What catches your attention in a job listing?

Freedom and independence minimum intervention, flexible timings, stock options, % share in profits, clean non-political environment and above all suggestion box type model where one is ready to listen even to the bottom most ranked employee. I know i am askingfor too much ;-)

This is one of the better listings I got recently from a recruiter. When I asked her about the company and what they did, all she would tell me is "Our client is a very successful E-Commerce company. It is in the top 10 in the world for the particular type of site that this job is for." Looks like a fairly good 'job', but to work for a non-descript ecommerce company was not in my plans. I think it's great though that they start right off with the work environment. Custom workstation with Dual 30" Apple displays would be amazing.

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Work environment

- We will custom build a workstation to your specifications using the latest and greatest technology; Mac OS X and Linux-friendly

- Dual Apple 30" Cinema HD displays

- Join a team with a winning attitude in a fast moving, highly energetic environment

- Full benefits

- Executive desk with your own personal choice of ergonomic chair

- All of our servers run GNU/Linux (Debian) or OpenBSD

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Job Title: Senior PHP5 Developer

Location: Anywhere

Job Type: Permanent

Salary: $75K - 150K

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The Opportunity

- Design and manage an object oriented PHP5 codebase

- Seeing projects through the complete software life-cycle, from design and implementation to testing and production deployment and beyond

- Lots of room for growth within the company

- Technically challenging

- Highly rewarding and enthusiastic team environment

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Getting in the door

- Strong object oriented PHP experience, must have operational examples of prior PHP5 OO work

- Strong understanding of MySQL 4.1-5.x

- 8 to 10 years of experience in software development using object oriented and procedural programming

- Strong background in developing for GNU/Linux or Unix-like platforms for mission-critical production deployments

- Strong analytical and logical thinking capability

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Always a plus

- Experience with MySQL replication, MySQL Cluster

- Experience with MySQL performance tuning and optimization (query optimization, index tuning, caching, and buffer tuning)

- Secure coding practices

- High-availability and scalable network service development

- Expertise with interfaces, MVC, HTML, CSS2, JavaScript, AJAX, Templating, caching, sessions, and authentication

- GNU/Linux optimization, security and network administration

- Experience with distributed architecture, design, and implementation

- Experience with running Apache or other Unix-based web servers in a production environment

- Industry networking experience, including knowledge of fundamental protocols, such as TCP, UDP, IPv4/6 and SSL/TLS

- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or other related field

Is it the opportunity to be a cofounder/early employee? Potential fame & fortune? A chance to change the world? Getting paid to build something cool? A specific vertical that you’re interested in? The chance to work with great people?

What is it about a potential job opportunity that gets your attention? What would you have to see in a job listing to entice you to respond?

Positively? the job listing tells me what I want to know in order to determine whether I want to find out more about the position (what am I doing, what tools do they provide, who am I working for, where are they located?)

Negatively? Evasiveness ("one of the leading X"), attempting to impress me with things I don't care about or am likely to consider negative ("a Fortune 500 company," "one of the largest Visual Basic code bases in the industry"), signs of buzzword bingo or technical incompetence ("must have significant experience in PERL, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, ASP, C#, ColdFusion", "must have 10+ years of experience with Windows XP"), signs that the accounting department and glossy magazines are choosing technologies (any mention of ColdFusion or Dreamweaver).

Yeah, the latter list is much longer. It's a lot easier to do things wrong than to do them right.

When there's a mispelling or obvious sign that someone in HR wrote the job description.

For Example: "Must be proficient in Sequel."

or

"Must have 10+ years experience in the .NET environment."

When that kind of thing catches my attention, I want nothing to do with a company where people who don't know what they're talking about are allowed to represent the company to the public.

If it's evident in the job listing that they have read and practice what's in Peopleware (a classic, be sure to read it if you haven't already).

http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco/dp/0932633439

Dollar signs?

No, but seriously, everything depends on compensation. Everything else is simply an apology. The more you pay me, the less of my life I have to waste working for other people.

Something that shows me what kind of people the company consists of. The ad needs to show that the company is smart and fun.

In western Michigan, a job listing.