attractive to whom? know your audience. even among HN members, there's a huge range of what "attractive" means. figure out who you want to target, very specifi

attractive to whom? know your audience. even among HN members, there's a huge range of what "attractive" means. figure out who you want to target, very specifically, then figure out exactly what they want out of a job. The following is my paraphrase of dotBen's comment, with "if statements" instead of "dont's": if you want people who care about degrees, require a degree. if you want people who care about the exact number of years they worked at some job or with a language, add it to your requirements. if you want honest down to earth people, then be honest and down to earth. if you want people who are cocky enough to label themselves as "rockstars" or "ninjas", then ask for it. ... list goes on I personally think this is common sense, but as they say, common sense isn't common. The most important thing? Hiring is a two-way street. You're shopping for employees, we're shopping for employers. Your job description is like an employers resume. If you want honest applications, then give us an honest description of what you want. It would seriously MAKE MY DAY, if there was a job listing that said straight up what you were going to do, i.e.: "we need someone to work with us on a team of 5 to implement our new web API within 3 months and provide support afterwards. If you suck, we'll fire you. If you're good, we'll move you on to whatever new stuff we might need help on like a potential mobile platform..." at which point it would be very easy for me to say "yeah that sounds awesome! i can do that for you!" or "fuck that i got better shit to do." either way, we'll both get exactly what we want, and I won't be trying to fake my way into a job I don't deserve, and you won't be questioning whether I'm actually good enough.