimately, the impact.
Crafting a Narrative
A job description for a social impact role should do more than list responsibilities and requirements. It should tell a story. This narrative should encapsulate the mission of the organization, the role's contribution to this mission, and the impact it has on the community or cause it serves. By weaving this narrative into the job description, we attract candidates who see themselves as part of this story, who are motivated by the impact they can have.
Language Matters
The language we use in job descriptions plays a pivotal role in attracting a diverse and qualified pool of candidates. It's about being clear, inclusive, and engaging. Clear language ensures that potential applicants understand the role and its requirements. Inclusive language makes sure that the job appeals to a broad audience, encouraging applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds. Engaging language captures the imagination and interest of potential candidates, making them excited about the possibility of joining your team.
Practical Tips for Impactful Descriptions
Based on the guide I referenced earlier and my own experiences, here are a few practical tips for crafting impactful job descriptions:
Start with Why: Begin by explaining why the role exists and its importance to the organization's mission and the broader social good.
Highlight Impact: Clearly articulate the impact the role has. Candidates should be able to see the difference they can make.
Be Inclusive: Use language that is welcoming to all potential applicants, avoiding jargon or terms that might inadvertently exclude people.
Focus on the Mission: Emphasize the organization's mission and values, and describe how the role contributes to these.
Encourage Passion: Invite candidates to share not just their qualifications but their passion for the cause.
For those interested in diving deeper into this topic, I found a comprehensive guide on Socious's blog that offers a wealth of information on creating impactful job descriptions for talent acquisition in the social impact sector. You can explore it further here.
In conclusion, crafting job descriptions for social impact roles is about more than just listing requirements. It's about storytelling, inclusivity, and highlighting the role's contribution to the mission. By focusing on these elements, we can attract candidates who are not only qualified but also deeply committed to driving social change.
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jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:
Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)
Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.
LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.
It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.
The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.
So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.
So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.
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my bohemian ass woke up at noon on a friday so I'm not firing on all cylinders yet, but there is this important distinction in the novel, The Phantom of the Opera, and the musical The Phantom of the Opera. I understand why a novel length distinction is cut for time and narrative tidiness for a medium that happens on stage, but I think people draw some very unfair, unflattering and incorrect conclusions from the stage that they port into their reading of the novel.
that is: Erik, the phantom of the opera, knows about Christine and Raoul's engagement and he's actually totally cool with Christine's plan. This is not incel behavior. This is not ~toxic masculinity~ or whatever contemporary bullshit you want to spew on the intentionally sympathetic monster in gothic literature. Raoul is supposed to leave on a naval expedition to the north pole. Christine's plan is to be engaged with him until he leaves. "This is a happiness that will hurt no one," she says. I don't have the exact quote for it but later on she relates how Erik knows and approves, at least of this intended to be limited engagement engagement. Why? Because he's the happiest of men with Christine, and he wants Raoul to experience that happiness. He does also expect Raoul to, you know, fucking leave when he's supposed to, but still. Christine and Raoul are romping around the Opera, kissing and crying together, and our ghost dude here is just like: good for them.
What sets him off is not the idea of a romantic rival. He does not, imo, feel "entitled" to Christine's love or whatever batshit nonsense the Erik-as-incel narrative huffs like paint fumes. What sets Erik off is how Christine has lied to him: not about the engagement, but about the degree of visceral disgust she feels for Erik specifically as a result of his deformity. She details, in graphic detail, how she closes her eyes instead of looking upon him, how she tells him that she only averts her eyes because she is in awe of his genius. She tells Raoul how horrible even physical proximity to Erik is, how grotesque his face is, how the horror of an animated corpse proclaiming his love to her is--well, horrible, and horrifying. Erik is on the floor, on his knees, kissing the hem of her dress, and Christine has her eyes closed the whole time.
I also think contemporary audiences can't handle that. They need Christine to be a pure and wholesome Good Girl (regressive bullshit), who is the victim of an evil evil man, and only the victim (also regressive bullshit). But also because she is a female character in the contemporary mind, she is allowed no flaws. She must reject Erik because he is a bad man. It would be ableist otherwise, yes? And the contemporary audience cannot handle lack of physical beauty being the reason. There can be no nuance to Christine's reactions. She is Good. Erik is Bad. That's all there is to it. The audience member is so sure that they themselves are above moral reproach, too. That's what is at stake here, also.
Never mind that Christine herself, repeatedly, notes that Erik is right when he says that if she thought he was handsome, she would stay. Never mind that when Raoul asks her if she would still love him if Erik were handsome, Christine declines to reply.
To be clear: this is not a Christine bashing post. I think her complexity here is fascinating. I hate a flat one note ingénue and that's not what she IS, and it pains me that fic authors write her that way, as if it's superior. No! Here she's human and she's magnificent! She's conflicted! Erik is alluring but also in ways that are no fault of his own, terrifying.
We gloss over the intended body horror of the novel. I know I do. I forget that he smells like rot and death, that he's cold and clammy to the touch, that he moans like a ghoul, that is supposed to have a gaping nose hole and eyes you can only see in the dark.
I don't think Christine is wrong to lie. But it's easy to understand, if you let yourself, how betrayed the monster might feel when he finds out about all this concealed disgust.
So, two points here
The rage upon being unmasked isn't just because he's unmasked and she broke a rule or whatever. It's the death of his whole gambit and his last hope, and Erik is, canonically, very smart. He knows this. He knows his face IS the issue. He knows it is THE issue. He reads Christine correctly in that the Angel of Music bit is ultimately forgivable in her eyes, and she likes that he brought down her favorite horse, she absolutely is there for their shared spiritual musical raptures. I want people to understand this: ERIK IS RIGHT about his own situation, a LOT of the time. He comes to some bad conclusions after, but in terms of understanding what's happening around him, he's accurate.
And so the rage and despair post Apollo's Lyre isn't "oh no, she loves Raoul," or even "how dare she, that SLUT," as some people make it out to be. It's the realization that he's been a monster to her this whole time. All this time he thought that she saw him as a man, and she has not. All the presumably good memories he has of her and her two weeks she lived with him are now revealed as lies. She's been enduring this whole time, not acclimating. She feels horror. She feels, again, disgust. She's shuddered at the touch of his hand in hers and put on a brave face and he's believed her up until this point, and he's having his physical inadequacies and his uncharacteristic naiveté described in excruciating detail to his romantic rival. He probably feels real fuckin stupid, on top of all else. He's been duped. He also feels disgusting and unlovable, because Christine has just repeatedly described him as disgusting and unlovable.
It is, of course, wildly incorrect to then decide to blow up an opera house about it.
But it's not entitled incel behavior and that's such a boring and contemporary narrative to shove a beautiful example of gothic literature into. Intellectually lazy and artistically myopic. I think most of us, if we're honest with ourselves, can think of a time we thought somebody liked us--maybe romantically or sexually but also maybe not, maybe just as a friend, as a bestie--and we turned out to be very wrong, because the person was just being polite or avoiding awkwardness or whatever. That is: they lied, in a very understandable and justifiable and socially expected way. And how did that feel, dear reader? Not great, right?
The point of the phantom of the opera is that it's a bunch of normal human experiences turned up to the max, dialed into a sublime hum that goes so hard it turns inhuman and terrible. It's that what makes a monster, what makes a man line, which is only interesting to walk if it's identifiably very human in parts. So Erik isn't just romantically rejected: he is rejected in just about EVERY way possible, besides his divinity of music. And this is supposed to the story of his entire life, over and over again, just most vividly and poignantly illustrated by his failure with Christine, when he most desperately wants to be just like everybody else.
And I think it's a shame to lose that very basic narrative and thematic point, but also a shame to lose the nuance of: Erik wants to share his happiness with Raoul. He loves Christine so, so much that he seems to find Raoul's lovesick desire very relatable. Of course, who wouldn't allow his fellow man a glimpse of heaven? And I just chose my words carefully there, if not the rest of the post. In his approval of Christine and Raoul's playful engagement, Erik is briefly engaging on a man-to-man level. He feels human about it. And when he feels human and accepted as human, instead of a walking horror show, he's immediately kind of gracious.
It's when he finds out that he's been a monster and not a man this whole time, in the eyes of his beloved and his rival, that he seems to go: I'll show you what a monster is.
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