7 ms·

Creating Effective Job Adverts

54 points by Peroni 8y ago

cateye 8y ago
Salary range is the most strategically left out signal that most job seekers look for. In most cases it is a waste of time for both sides. But I guess that companies have an advantage in the end by creating this opaqueness.
- gitgud 8y ago
  Salary is often negotiated on a person to person basis. One of the first rules of negotiation: “Whoever mentions a number first, loses” As the other negotiator knows the expected salary and can undermine it...
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    Actually, “whoever doesn’t have an alternative loses”. If you’re interviewing at Google, casually mention that you’re interviewing at Facebook and Google will raise their offer. This is much more powerful.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I am not sure if that's always true. If you name a high number first you can manage expectations and avoid being confronted with a low-ball number. Maybe it's just my market value but when I waited for the employer to name a number first the number was never a positive surprise so to me it's better to immediately signal the expectations I have.
  - codingdave 8y ago
    That is why you talk about your minimum acceptable level, not your expected salary. It won't prevent upwards negotiation, as they are still competing with other offers. Whereas if you don't communicate a minimum, you could go through a lengthy interview process, only to get a lowball offer that you never had a chance of taking. Waste of time for everyone involved.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Do people really have multiple offers while applying somewhere? I can see that for college grads who have time to apply a lot but once you have a full time job how do you find the time to set this up?
      - 0898 8y ago
        You should always be looking. The best time to look for a new job is before you need one.
      - mdorazio 8y ago
        Not always, but yes it happens quite a bit. These days the interview process for experienced hires tends to be rather lengthy and it's easy to draw it out even farther if you want to. If you're ready to move on and have been hitting up your network and applying to multiple new positions (that you're qualified for), it's not overly difficult to hold off one company making an offer while waiting for another to come through.
        maxxxxx 8y ago
        How do you find the time to deal with applications at multiple companies? Between phone screens and interviews that's a lot of time.
      - nfriedly 8y ago
        I usually don't have multiple offers at the same time.. but you don't have to mention the timing. I can honestly say that I've received offers from companies X, Y, and Z - even if all three were in the past and I already turned down all three of them. It's not as good as having them all at the same time, but it's better than nothing.
  - dmitri1981 8y ago
    Meh. There are more jobs than developers, so developers have lots more alternatives. As I developer I would not apply for a job that did not advertise a rate unless I knew in advance it would meet my expectations. I feel withholding salary info is a premature optimisation of salary negotiation. You are not going to attract top talent and then snag them with a lowball offer.
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    As others have mentioned, this rule only applies to negotiations where one side is willing to offer more than the other side expects. If you're expecting $150k and the company only has budget for $120k the opportunity cost of engaging in a lengthy interview process to find that out is rather bad. A better rule of thumb for in-demand professionals (in my experience on both sides of the table) is to do your homework ahead of time, have a realistic understanding of what you're worth and what the company is likely able to offer, and name a price that's a little bit above that. You'll save a lot of time and weed out low-balling recruiters immediately without actually sacrificing much in the way of compensation.
    - UweSchmidt 8y ago
      The company also wants to attract lots of people who would be happy with (say) $90k, and not anchor anywhere above unless necessary. If you expect a number of people applying, chances are good that someone is willing to be underpaid for whatever reason, and this fact is huge for companies.
- mathgeek 8y ago
  > But I guess that companies have an advantage in the end by creating this opaqueness. By its nature, any information that one party has, but the other does not, creates such an imbalance.
- Peroni 8y ago
  What makes it worse is that it's categorically proven that job adverts that advertise a salary range not only attract more applicants, but they also typically attract more relevant applicants.
  - nfriedly 8y ago
    Any sources for that? I believe it, but I've been unsuccessful at convincing my employer's HR department...
    - Peroni 8y ago
      Sure. Here's two helpful sources: https://resources.workpop.com/blog/publishing-compensation-matters https://resources.workpop.com/blog/publishing-compensation-m... https://twitter.com/dougall/status/1011564748708728832?s=20 https://twitter.com/dougall/status/1011564748708728832?s=20
- jandrewrogers 8y ago
  On the other hand, it can work in the opposite direction when recruiters contact you. I often insist that recruiters give me a compensation range as a pre-condition of further discussion so that they don't waste my (and their) time. The contactee, by virtue of being in that position, has leverage to request a salary range as a concession for continuing the conversation.
philipodonnell 8y ago
Does anyone have a contrasting opinion? The article seems to focus on just not explaining with enough specificity what they want, but I find this is extremely common so shouldn't overly effect one particular employer. In fact, I found this job post to be quite well written. The scope is a bit wide (40-120K is quite a range) but I feel like good applicants will know whats expected at different points on that range. https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/honest.work/posts/effective-job-adverts/bright-cove-advert.png https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/honest.work/posts/effecti... Part of me thinks this might be over generalizing from a small sample size, i.e., does honest.work get enough traffic that a lack of applicants is truly indicative of quality. Of course there is also the fact that by pricing by the job advert they naturally encourage overly-broad adverts for broadly similar jobs, so that's probably not helping.
- Peroni 8y ago
  This definitely isn’t a contrasting opinion as I’m the OP and co-founder of Honest Work but for context, the original role Brightcove posted had over 5k unique hits, a lot of which came from the Go subreddit and a highly relevant Go community here in the UK so they definitely had a substantial number of the right people looking at the post.
  - philipodonnell 8y ago
    It's still sort of a sample size of one, though. This content would have been more effective if you had an analysis of some factor that measured your hypothesis (length of posting, salary range width) and showed the correlation with conversions. Then this could have been an illustrative case study backing that up. Even better would be the results of the changes, maybe offer for free to turn this into a junior and senior postings and see the difference multiple posts with narrower ranges makes. The holy Grail of data science is solid math foundation, benefits your clients (more apps), benefits you (more revenue, higher satisfaction), and demonstrates your effectiveness with data and willingness to continually improve.
starikovs 8y ago
Honestly, I feel pain when I read most of job adverts/postings. They have a lot of text, they're too verbose, etc.. Why can't recruiters just specify things what developers interested in? These things can be found in different surveys like the Stackoverflow's one.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

54 points by Peroni 8y ago

Salary range is the most strategically left out signal that most job seekers look for. In most cases it is a waste of time for both sides. But I guess that companies have an advantage in the end by creating this opaqueness.

gitgud 8y ago
Salary is often negotiated on a person to person basis. One of the first rules of negotiation: “Whoever mentions a number first, loses” As the other negotiator knows the expected salary and can undermine it...
- paulsutter 8y ago
  Actually, “whoever doesn’t have an alternative loses”. If you’re interviewing at Google, casually mention that you’re interviewing at Facebook and Google will raise their offer. This is much more powerful.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I am not sure if that's always true. If you name a high number first you can manage expectations and avoid being confronted with a low-ball number. Maybe it's just my market value but when I waited for the employer to name a number first the number was never a positive surprise so to me it's better to immediately signal the expectations I have.
- codingdave 8y ago
  That is why you talk about your minimum acceptable level, not your expected salary. It won't prevent upwards negotiation, as they are still competing with other offers. Whereas if you don't communicate a minimum, you could go through a lengthy interview process, only to get a lowball offer that you never had a chance of taking. Waste of time for everyone involved.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Do people really have multiple offers while applying somewhere? I can see that for college grads who have time to apply a lot but once you have a full time job how do you find the time to set this up?
    - 0898 8y ago
      You should always be looking. The best time to look for a new job is before you need one.
    - mdorazio 8y ago
      Not always, but yes it happens quite a bit. These days the interview process for experienced hires tends to be rather lengthy and it's easy to draw it out even farther if you want to. If you're ready to move on and have been hitting up your network and applying to multiple new positions (that you're qualified for), it's not overly difficult to hold off one company making an offer while waiting for another to come through.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        How do you find the time to deal with applications at multiple companies? Between phone screens and interviews that's a lot of time.
    - nfriedly 8y ago
      I usually don't have multiple offers at the same time.. but you don't have to mention the timing. I can honestly say that I've received offers from companies X, Y, and Z - even if all three were in the past and I already turned down all three of them. It's not as good as having them all at the same time, but it's better than nothing.
- dmitri1981 8y ago
  Meh. There are more jobs than developers, so developers have lots more alternatives. As I developer I would not apply for a job that did not advertise a rate unless I knew in advance it would meet my expectations. I feel withholding salary info is a premature optimisation of salary negotiation. You are not going to attract top talent and then snag them with a lowball offer.
- mdorazio 8y ago
  As others have mentioned, this rule only applies to negotiations where one side is willing to offer more than the other side expects. If you're expecting $150k and the company only has budget for $120k the opportunity cost of engaging in a lengthy interview process to find that out is rather bad. A better rule of thumb for in-demand professionals (in my experience on both sides of the table) is to do your homework ahead of time, have a realistic understanding of what you're worth and what the company is likely able to offer, and name a price that's a little bit above that. You'll save a lot of time and weed out low-balling recruiters immediately without actually sacrificing much in the way of compensation.
  - UweSchmidt 8y ago
    The company also wants to attract lots of people who would be happy with (say) $90k, and not anchor anywhere above unless necessary. If you expect a number of people applying, chances are good that someone is willing to be underpaid for whatever reason, and this fact is huge for companies.
mathgeek 8y ago
> But I guess that companies have an advantage in the end by creating this opaqueness. By its nature, any information that one party has, but the other does not, creates such an imbalance.
Peroni 8y ago
What makes it worse is that it's categorically proven that job adverts that advertise a salary range not only attract more applicants, but they also typically attract more relevant applicants.
- nfriedly 8y ago
  Any sources for that? I believe it, but I've been unsuccessful at convincing my employer's HR department...
  - Peroni 8y ago
    Sure. Here's two helpful sources: https://resources.workpop.com/blog/publishing-compensation-matters https://resources.workpop.com/blog/publishing-compensation-m... https://twitter.com/dougall/status/1011564748708728832?s=20 https://twitter.com/dougall/status/1011564748708728832?s=20
jandrewrogers 8y ago
On the other hand, it can work in the opposite direction when recruiters contact you. I often insist that recruiters give me a compensation range as a pre-condition of further discussion so that they don't waste my (and their) time. The contactee, by virtue of being in that position, has leverage to request a salary range as a concession for continuing the conversation.

philipodonnell 8y ago

Does anyone have a contrasting opinion? The article seems to focus on just not explaining with enough specificity what they want, but I find this is extremely common so shouldn't overly effect one particular employer. In fact, I found this job post to be quite well written. The scope is a bit wide (40-120K is quite a range) but I feel like good applicants will know whats expected at different points on that range. https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/honest.work/posts/effective-job-adverts/bright-cove-advert.png https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/honest.work/posts/effecti... Part of me thinks this might be over generalizing from a small sample size, i.e., does honest.work get enough traffic that a lack of applicants is truly indicative of quality. Of course there is also the fact that by pricing by the job advert they naturally encourage overly-broad adverts for broadly similar jobs, so that's probably not helping.

Peroni 8y ago
This definitely isn’t a contrasting opinion as I’m the OP and co-founder of Honest Work but for context, the original role Brightcove posted had over 5k unique hits, a lot of which came from the Go subreddit and a highly relevant Go community here in the UK so they definitely had a substantial number of the right people looking at the post.
- philipodonnell 8y ago
  It's still sort of a sample size of one, though. This content would have been more effective if you had an analysis of some factor that measured your hypothesis (length of posting, salary range width) and showed the correlation with conversions. Then this could have been an illustrative case study backing that up. Even better would be the results of the changes, maybe offer for free to turn this into a junior and senior postings and see the difference multiple posts with narrower ranges makes. The holy Grail of data science is solid math foundation, benefits your clients (more apps), benefits you (more revenue, higher satisfaction), and demonstrates your effectiveness with data and willingness to continually improve.

starikovs 8y ago

Honestly, I feel pain when I read most of job adverts/postings. They have a lot of text, they're too verbose, etc.. Why can't recruiters just specify things what developers interested in? These things can be found in different surveys like the Stackoverflow's one.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]