Notes: FUNC. SPECS AD COMPOSE MODULE

Dated 26/06/03

To: Inder, Kartavya, Abhi, Nagwekar

Ad. Compose (GuruAd) Module – Functional Specifications (FS).

Enclosed find some thoughts on this subject.

I agree with the “System Expectations” listed by Inder viz.:

“Draft Advt. in a minute.”

I would go one step further and say that, to create a “draft advt”, all that a subscriber/recruiter should be required is to simply enter just one field, viz.:

VACANCY/POSITION NAME: [__________]

And presto! – the draft emerges on the screen! Of course, it will be a “draft”, which he would need to “EDIT” before submitting.

But, as I have repeatedly said, “Starting from a blank page requires a lot of creativity. The fact that you are an experienced executive, having tons of tacit knowledge, does not help.”

But,

If you are presented with a draft, your expert knowledge immediately discovers what is wrong/jarring/absurd/incongruent/inconsistent/contradictory/irrational etc. etc.

And,

You are able to “edit” the draft (may take 2/3 quick trials) in a minute!

You may call this “intuition”, but what really happens is that, thru years of practical experience, your mental-computer has developed some “decision-rules.”
Your mind applies these rules to the draft in front of your eyes and is able to quickly “spot” anomalies/inconsistencies. This happens real fast, and seems to be a very simple exercise!

You “know” what is wrong with the advt., the moment you look at it and you are able to set it right in seconds! Seems almost effortless exercise.

Not only that, but, someday we will…

…build/develop a “NeuralNet/Fuzzy Logic” software, which will record/memorise every edit/correction carried out by recruiter in the draft. It (the software) will “learn” from these “mistakes” & then “modify” its “decision-rules”, and create better & better “draft advts” in future, requiring less and less “editing/correction”!

In the meantime, how do we go about presenting to the recruiter, a most tentative draft, the moment he enters,

VACANCY/POSITION NAME?

Simplest way is to present/display to him, a number of past advts released by competing companies for identical vacancy/position.

Of course, still better would be to display to him, his own company’s past advts for identical vacancy/position. Assuming that, while drafting such a past advt, he (or his predecessor) had taken lot of trouble, the “draft” (really a past advt), would require very little “editing”, if at all.

And, of course, every new advt. (for identical vacancies) gets stored in the database, against that VACANCY/POSITION NAME. So next time, he is able to view all variations.

But, as of today, we have only 30,000 job advts downloaded from various jobsites. These are unlikely to cover all:

23 industries
56 functions
9 designation-levels
5000 actual designations (maybe!)
50,000 company names

So, if we ask recruiter to simply enter VACANCY/POSITION NAME and wait, then, there is every possibility that the database (of 30,000 job-advts) may return one or nil results!

This approach would give good results only when our job-advt database grows to 500,000.

Therefore, as soon as Deepa becomes free, we should get her to download 2000 job-advts daily from various websites (– to begin with job-advts released by Indian companies, on Indian jobsites only). Even at that rate, it would take ONE FULL YEAR to download 5 lakh job-advts!

Abhi may consider training Pandey/Tushar to download job-advts (by distributing different jobsites to different persons working on independent machines).

As soon as we can make Vittal/Samata free from their current work, they too could work on this (– we have no limitations on installing MYRIAD on any number of machines).

We may even be able to strike a deal with jobsites (– some kind of barter?), under which they give us their job-advt database (in XML).

We can make similar deal with newspapers (especially Times) in return for “JOB MARKET PROFILE” graphs?
After all, most leading newspapers are composed digitally (before printing) & their job-advt database is in digital format. I would not be surprised if Times of India uploads on its own website (timesjobs.com), all of its print-media advts.

But, even with these multiple efforts, we may not be able to build up a job-advt database of 5 lakh job-advts before 6 months!

But launch of GuruAd cannot wait that long!

So, what is the alternative?

According to me, a viable alternative is:

We create some (rather crude) MASTERS for:

Man Specifications (incl. Candidate Profile) Master
Advt. Related Info. Master
Company Profile Master
Job Description Master
etc.

Then, ask our subscriber-recruiters to “CUSTOMIZE” these MASTERS, to suit their own company’s requirements.

It may take them a day or two to carry out this CUSTOMIZATION OF MASTERS, but then, they have to do this only ONCE, at the beginning. It is a one-time effort, which will save them many, many hours later on. We must sell them this idea.

Most likely, the following MASTERS would be independent of the vacancy-to-be-filled:

Advt. Related Info. Master
Company Profile Master

Whereas, the following MASTERS would depend upon VACANCY/POSITION:

Man-Specifications Master
Job-Descriptions Master

From tool, “Actual Designation Splitter” we get:

Designation Level Function

So, for every VACANCY/POSITION entered by a recruiter, we know Designation Level & Function →

Man-Spec. Master
Job-Description Master

After all of you had a time to read this note (& enclosed pages), Inder should organise a meeting by early next week, when we should deliberate & finalize an approach to GuruAd.

(Signed & dated 26/06/03)

Constructing a Job-Description

There are two options, which we can consider offering to a recruiter, when he wants to write/create a job-description.

Option #1

Job descriptions are mainly built around “keywords” belonging to a given function.

We have already identified some 56 functions. Under each of these, we have listed 30/50 important “keywords” (based on their weightages/frequency of occurrence).

We have also downloaded some 30,000 job-advts from various jobsites. Maybe, between them, these job-advts contain 3 lakh sentences in their “job-description” sections.

Presumably, each of these sentences contains one (or more?) of the “keywords.”

Let us regroup these sentences keyword-usage wise. E.g.: group together all the sentences containing keyword “Training” or “HRD” or “Manpower Planning” or “IR” or “Recruitment” or “Compensation Policy” etc. etc.

Job Description Box

(You can edit/add new sentences/rearrange etc.)

[Sketch of a box with lines for sentences + SAVE button]

Of course, this method of constructing a job-description would be a very slow, tedious process if:

a given function contains 40 keywords, and
on an average, there are 200 sentences (in the database of sentences) for each keyword.

That would mean 40 × 200 = 8000 sentences to be read & 40 selected!

Of course, if this method/process is offered as a one-time activity to create a MASTER for each function,
(which then gets stored & reused again, every time a job-description needs to be constructed for that function),

then, the recruiter may not mind. By customising function-wise “job-descriptions,” he will save a lot of time in future.

JD/4

Option #2

We have 30,000 job-advts. These can be regrouped as per 56 functions. So, on an average, there may be 500 job-advts for each function.

The Master-Creation Tool will ask recruiter to first select any function of his choice.

Select Function:

Marketing
R&D
Production

(Example UI sketch with dropdown and arrows for selection)

You have selected Marketing function. For this function, we have following job-advts in our database. From these, you can select any number, for viewing & editing.

Srl. No.	Advertiser/Company Name	Position Advertised	Select
1	Voltas	Mkts. Mgr.	☑
2	L&T	GM – Mkts.	☐
3	Godrej	Sr. Mgr – Mkts.	☑

Displaying “Job-Descriptions”

Advertiser: Voltas – Position: Mkts. Mgr.

(Sketch showing list of sentences with checkboxes to select for inclusion.)

Alternatively, we show the entire “job-description” in the block above (without breaking up into sentences) and ask/enable the recruiter to “drag & drop” (by highlighting) one or more sentences to an adjoining Construction-Block.

And then edit/modify/add.

The advantage of this Option #2 is that:

As a recruiter wanting to compose a job-description, I would automatically choose those job-advts (for display) which are:

for same/similar “vacancy names/positions/titles” – which I too am looking for.
released by my competitors/companies belonging to my own industry.

I know/believe that my co-professional, Recruitment Manager, in that company would have done a “good” job of writing a job-description and that if I use the same, I cannot go wrong!
This is plagiarism at its best! Of course, I would add 2/3 sentences which may be unique to the vacancy in my company.

Once again, this is a ONE TIME trouble/effort & I store this UNIQUE job-description so that I can use it again & again, every time I need to advertise same/similar vacancy!

In fact, if, in our database of 30,000 job-advts, a recruiter-subscriber happens to chance upon his own company’s past advertisements (for a given vacancy), then he may simply/blindly copy it, to speed up the matter!

Why re-invent the wheel?

And if our job-advts database grows to 100,000 (or even more), a company will have a greater chance (probability) of finding: