I have written and read so many job adverts over the years that I have almost become immune to phrases like “rockstar developer”. That’s a lie.

What Your Job Ad Says About You

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Style Pass

2024-10-02 10:30:05

I have written and read so many job adverts over the years that I have almost become immune to phrases like “rockstar developer”. That’s a lie. I still throw up in my mouth a little every time I see that.

I’m going to walk you through some of the mistakes I regularly see in your job advert and hopefully this will help you write better job adverts that don’t make me want to break things.

Salary: Competitive Saying your salary is ‘competitive’ is as effective as saying ‘we definitely pay more than minimum wage.’ Throughout my career, I have yet to come across a single, justifiable excuse for not displaying a reasonable salary range on a job advert. Some of the excuses that I often come up against are worth sharing though:

Excuse: I’m worried what the existing team will think if they see that the salary is higher than theirs. Solution: Pay your team fairly.

Excuse: If we put a range, applicants are only going to ask for the top end of that range. Solution: Most of them won’t but pay them that anyway if they are really good.