Gendered wording

There are more than 20,000 job advertisements available in different job portals in Estonia. Company that wants to stick out with its recruitment advertisement must think does it speak with potential candidates, does it has a story?

One week I noticed three G4S recruitment ads where they were looking for employees to customer sites - all of them had attractive visuals with photo materials.

First one was looking for security staff to aviation customer; in its visual there were company car and Tallinn Airport on the back of the advertisement, showing to candidates where they are expected to work.

Second one was looking for security guards for Prisma Peremarket (local retail chain), where company has used photos from customer site and added of photo of serious security person.

With third advertisement they were looking for security personnel to Solaris Center (Estonian life style center). The message of the advertisement was again supported with photo material about customer site, with added photo of male and female security guard in uniform.

Most people probably associate word ‘security guard’ with so called male job.  In Estonia the job was formerly called not ‘security guard’ but ‘security man’ (in Estonian turvamees). And even if most of us are now used to see female security guards on their job posts in different retail stores, office buildings and etc, the first thing that comes to our mind, when we think about security person is - a man! It is really time consuming to break stereotypical thinking and if a company wants to hire people from opposite sex to stereotypical position they must think how to deliver their message so that it would reach target audience. One of the possibilities is to support your message with photo, as G4S has done here. Woman who sees that add and sees a female security guard starts to think ‘if other women can do it, so can I’. Second possibility is to write to job ad that the job is suitable for men and women. Third possibility is to use gender related wording.

Just recently I found information about one research that was carried out in USA in 2011 by D. Gaucheri, J. Frieseni and A.C. Kay. This research was studying usage of gendered wording in job advertisements and in job descriptions, and its influences to job seekers.

This research revealed that women found male-dominated jobs to be less appealing, compared with the same types of jobs advertised with feminine wording. Moreover, to use masculine wording in male-dominated jobs makes the job unappealing for women because conveys that they may not belong in that job.

With the research they also studied 493 typical female- and male – dominated job advertisement and prepared a list of masculine and feminine words. According to this masculine words are: active, confident, decisive, dominant, impulsive, objective, outspoken, etc. Feminine words are: gentle, honest, kind, polite, warm, loyal, interpersonal etc.

Takeaways:

-          Use illustrative photo material in your job posts. It gives job seekers better overview of the vacant position; use pictures where employees are dressed in company’s uniform, employees filling  various job duties, photos showing different areas of the company’s core business, etc.

-          Be different from others! Instead of using layouts of job portals, try to prepare (or use agency help) your job advertisement yourself by using custom-made visuals for different vacant occupations that you offer.

-          Looking for candidates from opposite sex to stereotypical jobs, you can use supporting picture material, gendered wording or write to the job ad that the job is suitable both man and women.