You're listening to a CNA podcast. Hi there. It's the Work It podcast with Tiffany and Gerald. Now, recently, I was trolling through Reddit and I was having a good laugh, reading about some insane job postings. OK, so for example, there was one looking for a virtual assistant but only pays $1000 a month and the caveat is that you're not allowed to have a side job, which distracts you from giving this role your 100%. And then there's the issue of fake job list.
Have you heard about that, Gerald? Fake job listings. I'm not talking about a scam kind, right? Yeah, yeah. So what I was them as maybe insincere job postings. They're posted, they're listed on job portals by the employers are not really genuine about hiring. So sometimes they could be like ictitious jobs posted by recruiters just to build a candidate pool,
or sometimes they're doing market research on salaries. They could be, you know, companies checking out the market for talent before they decide to relocate here. Of, of course, we also know that some companies, they just post the job ads for the sake of posting. Yeah, because they already pre-identified somebody already and they're letting the posting go up there. So in fact, I think a survey by resume builder, there's a career site, they said as many as 4 in 10 companies said that.
a fake job listing. This is something that I'm sure a lot of our listeners out there would be very keen to know how do we differentiate between a job posting that is sincere and one that is just there to collect resumes or collect information. So what are some red flags that we can look up for when we read job descriptions. So we are very happy to have in the studio with us Han Lee, he is director of executive search from Lio Resources, and he's here to give us some tips. Welcome. Hi,
good morning, everyone.
So Han, I want to ask you, have you encountered any of these kind of absurd job listings before in your line of work?
Of course, I've seen it many times actually. I mean, our job of online is really read the job description from a clients or so and sometimes you have to Really stop yourself from having a laugh, you know, like I wrote about the poster a few weeks ago, talk about. When I see the job description, I was asking myself, right, is this for real? How am I going to find someone for these clients when you look at the job description like that. So it's not so much of a scammer.
I think a lot of time it's a wish list they want to have for this perfect candidate and I think underneath they also know that it's probably not going to happen, but it's more like trying to cast a wider net, attracting more people to apply for the job, but I think most of the time it's probably counter effective because The great candidates might be looking at a job description thinking that hey, I only take like 70% of the boxes, but I don't want to fail myself for a job, right?
So I don't apply because I don't have the rest of the 30%. But the reality is that 30% can be just a good to have. But in job description, you don't really list it in the way that this is the one I must have, this is the one I'm really just OK. To not have, right? So that's becoming a problem for the job description. Yeah,
yeah, I agree, nobody puts up a section that says this is a must have and then the nice to have.
Sometimes I think to myself, there's no way I'm going to be able to hit maybe even 50% of what they are asking for because they always like I want an individual who is a creative, who takes initiative, but at the end of the day it's like How do I measure that you are a person who is there, and if I'm the person who is applying for the job, I'll be like, yeah, I can do this, or some people might say, oh no, I'm not sure if I am creative enough for you, or I'm not
sure what you mean by take initiative. So I think some of these lingo or the jargon that they put on the job postings may not be very realistic or may actually be a barrier to entry.
I think Tiffany are being very kind. I mean the real example, I was writing that article, the job description sitting in front of me saying that We're looking for someone with strategic view and detail oriented. But how is it going to happen? I'm very strategic, giving an overview direction or so, but at the same time, a very detail-oriented person. You're looking for two personalities in one person. So how? I've never met somebody and yet these are the things that you often see in the
job description. So you will be asking yourself, should I or should I not? I may be detail oriented, but I certainly not a strategic view. At the same time. So when a company put the words like this, whether it's by default, they write something or because of AI generated, they are ineffectively driving certain candidates away and the reality is good candidates always have great expectation for themselves. You will come across a candidate who is really good at what they do and they
want to set themselves for success. They will not apply for any job, they will not walk into any job when they think that I'm not going to make it. So then those applying to you are Maybe just mediocre, maybe in the situation of wanting just a job. So a good job description will make wonders for you if you are an employer looking to hire people right now. So don't just outsource this to AI. They can help you to maybe do a certain draft or so, but you need to really verify it.
And most of the time in enterprise situation, the hiring manager who is hiring for that position may be the one who's driving it or writing the job description, but sometimes it is actually the HR who is doing the work for them because the hiring manager may be too
busy or whatever. So our suggestion is always you want to make sure that's right, the combination because HR has the expertise in our case it's like massaging the job description, the first draft may be from the hiring manager and HR can massage it more palatable. To the readers or so, but don't just let either one of those just do the work, it will never really work, in my opinion.
I want to talk a little bit about the unofficial translation guide that you actually wrote in terms of the job description. I'm asking because when I look at the job description, sometimes even when I'm told, please write a job description for this role that we would like to hire for your team, and I'm just like, I don't know. So for example, when somebody says fast-paced environment, what does that mean?
Well, OK, I, I can be wrong, but I've been doing this a lot, right? And I will tell the client the same thing. When you write fast pace, you're literally telling people that you're shorthanded, you don't have enough people, so you get people to do faster.
That's true, that's probably what I'll write in there as well. I guess I just want to cover a bit of my basis, you know, making sure that people are clear. But I also don't see, I mean, what would they say if they don't say. Yeah, normal pace. We are normal pace. Every company these days, you see, you expect to see fast pace in the first or the last line.
So that's the first thing I tell my client. You put fast-paced candidates, look at this. Then what do you expect? You want to lose some candidates. You write a job description trying to attract more candidates, right? So it's counterintuitive, so why do you put
it in. About the people who are slower paced, you know what I mean? Like they're naturally used to the chill vibes.
I don't know, Tiffany I'm not a very fast person, when I see the fast pace, would I still click yes, depending on my situation,
buyers beware, right? Then I'm telling you that I already told you this is a very fast-paced environment, so when you come and join me, don't be a snail about this. Um, see, I would write that in the job description so I can see about people.
There's a valid point there, but I think the reality is out of 100 applicants, if you can get 5 people out of the 100, you consider yourself lucky. But you're right, like the fast pace then some
competitive salary. Tell me what does that mean?
In my version, that means I can't pay you good enough, so I'm just only competitive in a sense.
I mean I might pay you like lower than average.
I might pay you lower than average. Or at the best, I pay you just market average. I mean, if I'm the best paymaster in the market, why would I put it there? You know, it's just unnecessary and it's not a selling point. People think that competitive salary is a selling point. I can't
see it. OK, we get this a lot as well, self-starter, like the sourdough. What does self-starter even mean? right? at the right if you feed me well, meaning
that's right, you come on board the first day, go bring me the revenue or whatever things I get you to do. So effectively telling the candidate. need to grab it all by yourself. I don't have enough time to train you and then you have to rely on yourself to do that. That's a self-starter in my opinion, like what you say is Shad, right? You leave it there for you to do whatever works. I'm not there to teach you. If not, then my selling point will be we have the effective training system set up.
We have the guidance systems, that is a selling point. Self-starter is not a selling point. It's quite the other way around.
Last one, things like 5+ years of experience or 7+ years of experience. Is it true? Do I really need exactly what they say?
The short answer is no. You don't really have to be 100%. And you talk to any headhunters out there, the first thing that we do when we talk to the clients is to take the job description and then strike it back. My question to my clients would be, so what is absolutely necessary here? What is good to have? That is a rookie 101 for all the recruiters really, because everybody knows that the job description is a wish list because you know there is no 100% perfect candidate.
So if you look at the job description, you see that you have about 60 or 70% that can fit into this job doing what they do so just apply, go ahead, because like chances are the rest of the 30%, 40% that you don't have is just good to have. And I can say for most of the companies, they will be willing to train and guide certain people. I don't think they are in a fairy tale land and thinking about always get the 100% candidates, they don't.
But I also think most of the clients they are not ready to just take on anyone without the essential skill set that they need for that particular job. So the short answer is yes, just go and apply if you think that you've 70%, 60% matching of the job description, you're fine to go.
So far we've been talking about the job description, the way it's worded, it alienates some deserving candidates from applying, right? But at least the employee is still sincere about hiring, so they write a really unrealistic job description. How about job descriptions that are not sincere about hiring, you know, they are just there to collect information because I've heard for many individuals, many clients when they apply for a job,
they don't even know whether it's real. They said, you know, I applied, there's no reply, and I keep seeing this job being posted over and over again, right? So there's a possibility that they haven't found a perfect candidate, right? There's also a possibility that they are just there collecting information. I don't understand this collecting resumes. What does that mean? Why do companies do that? Well,
I think there are many reasons why the company will want to collect the resume. One, it's probably because the headcount is not there yet, but they want to start collecting now and when the headcount is ready, They can start interviewing. A lot of time they interview even before the headcount is granted because they think that
they will get the headcount. So then I start interviewing, I will start running all the necessities and I've even come across a situation that, OK, this is the candidate we want to hire, but we can't. Do it now because the headcount is only ready in July.
Were they very upfront with the candidate?
Um sometimes yes. Unfortunately, sometimes no, but you see, in a legitimate situation where a company genuinely wanted to do it right, there are ways to overcome this, for example, If now is May, my headcount is only ready in July. I will give you an offer letter right now, but it only starts from July onwards, because some organizations, they are very strict in their headcount planning, which is nothing
wrong with it. Yeah, because it could be a new financial year, absolutely new financial year, and I will not warrant anything before that or so, but I'm legitimate in having this headcount right now. So that's OK. But there are times like what you mentioned, people just wanting to get their resume to understand what's going on in the market. Worst, you are actually Interviewing candidates trying to get a market info for your business purposes, but you have no intention to hire people.
That is real. The listeners can't see your face, Tiffany, but I know my
eyes are wide open and Gerald is like, yeah, I've heard of these unscrupulous means, but that's terrible.
Yes, unfortunately. I even come across the clients asking for the client list from the candidate and then just never hear from them again. I mean, there are people like that, so it is true that as a job seeker, You probably want to be a little bit more careful about what you encounter, but to answer to Gerald's question, how do I see from a job description alone is it possible? It's difficult, but there are common things that
maybe you can look at for examples. If a job descriptions are all about telling you all the benefits about an organization, or culture are great, we have a morning yoga classes with the free, I don't know, smoothies or whatever, but it's very little about the actual job and I will ask myself, right, and is this for real? company hire you, pay you the money for the content they're going to produce for them, not to get you to enjoy the yoga in the morning. I find it
quite funny. But then that's one. So there are certain cases where the company says in the job description that the role may evolve when the company grow. What does that mean? Yeah, I mean when you're a startup situation, you're really in The growing mode, maybe you just get a funding from a VC or so you just hire the right talent, then there are many positions that you can actually allocate
them to. So that's real. But in other circumstances, if you come across a phrase like this in the company that doesn't associate to this situation, you ask yourself, what does it mean really? So you're hiring people with any potential walk into any role itself, right? That is a big question mark to me. Another example can be the company say we're hiring across multiple levels and we will match based on your experience.
What does it mean really? So a real example, a candidates walk into the interview for a sales director position and then the company asking all those questions about sales strategy, your go to market, a typical question for a sales director and at the end of it, they are thinking about, oh we might just need a sales manager. Are you open?
To consider if it is a sales manager position, then you will be asking yourself, is it even possible for a company to eye for a sales director, but they are actually thinking that I might just need a sales manager.
But could it be that through the interview, they feel that your skills and competencies are not there yet for a sales director, but they still like you because you have good attitude. So they would like to create a position or there could be an open position just that you applied for the sales director role. Sure,
absolutely, that happens. So in the situation where I still like you, but I don't think you're a sales director level yet,
but we can try and push you
in the sales manager, then you can show to us that you are actually able to become a sales director. It's a different story compared to with a multiple position, we might consider based on your experience. In my opinion, typically organizations don't do that. You don't think about, I'm actually having these two positions, I'm toying about what could be the possibilities. It's very unlikely. Most of the time you get your headcount ready, you have a go.
to market strategy already have the account set up. For anyone to come across such a situation, you need to be careful because it can be a situation that we want to bait you into a certain position, but we are trying our luck. Remember, when you are selling yourself to a potential job opportunity, most of the time the organization is also trying to sell to you the opportunity.
They may be thinking, hey, if I just say I'm hiring a sales manager, I might not have a chance to meet this candidate because they won't apply. So why don't I try my luck? I invite this person to come in and then see whether I can charm them in the way or so. It's not like you can't do that, but if we can be a little bit more transparent, this is one of them that usually done by the organization.
I think the baiting part of it. I think it does happen quite often. I think we talked about this before, getting lowballed into a job, right? You apply for something but you're told like actually, you know, it's not really that thing. You are more suitable for another role, lower pay, lower responsibilities, and then Because you feel like you're already there and the company feels they already pitched to you, they're more likely to
accept it from the company's perspective. Why they want to do that is they want to attract high caliber candidates, but in reality, they want them to do slightly lower on a role with less responsibilities at a lower pay. I brought at this point because I know somebody, he saw a job listing for like a department head. They were going to create a new department in this company. He saw the job listing, he applied for it knowing.
That he didn't have the skills to do it, but he really wanted to join the company and during the interview, after maybe about a good half an hour, they did tell him, look, you and I both know that you're not at that skill competency yet. They were very upfront with him and said, actually we would really like to hire you but not at this job position. So in that case, would you mind waiting until we
basically hire your boss? And this person was like, yeah, I don't mind waiting because I really like your company and I would like to work for you. So he signed an offer letter and waited for about 4 months. Eventually did it work out? It did work out, but it all sounded pretty scammy to me at that point of time with me just thinking now having this conversation, I'm just thinking. To myself, I'll be like, please do not sign that contract because we don't know. 4 months later what's going
to happen, right? But I think in this particular case, it kind of worked out and I'm sure like when there are new departments, new teams formed, there's going to be multiple positions. If the employers up front and sincere about it, it's still not so bad, right? But they can go the other way where the company didn't have any intention of hiring so many and they're just trying to bid you.
So that's a totally different intentions altogether. So I think going in also knowing that you're not desperate for this allows you to go, you know, can I wait 4 months. If I cannot wait 4 months, then I'm going to go and find something else. But didn't know that it's going to be 4 months as well,
right? But in the case of your friend Tiffany, if I'm the one talking to your friend, I'll be telling your friend that you still need to be a little bit careful one. You really don't know what's going to happen. You don't know who is going to be your future boss, someone you might or might not like, that is the period of gap here, then you just wait. That means that 4 month period of time, you can't do anything. So it's a commitment from the candidate that you surrender.
control in the process. There's nothing much you can do. Whereas from the employer's perspective, there are a lot of things that they can do. I'm actually secure commitment from a candidate, so it's only one side winning, not the win-win situation that most of the time we're trying to achieve. In this case, I mean, it's the legitimate case, but it's just very dangerous case for the candidates.
If let's say I know that this job listing is not real, the kind that I've gone for the interview and I know they're not very sincere in listing and then I go back to let's say LinkedIn or all the job portals and I keep seeing the same listing over and over again. Is there something that I can do? To maybe warn other potential job seekers.
So you see the My Career Futures portal initiated by the government. If you post a job, you cannot repost it more than 2 times. So they're trying to restraint in that way. They're coming up with a very good initiative now trying to encourage whoever advertising it to give the response to the candidate because ghosting is a huge problem, right? So the time you hear, I apply, I don't hear anything.
So they're trying to give you a very good view about is this the employer that usually gives response to the candidates, how often they come back with the response and then from the employer's perspective, all you do is really just a few click on the system itself. So I think it's a very good initiative. I don't think there are any specific body or Law or rules or so, but then I think the government is trying to do in the the other way, encouraging, yes,
at least for their own porter. But ultimately, when it comes to the job seekers, I think the better way to do in my opinion is to equip yourself with the knowledge and better still, knowing what to ask is fundamental. For example, when you see the job description is too good to be true, ask the question, what is the job responsibility? Possibility for this one. What is the expectation? You are asking for a project directed. How big is the project? How big is the scale, how many people asking the
right question throughout the process. It's fundamental. And if I use the case of your friend just now, Tiffany, not being seen that you are desperate, because when you're in desperate situation, you're probably not going to get a very good baroning power in that sense. So in that situation, I'll be asking, what's the pipeline of your head of department searching right now? What sort of the commitment I'm going to get from you if I give you my commitment right now? What is eventually
the plan for this team? Those questions will help you to make a better decision. I think that is the fundamental skills that all the job seekers should possess with them.
Yeah, I think if I to summarize, one of the things is if the job. Thing looks too good to be true, a yoga and milkshakes, right, then be careful about that. And the other thing we talked about was also if the job gets reposted several times, then you also kind of know something is not quite right. The third thing I would say is to maybe counter check whether this job exists on other portals because typically if the recruiter is sincere in hiring, they will post
on several pages, including their own corporate website. So then you go there and you reference and you see, OK. So this is a legit job, just posted on different places. Just
just a caveat a bit. Most of the time right now it's very unlikely an organization doesn't have the online footprint, very unlikely. So I think those are legitimate things you can look at.
Well, this podcast definitely has been very helpful for me. I think even for myself, the next job listing that I put out, I better be very clear, like you say, put the
just won an award, right? People come
and look for you. No, I still have to, but I definitely will still put fast-paced environment because I don't want to sieve out the snails, but yeah, I shouldn't shoot myself in the foot with competitive salary and self-starter because even I don't really quite understand that. But thank you so much, Han, for coming on our podcast.
Thank you very much.
Hi, it's our Ask Me Anything segment where we answer a work-related question that you have sent it to us. Please continue to send. I like them. They give me very good food for thought and we hope that we have helped you a wee bit in your work week. Today's question is sent in by Shaan. Now Sean's question is about how to ask or get time off to go and do interviews when you are juggling an existing job. Yeah.
I'm sure many people are interested right now. Well, this is especially for interviews where you don't know if you're going to be successful and there are multiple rounds. Yeah, so Sean says taking leave for every interview is not feasible, especially when you have to save some for other users. Is resorting to taking medical leave more recommended or more common in the workplace where leave approvals are not required
or can be requested at the last minute. OK. This is a tricky situation, Sean, but how do you go for these multiple interviews without raising the question with your boss that, hey, you know, this guy is taking a lot of leave huh? And also I just want to caveat. I'm asking for a friend. OK, OK. Should you use medical leave for this? Please don't. Please, please,
please don't lie. Don't abuse and mistrust because people are going to figure out how come you always fall sick and you don't really look sick and if it gets found out, it's really, really going to look very bad. So trust is going to be an issue. Yes, yes. So don't don't abuse the benefit of medical leave for job interviews. So with that out of the way, then how do we get through the multiple rounds of interviews
if you're not going to use leave? Actually, I feel like most of us, we somehow have our own way of figuring it out, navigating it so there isn't that one fixed answer. Maybe those who are listening, maybe you can also drop in your comments on what you have done the legit good ones, OK. Illegal ones, but one thing is during the interview process, it's important for you to ask the recruiter how many
rounds uh can you expect? sometimes they say 2 to 3 rounds and you can have a sense over the next couple of weeks, uh, if things go according to plan and you get caught up for subsequent rounds, and how many days of leave you need to take. You might not want to take full day leaves you have the option of taking half day, right? You can take half days. You could also ask some of these interviews, are they online?
Offline, right, I know some of the people are going to wonder, hey, but if you are online and then your boss calls you or rather your working hours, isn't this like eating into the company policy, you're not being a good employee, you taking your time off. I mean, this is where the gray area happens. Ideally, the new company will be nice enough to ask you to maybe come down during lunch hours or after office hours for
an interview, and that's a possibility as well. If that's an option, you can consider it, but as a job seeker, right. You're wondering whether the person has eaten lunch. Why should you career hungry person interviewing you is not good, it's not it's gonna make proper assessment because not enough blood
sugar to the brain. Yeah, so usually if it was up to me, right, I would probably say maybe just after lunch hour, then it's for you to impress the person to keep the person awake during that time or maybe just before lunch, just before that, I think it'll be OK, but if it's right smack in lunch hour people. Might not like it very much, but I do know companies HR and the supervisors are willing to meet people
during lunchtime. It's possible as well. So if it's outside of the lunch hours, you still have to take like a half day leave and everything. So you still have to pace out, I guess Sean probably has to pace out the leave quota that he has because he might want to use all the other days to go and travel with his family, do his own travels, and things like that, right? Yes. Honestly, I don't think it will take a lot of leave days, right, unless you're aggressively
being sought after la. But generally, you know, if you are a job search. While you're still being employed. The leave days is not going to be significantly a lot, honestly speaking. But you do need to manage if today you are really saving up that leave for other things, then you do need to plan a little bit. And what we said earlier, asking for the number of days, number of rounds that you need to have, that you can do it online,
can do it after office hours, during lunch breaks. I think these are some of the advice that I will give that you can try. I don't know, maybe we'll hear a lot more from our listeners in terms of what they have done, what are some of the good tips that they can give to somebody like Shawn. So yeah, Sean, wish you all
the best in your job interviews. I hope that you don't have to go through that many, many rounds, but in a nutshell, don't lie, get creative and you know I'm hearing this for the first time, try not to do a lunchtime interview, so yeah, let's try and avoid that. If like Sean, you have a work-related question, do send it to us. We are at CNA podcasts at Mediacorp.com.sg. We're also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Me Listen, and YouTube where a video version of this is at.
The team behind the Work It podcast is Junaini Johari, Joanne Chan, Saye Win, Allison Jenner, Shahzad Delia, and Christina Robert. Video by Hania Ahmed. I'm Gerald and I'm Tiffany. Have a good work week ahead and I hope you have an understanding boss.