I’m writing a job description for a new opening in my team. While reviewing a draft, I realized that one of the requirements was meaningless, and bordered on being silly.
Why do job qualifications list, “excellent communication skills?”
This knee-jerk requirement is in every description I see. And I’m guilty of putting it in my JD’s over the years, too.
It’s meaningless for at least two reasons.
- It’s a large blanket requirement that can’t be quantified. I don’t know how to do it, and I bet you don’t, either. I sense when someone will be hard to communicate with, but it’s instinctual and is based on a nigh-infinite number of (often subtle) reasons.
- Even though I can’t quantify it, I agree it’s important. The problem is, it’s important to every job on the planet. Every employee needs to be able to communicate “well,” be it in e-mail, memos, presentations, group meetings, 1-on-1, to subordinates, to colleagues, and to superiors. I’ve never seen a job description ask for “mediocre communication skills,” or state that “poor mumbling is considered a strong plus.”
It could be argued that the “ECS” requirement lets you legally reject a candidate who cannot communicate well. Otherwise, you’re liable to be sued. But if so, then why not list, “must not pick nose or eat ear wax,” or, “must not punch interviewer in the face?” Those behaviors would disqualify a candidate, too.
If a job needs particular communication skills — say, a web producer job entails a lot of writing — then the description should call it out. For example, “three or more years experience with writing lively business stories.” But we shouldn’t waste time listing something that’s a common yet unmeasurable requirement for every job on the planet.
I’m going to write this description without listing “excellent communication skills.” I wonder if it will pass the HR sniff test.
8 responses so far ↓
Jonathan Kamens // June 30, 2008 at 10:29 AM |
I see two flaws in your argument. The first is that communication skills, excellent or otherwise, are not in fact required for every job, and the second is that they are in fact quantifiable.
Does a night watchman need to have “excellent communication skills”? How about a gravedigger? A bricklayer? Your statement that every job on the planet requires excellent communication skills betrays your white-collar bias.
Furthermore, there are also plenty of white-collar jobs that do not require communication skills. I bet there are plenty of brilliant mathematicians working at the NSA who couldn’t put together a coherent sentence to save their lives. I’m sure I could think of other examples, but I think the point is made.
On the question of whether excellent communication skills are something you can measure, I will first note that you shouldn’t discount the value of the gut feeling you get during an interview with a candidate. The whole point of having face-to-face interviews rather than doing the entire process in writing or on the phone is to enable the potential employer to get such impressions from the candidate. It’s usually quite obvious whether a candidate communicates well during an interview.
Having said that, when oral communication skills are extremely important for a position, then have the candidate do a presentation to the team. When written communication skills are important, have the candidate do some writing on some topic while in the office for the interview. If you can’t judge accurately whether a candidate communicates well during a presentation or in on-the-spot writing, then you’re not qualified to be doing the interviewing for a position for which communication skills are important.
John // July 1, 2008 at 7:47 AM |
@Jonathan:
You nailed me. You’re right. I do have a white-collar bias.
I’d argue that a bricklayer, perhaps, needs some communication skills, because it’s very rarely a solo occupation, unlike a night watchman or grave digger. (You can argue that a night watchman is part of a security team, but I’d argue that everything about the job is solitary.) A brick wall, chimney, patio, etc. has to connect to, and work with, a larger structure. But that’s a quibble — I acknowledge that an awful lot of bricks can probably be laid without a heck of a lot of communication skills.
I’m still mulling over your mathematician example. In any rule or guideline involving people, there are bound to be corner cases. Blue-collar jobs aren’t a corner case, but a mumbling NSA mathematician is.
Perhaps communication skills are one of the defining characteristics of white-collar jobs. I still may hold on to my position, just for white-collar jobs. I need to cogitate on this a bit more, before I write about it again.
Regarding quantifiability, let me be clearer. I agree that “excellent communication skills” can be quantified for any white-collar job, given enough paper. But they never are, except for jobs like news reporters, writers, tour guides, etc. “Excellent communication skills” can be quantified for, say, a mechanical engineer, but doing so would be so unwieldy as to be be unusable. So what’s the point in listing them? If it comes down to intuition and subtlety for white-collar jobs, as you seem to agree, then why now replace the requirement with, “You must seem like an OK person to work with?” It amounts to the same thing.
Jonathan Kamens // July 1, 2008 at 8:11 AM |
I’m going to have to disagree with you again.
My company makes candidates fill out a written questionnaire, and the quality of the writing vis a vis communication skills is certainly one of the things we evaluate when we review the completed questionnaire.
I’ve been involved in interviews from the hiring end where the candidates were asked for the second round of interviews to give a presentation to the interview team on a particular topic, and the whole point of that presentation was of course to evaluate the candidates’ communication skills.
In short, I do not at all agree that communication skills are “never” quantified. There are plenty of interviewers who consciously and methodically evaluate communication skills for the candidates they interview.
The point of a job description is to let the candidate know what skills s/he is expected to have. If excellent communication skills are required for the job, and as I’ve already noted they aren’t required for every job, then it should be mentioned in the job description to give potential candidates an opportunity to evaluate whether they fit the mold. A candidate who knows that he sucks at writing, collapses into a puddle on the floor when asked to give a presentation, never responds to email, and/or has a bad habit of getting into email flame wars with coworkers, may very well decide that it wouldn’t be such a good idea to apply to a job which lists “excellent communication skills” as a requirement.
John // July 2, 2008 at 8:47 AM |
@Jonathan:
We’ll have to agree to disagree, at least for white-collar jobs. I still believe that the vast preponderance of them want “excellent communication skills,” nobody every advertises for mediocre or average communication skills, and exactly what “excellent” means is never quantified. (”Never” means, again, the vast preponderance. I’m not claiming to have examined every JD on the planet.)
John
syinly // July 7, 2008 at 5:06 PM |
That’s true poor communication skills are not wanted.
Jim Bullock // July 18, 2008 at 11:11 AM |
Bricklayers need excellent communication skills. For example, they need to communicate where a stack of bricks is going to set down, or not to set it down, effectively and in real time, or people end up with crushed toes or worse.
“Communication” like “intelligence” is a multi-faceted beast. (Gardner is the canonical reference on multiple intelligences.) The brick layer example also shows how to quantify the communication you need – operationalize it. Transferring what information, in what parts of the job, to which people, perhaps even using which vehicles? The bricklayers manage to communicate which piles of bricks are going where quickly and effectively successfully without a single PowerPoint presentation.
You might actually be cleaner with HR with operationalized “communication” requirements. You’ll certainly do better with your hiring.
tony // August 31, 2008 at 5:43 AM |
I have met gravediggers and construction workers that can speak better that Bush…and he is our President. I think this requirement it should not be a “must” but desirable.
Enough said…
John // August 31, 2008 at 7:52 AM |
@tony: Here’s your snarky comment of the day: Speaking better than George Bush is a very low bar to pass.