How not to write a job post
blog.hackerearth.com
blog.hackerearth.com
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.
Anyway I did all of these things except salary range. If I left that out, I thought it would give me more room to negotiate, it's an iOS job for a startup btw (email me if interested I guess). I mean, these iOS guys know what the going rates are, I didn't see the point of writing down a number for my first ever job post, plus I was scarred of picking the wrong number =/ How bad is it to not include the salary range type info?
Just one thing - you might want to translate US-specific terms like "401K" into globally understandable terms like "pension".
A "contributory pension" is a pension to which an employee makes contributions from, a "noncontributory pension" is one where the entire amount is funded by the employer, which is a different axis of distinction from the pension (defined benefit) vs. defined contribution distinction.
Ah, this is the difference. For me (in the UK), a pension can be either defined benefit or defined contribution.
There are three positions on your contributory axis - noncontributory (employer pays all), contributory (employer and employee pay), and personal (completely independent of employer).
- 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).
Have you tried giving only the lower bound though? Something like "starting at 95". Then the candidate comes and asks for 110.
I tell you our range is 70-120K, and you tell me you are 1 yr out of school. Then you try to negotiate to 120K. I tell you that is for someone with more experience.
This happens all the time in the business. 15 years recruiting, saw it most of my first 10, and now I don't get into ranges.
When I'm working with senior level folks I respect their time and let them know if I think they'll need to take a haircut on compensation or if they are underpaid and might expect a nice bump. Most recruiters probably don't do that.
Giving the lower end of the range doesn't really provide any benefit to either party (that I can think of anyway). If the candidate is making more than the low end, he/she is likely to ask for a high end. If the candidate is making less, he/she is probably happy that they might get a bump.
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.
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.
Cheers!
Please go ahead and tell me about the culture, attitude, perks, etc: these are likely to be red flags that I need not apply!
If the perks are a gym membership and free transportation pass, it may be my kind of place. If tney mention ping-pong tables and game consoles in their lounges, I know I should run away screaming.
(If you are half my age, you might reverse those.)
How much salary are you on ?
In my case, I use about 150-200€ for midday lunches in a normal month (eating out, I'm in a client's office, and eating at my desk would means eating alone, and I forbid myself to do this anymore). So that's 200*12 every year.
If it's free food, it's money I don't get, so I don't have to pay taxes on this money. I'm in the 30% range, so free food = about 3k€/year salary.
I think the extreme perk there is "5 day weekend", not "free food".
Yes. That.
Would that be the best type of job post? I would think so because then you know they aren't applying because they get X, Y, and Z but because of the work. X, Y, and Z might be nice perks if they enjoy them but if they don't care about X, Y, and Z you know they're still interested in the opportunity without them.
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.
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.
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.
As someone with +10 years experience, I now see my skillset a lot differently from ten years ago.
I know a lot more now. I can not do trivial pursuit programming questions as well as I could in the old days. Or clever hacks. I can't come up with a clever algorithm quickly like I used to. I can however design a database well. I think it is easy, but then my colleagues come up with some hacky solution, I can see instantly that it will cause confusion later down the line (e.g. using the same variable for two things), and suggest a better solution. I haven't read about design decisions in a book, that comes from experience.
Then again maybe the person you are comparing yourself to is a "one years experience ten times" person.
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.
Also even for non-programmer jobs like sys engineers/admins i see a lot of hacker and superstar postings.
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.