Why Job Descriptions Should Exist on Your Website—Not Just Emails

Finding a new job in the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements is a challenge. Not only is it hard to make connections to get your foot in the door of your favorite organizations, but great job opportunities also receive hundreds of applications making the odds of getting a phone screen even harder. 

Still, we receive job descriptions for open positions via listserv emails, mass emails, Canva graphics, and PDFs which, unfortunately, we aren’t able to post to our jobs board or social media because they don't have a website URL. In addition to not being able to post it, we see it as a disadvantage for candidates who aren’t on the listservs or connected enough to be passed the job and have someone flag their application. Here are a few more reasons why you should list all open and available positions on your website, and not solely in PDFs or email threads.

Making the job description available for all

Posting open job positions on your organization’s website ensures that all candidates have an equal opportunity to see the position and apply for it. When job position announcements only exist on listservs or are passed through networks, great candidates—especially people of color, people without degrees, and queer and disabled candidates—don’t even have the opportunity to apply. Passing jobs around via networks and listservs maintains exclusivity. It means the same people will apply to the same jobs every time. Candidates often already have to be connected to people and networks in our movement, making it difficult to break into. This harms our entire movement and doesn’t allow for new people and their brilliant ideas to join our ranks. This, in particular, is one of the many reasons we started ReproJobs. You shouldn’t have to know someone who knows someone in order to learn about an open job position.

Solution: Make the full job description available on your organization’s website. Create a quick blog post and put the full job description on your organization’s website so everyone has an opportunity to view the position requirements and knows how to apply. Add this URL to all social media posts, emails, and PDFs about the position so people can refer to it later when they apply.

It’s a disability justice issue

Making job descriptions available on websites is a disability justice issue. People who have visual impairments use screen readers to aid their ability to read documents, websites, and social media posts. We’ve seen organizations post their call for applications and very short job position outlines on social media graphics. This is both bad for the candidate, as they should have a full understanding of what the job entails, but also if the image doesn’t include alt text—the text added to an image to describe what’s on the image—of the job posting, applicants who use screen readers are unable to read the post, thus unable to apply for the job. While PDF documents are good for accessibility purposes, if the job description solely exists in a PDF, it will only be passed around through exclusive networks and people who aren’t connected to others are unable to apply for the position. Not making the job description available to people with visual impairments is a quick way to tell applicants that people who have disabilities aren’t welcome in your workplace. Reproductive rights are disability rights, and our movement must do more to encourage and support applicants and staff with disabilities.

Solution: Add alt text to job post social media images. We should be adding alt text on all of our social media posts anyway, but especially for social media posts about jobs. When posting on social media, take the extra few minutes to write a description of what’s on the image and the text in the alt text feature on all social media platforms.

People should know what they’re applying for

Emails and social media posts usually don’t have the full job description listed in the text or image leaving candidates unsure of the full list of responsibilities attached to the job and other benefits as part of the position. Candidates should know the full range of tasks they’ll be asked to perform day-to-day and long term in the position, which usually isn’t possible in a short social media post or email.

Solution: Add a URL with the full job description to learn more to the post. By adding a link to the full job description posting on your website, candidates are able to learn more about the position and be sure of what they’ll be asked to do, how much they’ll be compensated, and any benefits that come with the position.

Ease of access

It’s just that simple: making your organization’s open positions available on your website makes it easy for all of us to access. Fantastic candidates can find it, friends of great candidates can share it with friends (or the candidate can find it themselves if their friend forgets to forward the posting), and selfishly, we can actually post it on our social media accounts and jobs board. Hiring great staff starts with making sure great candidates have the opportunity to apply, and that includes making sure they can easily see your job postings.

Solution: Just post it on your website! And don't forget to include a salary range!