
Ask HN: What do you want to see in a job ad? - colinhowe
I&#x27;ve done a fair amount of hiring and I keep coming back to job ads and thinking that most of them aren&#x27;t fit for purpose. Being on &quot;the other side&quot; my view is somewhat skewed. Would love to know what other engineers are wanting to see in job ads and what entices them into applying somewhere.
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onion2k
In my opinion most companies see their job adverts as a filters rather than
nets. They're written as if the goal is to make sure "the wrong people" don't
apply. That's why you see lots of criteria that a candidate has to match
before they should apply - 'you must know X, Y, _and_ Z' and 'you must live in
location N' and 'you need to have done exactly what we're hiring for before
for M time/projects/etc'. Everything is designed to _reduce_ the number of
people who'll apply, as if the company is the best place to work in the
universe and everyone will be queuing up if the acceptance criteria aren't
cleared defined. "Nice to have" skills shouldn't be featured. Confident
candidates ignore them, while underconfident candidates read them as
essentials.

I prefer adverts that _increase_ the number of people who will apply. I want
to see more candidates to select themselves _in_ to the hiring pool rather
than selecting themselves _out_. Job adverts should be pretty vague about tech
and experience - so long as you're in the right area then everything else can
be learned. Whether or not you get hired should be about whether or not you're
going to be a valuable asset to the company in the long term. The ideal job
advert should be 1/2 about why the company is a good place to work, 1/3 about
what the job will entail once you've got up to speed, and 1/6 about the
absolutely essential skills you'll need on day one.

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Pick-A-Hill2019
Definitely pay (filter 1), technology and systems used by the company relevant
to vacancy (filter 2). Then a brief outline of the role and expected level of
proficiency in the various requirements (filter 3).

If the job ad made it this far then a quick blurb about the company perks.
Hint - if it mentions they have a ball-pit and a slide then it’s a ‘company
not for me’ (hits filter 4). Things like medical insurance, flex-time etc
results in a ok, continue reading. Sometimes the recruiting company may not
want to reveal their identity and that’s ok (e.g. if using a recruitment
agency) but wherever possible a link to the ‘About Us’ page is handy.

If I see paragraphs about how company X is the best, most coolest, most
<insert buzz-word of the day> as an opener it is pretty much guaranteed I will
delete it and make a mental note of the agency/company as a pre-filter for any
future ads from them.

~~~
colinhowe
Thanks for this!

It's almost a rite of passage for a startup to say that they're
"revolutionising the world of blahblah"

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non-entity
Less generic crap (is genericism a word?). I get that this isn't always
possible but the way most job descriptions seem to be written make effectively
searching for what I want difficult sometimes.

Let's say I want to work with blub in my next job. I search for "blub
developer" in my job-board of choice, but I'm met with a lot of noise like
this

> Software Developer

> Required Experience:

> Experience with a programming language (i.e. Java, C++, Pascal, Modula-3,
> PL/I, Brainfuck, Blub)

Where the position isn't working with blub, but its been listed under some
generic requirement to have programmed in some programming language. Please
stop listing stuff like this. Another version of this thats typically bad with
enterprise-type positions is dumping every damn Java EE or Microsoft related
technology as required or preferred experience whether or not you'll ever use
them.

Also I'd like to know what id be working on. Often this is stated, but many
times its not, typically with an even less descriptive "Software Engineer"
title. Id at least like to know what sort of product in working on and if you
can ahead of time tell me exactly what the product is thats even better.

Some have mentioned thebsalary range and while its great to see that (and a
huge time saver) thats probably a pipe dream.

I digress for a moment to note one last thing. That the worst part of job
searching isn't even these sort of descriptions, but the job boards themselves
that seem to ignore search terms in favor of "promoted" positions that match
my above complaints.

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e_scape
1\. Salary

2\. Clearly stated what would day-to-day look like. Not a list of 25 things
one should do ranging from reading log files to configuring scalable systems.

3\. Writing anything that may be red flag. For example one would be the only
IT guy there, mandatory oncall during nights, mandatory overtimes, etc...

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detaro
a) pay

b) clear differentiation between _required_ and _nice to have_

~~~
colinhowe
Hah. Lack of pay on job ads is one of my biggest bugbears!

I've always been of the opinion that nice to haves just shouldn't be there.
They don't help self-select in a meaningful way. The must haves must be
_actual_ must haves. E.g. must be able to code confidently in Python.

