Job ads have hidden rules
Written by Zoran Bekric, Autistic Content Developer
As most neurodivergent people know, or have discovered through sometimes negative experience, society is full of hidden rules. Things that everyone else seems to know, but which no-one ever explains or states clearly. A lot of the difficulties the neurodiverse experience come from tripping over these hidden rules.
One of the areas particularly rich in hidden rules is job ads. The listings employers put in the ad on various employment websites trying to attract the right people to work in their business.
You’d think that this would be one area where simplicity and clarity would be important. The employer needs people with certain skills and abilities; they list those skills and abilities in the advertisement they place; people with those skills and abilities apply for the job; the employer picks the one they like, and the new employee starts work. Everyone is happy.
But that’s not how it seems to work.
Instead, employers will often list a whole bunch of skills that aren’t necessary for the job. Like having a Driver’s License. But there’s nothing in the job that requires any driving. Instead, a Driver’s License seems to be on some standard list of skills and abilities which employers use as a template, so it ends up in lots of job ads.
I know when I was younger, there were many jobs I didn’t apply for because they asked for something like a Driver’s License and, since I don’t drive, I didn’t want to waste their time by applying, since I obviously wasn’t qualified for the position.
Eventually I learned that a lot of the listed requirements were actually optional. That is, they are things that it would be nice for the employee to have, but which weren’t essential to the job they were required to do.
One of the hidden rules of job ads is that most of the skills and abilities listed are like that: optional. Most but not all. Some are essential. What you need to do is look at the description of the job and figure out what knowledge and experience would be required to do that job. That’s essential. If you have those skills and abilities, you should apply for the job. Everything else can be negotiated.
Sometimes it turns out that one of the seemingly non-essential skills is actually important. But most of the time they are optional, and the fact that you can do the core job is what’s important.
The same is true on a more specific level. I’ve worked with a number of Enterprise Management Systems (EMS) – which are basically big data bases used to manage the various aspects of a business. Jobs ads for people to work with ELMs will often list the specific ELM the business has and will ask for applicants to have experience with that particular EMS. But, here’s the thing: pretty much all ELMs work the same way. Each has its own little quirks and ways of doing things, but the underlying principles are the same. So, once you know one, you can generally transfer that knowledge to another EMS. It will just take you a week or so to learn the new quirks. Reading the manual is often all that’s required to bring you up to speed.
However, I’ve discovered that explaining that to potential employers doesn’t work. Another of the hidden rules is that you’re not supposed to say that out loud. Instead, you just do it. I have a friend who would routinely say on the first day of the job that his experience was with a previous version of the system – he worked with version 12.8, for example, when the company had version 13.1 – and it would take him a week or so to get up to speed on the new version. This always worked. Of course, he had never worked on any version of that particular EMS, but he knew his skills were transferable, so he just taught himself how the EMS worked and he was fine.
I had a friend who started a job at a place that produced custom merchandise. They hadn’t used the exact equipment before but claimed familiarity with a similar model. Because the process was machine-based rather than manual, they spent a week quietly studying the manual so when he started he knew what to do.
That’s a great example of someone who understood the unspoken rules.
Yes, my friend was steadily employed, unlike me. He knew the hidden rules.
Of course, sometimes job ads will fail to list required skills. This often happened to me when I would apply for a job and discovered that the employer also expected me to act as a courier, moving material between sites. That’s a job where a Driver’s License is required. But they didn’t list that as a requirement in the job ad. The employer seemed to have just assumed that everyone drives and would be willing to act as a courier, so it was superfluous listing that requirement.
Of course, if the ad had listed Driver’s License and I’d applied anyway, that would be on me, but it didn’t, so it’s another example of the hidden rule.
And there was one job I applied for where it turned out the listed skills and abilities had nothing to do with what was actually required. The ad was for a logistics officer to manage the stores at a medical facility. When I got the interview, all the questions were about my ability to manage a floor waxing machine to polish the floors. If there were transferable skills between managing stores and polishing floors, I must admit I couldn’t think of them, so I had to apologise for wasting the gentleman’s time and leave.
Since then, I’ve often wondered if he ever found anyone to do the job, since the ad didn’t seem designed to attract people with experience with floor waxing machines, so there no reason for those with such experience to apply. While those with stores managing experience who were more likely to apply probably wouldn’t have floor polishing experience. The whole thing seemed designed to fail.
But maybe there’s another hidden rule there. Just one too subtle for me to figure out.
