Ask HN: Who else is tired of job postings? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who else is tired of job postings?

18 pointsgiantg210 comments

Does anyone else lose interest in job postings after reading the first few bullet points?

They all want you to think they are the beat place to work and their work will substantially change the world. Then they have a list of 50 skills they want you to have. I just can't stand how much fluff and BS are in the postings and how little there is about the things that actually matter. Team structure? Nope (just saying "Agile" doesn't cut it). Benefits and pay? Nope. Working hours, culture, expectations (like a senior dev can be different things at different companies)? Nope.

I just find it crushes all hope - I don't see good jobs, and don't even know what would define a good job at this point. I'm a midlevel dev that just got a bad midyear review because I'm slow and need to be more engaged. What are your experiences?

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I hate job boards more than anything. Most of them have very poor filtering ability and too low of an SNR. LinkedIn does better with the filtering, allowing you to differentiate things like company industry and job function, but LinkedIn is ruined by almost always ignoring my search and flooding the results with jobs that look like my current role, which is exactly what I don’t want.

But back to your original point, yeah i can’t stand job listings. 90% of the ones I see look like keyword dumps mixed in corporate-speak responsibilities that don’t give me any insight as to what I’d be working on. Some due a bit better but almost always tend to be in companies out of my league.

Valid criticism. I'm now building a job board and would like feedback on the search and filtering.

https://www.arbeitnow.com/

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I think the content has to be there to do the filtering. Garbage content supplied by recruiter will just yield garbage filtering, right?

Yes it makes me really annoyed and is definitely a contributing factor for why I'm still at my current employer, I lose all hope after reading a couple. Skimming past the bullshit only goes so far. It would also be great if I didn't have to go to a third-party source to find out what their hiring process looks like. I have little interest being grilled over a whiteboard when I'm not even sure if I want to work at the company yet.

This is basically my current situation. I can't stand my current job, but the job postings are just as demoralizing.

I agree. They're pretty much all copy/paste of each other. They all offer "competitive salary", they all have "generous benefits". They all have a "great team to be part of", they are all "product people".

Sometimes, even after reading the posting you have no idea what the company does.

Where do you think the disconnect/problem is? Do you think it's possible to have realistic, good job postings? What would they need to look like?

I think the whole point is for HR/recruiters to make the posting unrealistic. I feel like most people aren't going to apply to jobs that say you're going to be working long hours, building boring stuff, and just going g to be generally squeezed until you're thrown away for a younger person who can be squeezed even more.

It's totally possible to have good job postings. Just state a realistic salary range rather than "competitive", explicitly list benefits, and throw some quantifiable statements about work culture into the mix.

It should be possible to know what a role is really about before the second interview, but honestly most companies do a awful job at describing their roles and so you have to drag it out of them during interviews.

How does the ideal job post you created compare to those posted by your employer? What feedback did you get when you shared your ideal job post with your team lead?

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