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How not to write a job post
- arunagarwal 13y agoAnd site seems down :-)
- skbohra123 13y agoShould write another post - How not to setup a blog!
- raghuHack 13y agoThat would be one sentence - never use openshift.
- lauradhamilton 13y agoThat's mean, but I laughed. Sorry op.
- maerF0x0 13y agoI concur, 503's are a bad way to post a job :P
- raghuHack 13y agoLOL :D
- lyndonh 13y agoCan I have a quick micro rant here: I don't want to know about perks when I'm job hunting. Tell me about the type of work (not a wishlist of skills you want), the ball park pay (not a range), the location (I'm looking at you, agencies), the level (entry level vs management) and the type of hours (I'm the type of weirdo that has a life outside of work). I don't care if you have free lunch or free t-shirts. I expect to work hard and get paid for it. P.S. Forget the marathon gauntlet interview with multiple skype calls; that's why I send you a copy of my resume and give you references. OK, rant over. Please carry on. Nothing to see here.
- raghuHack 13y agoFair points. I agree with you. Cheers!
- blueskin_ 13y agoI'd agree with this, but also add type of company. Somewhere where people need to wear a suit == instant rejection.
- useyourloaf 13y ago#1: Give me the actual location of the job, and on-site vs telecommute allowed. Please go ahead and tell me about the culture, attitude, perks, etc: these are likely to be red flags that I need not apply!
- codingdave 13y agoOh, I want to know the perks, because that tells me the culture. 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.)
- lyndonh 13y agoI agree about needing to know the culture. I don't care about perks because I'm interested in the work and the culture. Job ads use the perks as the main justification why you should want to work there. I can find my own gym and transportation.
- scrabble 13y agoThere are a few things I want to know about when looking at job posts: tech stack, target salary, what the company is, and a small list of perks. This will give me an idea of what the office environment is like. 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.
- Bahamut 13y agoIt also is a red flag to me when I see that - I know I am performing close to on par with some people with industry experience of 10+ years on the frontend. All things equal, you will want the rising star, since that person hasn't hit a ceiling yet, and there's a decent chance you can get away with underpaying that person.
- scrabble 13y agoThe real kicker is that while a lot of frontend skills are still valuable and very relevant, it's also a space that's changing rather quickly. 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.
- Bahamut 13y agoAlso agreed. I do envy those with more experience with me who are doing more with current technologies, since they have the advantage of having done it longer. 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.
- collyw 13y agoHmm. You think you are on par with someone with 10+ years experience. 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.
- codegeek 13y agoI commented on a similar post a couple of months ago but will re-paste it here. 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.
- calhoun137 13y agoI just wrote my first every job post yesterday, what a great life experience =) !!! 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?
- bluetidepro 13y agoAnyone have a mirror of this? It seems to be down...
- MikeTaylor 13y agoApart from very confused about what an adjective it, this article nails it. Just because it's "ninja" and "rockstar" instead of "monetise" and "synergy" doesn't make it any less meaningless jargon.
- MikeTaylor 13y agoIf your job ad doesn't give some indication of salary, then it's literally useless to anyone worthwhile who might otherwise consider applying. Good candidates will only apply for jobs that they feel are worthy of them. If they can't even tell whether you're going offer $10k less than they're already on, they'll just move on to the next listing.
- krstck 13y agoCan't access because the site is down, but I have a lot of feelings about this topic. Specifically, please never, ever, use one of these words to describe the developer you are hunting: 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.
- k3oni 13y agoLooking around these days i see a lot of ninja and rockstar requests, can't agree more with your post. Also even for non-programmer jobs like sys engineers/admins i see a lot of hacker and superstar postings.
- codingdave 13y agoIn my mind, a job posting, and the responses to it, are just intended to start a conversation. 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.