Here’s the relevant text of the ad (I think, I cut out the part about the company itself and a bit at the end for recruiters). Feel free to tell me what the hell it’s about:
Your new role
We’re all about continuous improvement and embracing change and new technologies to drive our business forward. That’s where you come in.
We’re looking for a Head of Digital Development to provide operational leadership across, successfully delivering high quality, value for money and effective applications and tools.
Of course not only is technical knowledge required, but also effective leadership and management skills as well as the ability to clearly communicate a strategic vision to a range of stakeholders.
If you want the opportunity to make a real difference to our team and lead on changes that will shape the way we operate as a business, we’d love to hear from you.
This role can be based out of our Eastleigh (SO50 6AD), Yeovil (BA22 8WN) or Bracknell (RG12 1RF) offices.
For more information on this fantastic opportunity, be sure to take a look at the job description below.
About you
We’ve all got different backgrounds, strengths and experiences. But we share the same values. It’s these shared values that bring us together as one team.
Our colleagues embrace these every day. Be the difference to our customers and colleagues, always curious and look for better solutions, achieve together by working in partnership with others, own it openly through working with others in an open and honest way, and finally embrace possibility and see changes and challenges as welcomed opportunities.
If you share our values and want to make a real difference in the world, you’re on to a winner and we’d love to hear from you!
Be yourself
Abri is committed to promoting an inclusive culture. We want our colleagues to bring their individual differences, life experiences and knowledge into the workplace and we welcome their contribution to our amazing company. Everyone is different, everyone is unique.
There is a document at the bottom you can click on that says it is a job description. Good luck figuring out that one either.
This is what happens when you let AI write the job listing. It’s just word salad.
AI points at HR
“I learned it by watching you!”
They are looking for someone to run a department that develops digital tools for the company. Senior leadership has no fucking clue what digital tools they want, but they want something.
You’ll probably be given a free hand to build your team since the ad seems clueless on what they have.
You’ll also be expected to be the subject matter expert for development of digital tools, even if you aren’t expected to develop them.
Nailed it. The job would be figuring out the business needs, then building out and managing a team to deliver those needs.
So… project manager?
It would be who a project manager reports to.
- Be in MS Teams meetings all day and talk with your hands
- Delegate software and system changes with confidence based on the sales pitches of vendors who over-promise and under-deliver
- Be a punching bag for executives when the solutions that were meant to save money for the business end up costing more time and money than before
Looks like a middle management position.
Head of Digital Development with the vagueness expressed otherwise makes it seem like you’d be doing PR on social media, possibly with a team under you but not necessarily (especially since they want 3 of 'em).
Other people have talked about how this is a middle-management job and what that would entail. I’m here to make a couple points:
- reading up on the company is important. See if hey have made LinkedIn posts about the importance of “Digital Development”. Look through their web pages and previous job posts to see if there are people with the job title “Digital Developer” and if so what they did.
- the best situation is: you have a friend at that company who tells you “yeah, they’re looking for someone to …” Next best is someone in that field who tells you “yeah I’ve heard that company is trying to …” or “that company really needs to …” If you go to job fairs, get cards from everyone you can; if you had a card from someone at that company (even HR) you could try emailing or calling and saying “hi it was great meeting you at (place), by the way I’ve heard your looking for a Digital Developer, do you think my experience as A would fit the bill, or perhaps my experience as B?” If you don’t have a card you could try looking at their web page for contact info and emailing them that question.
- a lot of times job postings are vague bc they don’t know wtf they want, they just know they need something that sounds like that. Send a cover letter that emphasizes your managerial experience, and be ready with as many anecdotes as you can about how you successfully crafted visions or identified problems or led teams to implement solutions while getting along with your peers. If you have experience in that field, great, but sometimes companies will be happy with an outsider’s perspective. Good luck, fam!
Sounds like a middle management role at a property management company, managing teams that will do some combination of developing new software, procuring outside software, configuring software, doing shit with integrations including rolling in whatever clusterfuck of legacy systems and data any corporate acquisitions would bring in, and providing tech support under Service Level Agreements. My first impression is that the packages in questions would probably be about some combination of rent pricing, market analysis, maintenance ticketing, and contract lifecycle management.
Frankly, it sounds awful. 🤣 The word soup could also be partly that they’ve already identified internal candidates but have a corporate requirement to post publicly.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. They want someone to run their Digital Development department. Overseeing the department in a managerial role, but they also want someone with technical skills so you actually know what’s going on and can effectively manage the personnel/job requirements, and communicate what it is your department does and plans to do to shareholders.
As far as the “technical skills” you need? Well… without knowing what this business is, I can’t further define that. Considering it’s a Digital Development department and they talk about “continuous improvement and embracing change and new technologies to drive our business forward,” it sounds like they’d be leaning on you to introduce new and innovative technologies to improve the way they do business.
That’s about all I can get out of that job ad without knowing the business or their technical requirements.
