

How not to write a job post  - raghuHack
http://blog.hackerearth.com/2014/01/write-job-post.html

======
codegeek
I commented on a similar post a couple of months ago but will re-paste it
here.

A good job posting in my opinion must include:

\- LOCATION or REMOTE. You can talk all about your great company, awesome
team, great perks but if you don't tell me where do I need to go, it is really
not very useful.

\- COMPANY NAME: I hate it when recruiters post "Fortune 500 client". Really ?
Could you be any more specific ? </sarcasm>

\- SALARY RANGE: "Market Rate Salary", "Salary: Competitve", "Salary:
commensurate on experience" is all bullshit. Give me a range. I understand
that the exact salary could depend on how good you are but every employer has
a range. Specifically big companies. Also, please make the range reasonable.
60K-150K is bullshit because then you are just throwing numbers for the sake
of it. 60K-85K or 100K-130K is more reasonable.

\- TEAM DESCRIPTION: Describe the team as much as possible without necessarily
revealing personal info. I would rather like to read "We are a team of 5
people spread across the globe where 2 of us do the back end dev in
NYC.......". Don't give me generics like "Excellent motivated team working on
world changing projects looking for the next ninja to join our awesome team".
Really again ?

\- WHY ARE YOU LOOKING TO HIRE: This is a must for me. Is this position open
just because you have some cash to burn to show good to the management that
you are "growing" the team or is there really a pain point that can be
addressed by hiring. What problems are you facing currently that could be
solved by this hire ? It is better to be needed than being a nice to have.

\- BENEFITS: This one is a nice to have. But again be specific if you can. You
offer 401K/pension ? awesome. now tell me what the employer match percentage
is. Or at least link to your HR benefits site if it is externally available. I
am always surprised to see how little you know about benefits until you are
hired. In the US, health insurance is a big deal. I want to know upfront what
kinds of plans are offered which could impact my salary requirements as well.

~~~
fecak
A couple explanations from a recruiter (why recruiters do these things): \-
Company name: Agency recruiters don't post company names typically because
they are afraid other recruiting companies might steal their clients. If a
competitor agency sees COMPANY is hiring, they might call and try to compete
for their business. This is a huge fear in the contingency recruiting world,
but in the retained world it isn't as big an issue. (I post client names, but
my business isn't contingency)

\- Salary range: The problem with posting a salary range is that candidates
only hear the high number. Most will say that isn't true, but I've been
recruiting for 15 years and whenever I gave a salary range to candidates of
say 100-120, they would automatically expect that they would get the 120. Any
offer below 120 was considered lowball. I'm sure there will be some who say
they wouldn't feel that way, but it happened almost every time.

\- Team description: Interesting that you mention personal info. It seems the
trend is starting to move towards publicizing the members of teams where that
could be a recruiting tool. If you have great engineers that are willing to
have a somewhat public face for your company, many companies seem willing to
use that to their advantage in today's environment. The risk of exposing team
members to poaching by other firms used to be a larger concern, but now most
people can be found via LinkedIn, GitHub, blogs, etc.

\- Why you are looking to hire: When it's growth and new projects, I'll
usually list it. When it's a replacement due to termination or turnover, don't
expect that to be advertised.

\- Benefits: Again, if the information is positive we tend to list it. If they
are industry average, they typically aren't worth mentioning.

It's possible to write job descriptions that will get great responses while
including none of the things you list here (except perhaps location).

~~~
codegeek
"The problem with posting a salary range is that candidates only hear the high
number."

Sure but if you want great candidates, why does that matter. Make the
candidates work for that high number. Let them prove it. If you the employer
thinks it is worth giving that number, then they will give it. If you think
that there is a risk that a mediocre candidate might demand that high number,
then it is the fault of employer for not being able to negotiate correctly.

"It seems the trend is starting to move towards publicizing the members of
teams where that could be a recruiting tool. "

I agree with you here. Team description are definitely getting tricky in the
world of social stuff. Where do we draw the line ? Publicly exposing your team
members (specially at startups) can mean poaching attempts by others.

"When it's a replacement due to termination or turnover, don't expect that to
be advertised."

Sure but that still doesn't change the fact why you are hiring. You don't want
to say "we fired someone" sure but why can't you at least say "one of our team
members left and we need someone to take over his role". There is a reason for
this. Good candidates want to know if they are going to be join a role which
was already there OR is a new role being created for a new requirement ? These
things matter to a great candidate but obviously not to a medicore one.

"If they are industry average, they typically aren't worth mentioning."

Thats just a lazy way of saying "we are too lazy to tell you the benefits
because well everyone gets it". Sure, but it impacts my decisions as a
potential job seeker. Do you give 15 days or 20 days of vacation to start with
? I think thats important because for someone like me who is self employed
currently, those are the things I want to know if I want to go fulltime
because 5 days could mean thousands of dollars.

~~~
fecak
I'm actually turning my response into a full blog post, as I think many people
will get something out of it. I'm not trying to argue that the methods used by
recruiters are the best for candidates, but rather explain them in terms of
the recruiter's perspective and motivations.

Salary range - It matters when you have candidates who have a false sense of
their own value. If I'm hiring an Android dev for a client and I know the
salary goes up to 140K, what is the use of telling that number to the person 2
years out of school who is only worth 80K at this point? The reason salary
ranges exist is that a company realizes they will get some variation of
experience. We can call people "Junior" and "Senior" all day long, but it
matters little when we get applicants of varying experience applying for the
same job.

The salary range, particularly when talking about those least qualified for
the job, often creates an inflated sense of value that translates into
potentially losing a candidate who feels somehow snubbed because they didn't
get the max of the range. People aren't realistic about their value in most
cases, and the range just reinforces that issue.

Reason for hiring: I see your point about replacement candidates, but most
don't use job specs as a way to both screen in and potentially screen out
candidates. I do like specs that screen out (if they want you to work 60
hours, I'd like that to be in the job spec).

Benefits: Again, we're advertising what is different. We could potentially
write every single detail of the benefits package, including what the plan is
and how much your copay will be if you go to the podiatrist without a
referral, or whether or not our HMO covers chiropractic. That might be a
dealbreaker for the person with the bad back, but it doesn't matter much to
most people.

PTO is important to you, and to most - so that is something that is usually
worth mentioning, but is only mentioned in most cases when it is above
average. Most people will assume 'average' when reading a job spec unless it
is otherwise stated. You'll assume 40 hours a week (probably), so if the
company expects only 25 hours or if they expect 80 hours it is worth
mentioning. If it's 40, should I mention it?

The job post is to get you to apply to something you are qualified for and
hopefully interested enough to want to learn more (as well as screen out those
who are unqualified or would obviously not be interested due to a
dealbreaker), and we're not able to give every single point in it. Even if we
did give every detail, you are still going to actually MEET the people, and
you might not like them (or they might not like you). It's how we start a
conversation with an applicant, but it's certainly not how we end it.

------
lyndonh
Can I have a quick micro rant here: I don't want to know about perks when I'm
job hunting. Tell me about the type of work (not a wishlist of skills you
want), the ball park pay (not a range), the location (I'm looking at you,
agencies), the level (entry level vs management) and the type of hours (I'm
the type of weirdo that has a life outside of work). I don't care if you have
free lunch or free t-shirts. I expect to work hard and get paid for it. P.S.
Forget the marathon gauntlet interview with multiple skype calls; that's why I
send you a copy of my resume and give you references. OK, rant over. Please
carry on. Nothing to see here.

~~~
nekgrim
I consider perks as a part of the salary. Let's take an extreme case: free
food. If I can eat for free 5 days a weekend, that's a lot of money I don't
have to pay!

~~~
dragonwriter
> Let's take an extreme case: free food. If I can eat for free 5 days a
> weekend, that's a lot of money I don't have to pay!

I think the extreme perk there is "5 day weekend", not "free food".

~~~
nekgrim
Indeed... When I write "week", my brain autocompletes with "end". My bad.

------
scrabble
There are a few things I want to know about when looking at job posts: tech
stack, target salary, what the company is, and a small list of perks. This
will give me an idea of what the office environment is like.

I hate it when job postings start listing out needed skills. I read one the
other day listing 5+ years of HTML5 and CSS3 experience. When it comes to
years of experience, you're more likely looking for a particular level of
knowledge and some people are going to get there in a year or less, and others
will not get there no matter how many years of experience they have.

~~~
Bahamut
It also is a red flag to me when I see that - I know I am performing close to
on par with some people with industry experience of 10+ years on the frontend.
All things equal, you will want the rising star, since that person hasn't hit
a ceiling yet, and there's a decent chance you can get away with underpaying
that person.

~~~
scrabble
The real kicker is that while a lot of frontend skills are still valuable and
very relevant, it's also a space that's changing rather quickly.

People set in older patterns who haven't adapted aren't going to be as
valuable as people versed in the newer patterns and tools. And those people
won't be as valuable as people familiar with the older patterns who also adapt
and keep up with the current state of things.

~~~
Bahamut
Also agreed. I do envy those with more experience with me who are doing more
with current technologies, since they have the advantage of having done it
longer.

But it makes me wonder what the heck are these companies thinking when they
are looking to hire if they care about # of years. You can be in the industry
for a long time but be terrible.

------
MikeTaylor
Apart from very confused about what an adjective it, this article nails it.
Just because it's "ninja" and "rockstar" instead of "monetise" and "synergy"
doesn't make it any less meaningless jargon.

------
krstck
Can't access because the site is down, but I have a lot of feelings about this
topic. Specifically, please never, _ever_ , use one of these words to describe
the developer you are hunting:

ninja, cowboy, rockstar, superstar, virtuoso, obsessed, "lives and breathes
code", knowledgeable about some arbitrary activity or hobby to show how quirky
and social the team is...

It gets tiring, as a professional, to read these job postings that sound like
they're an ad for a teenage boy's summer camp. Usually the non-programmer
postings will read like, you know, jobs for adults. Also, when you're asking
for a "virtuoso" for your 60k junior dev spot, I don't know whether that means
you don't know what that word means or you're just delusional. Either way, it
sounds like everyone definitely has a puffed up ego.

~~~
k3oni
Looking around these days i see a lot of ninja and rockstar requests, can't
agree more with your post.

Also even for non-programmer jobs like sys engineers/admins i see a lot of
hacker and superstar postings.

------
codingdave
In my mind, a job posting, and the responses to it, are just intended to start
a conversation.

Getting all worked up over what is or is not in the posting seem kind of silly
to me. If you don't like the way it was written, fine - don't apply.

If you have questions, just apply. If they contact you, ask those questions.
If they don't contact you, the answers didn't matter anyway.

Applying for a job is not a declaration that you want to work there. It is a
statement that you are interested in discussing it more. All the real
information gathering, in both directions, happens during the interview
process.

------
MikeTaylor
If your job ad doesn't give some indication of salary, then it's literally
useless to anyone worthwhile who might otherwise consider applying. Good
candidates will only apply for jobs that they feel are worthy of them. If they
can't even tell whether you're going offer $10k less than they're already on,
they'll just move on to the next listing.

------
arunagarwal
And site seems down :-)

~~~
skbohra123
Should write another post - How not to setup a blog!

~~~
raghuHack
That would be one sentence - never use openshift.

~~~
arikrak
Why not? It worked well for me when I got HN'd and I hadn't even setup caching
(though I did have Cloudflare). And that was on the free tier.

------
bluetidepro
Anyone have a mirror of this? It seems to be down...

