Job posting
Also called: job ad, job opening, vacancy
Most job postings get edited for grammar and never edited for the candidate. That gap is where applications are lost.
What goes into a job posting
The minimum a candidate needs to decide whether to apply:
- The role. Title that reflects what the person will do, not the internal HR title.
- The team. Who they will work with, day to day.
- The work. Three to five concrete things they will be doing in the first 90 days.
- The criteria. What you actually need them to have done before, written as outcomes, not as years.
- The compensation. A salary band. Not “competitive.”
- The location and arrangement. Office, hybrid, remote — be specific about days and timezones.
- The process. How many interviews, who they will meet, the expected timeline.
Most job postings include three of these. The strongest ones include all seven.
What separates a posting that works
Two patterns show up in postings that produce applications from people you’d actually hire:
- Specific over general. “Build the onboarding flow for new SMB customers in our German market” beats “responsible for customer onboarding.” Specificity self-selects.
- A real salary band. Postings with a band get 60-80% more qualified applications. Postings without a band attract people who’ll apply to anything.
The opposite patterns — buzzword soup, “ideal candidate” lists of 18 bullets, no compensation — produce applications from the wrong shape of candidate.
What to leave out
- “Ninja,” “rockstar,” “guru.” Self-disqualifies the people who read job postings critically.
- Eighteen-bullet requirement lists. Anyone who has 18 of 18 doesn’t need this job. Cut to five must-haves.
- “Other duties as assigned.” Tells the candidate the role is undefined.
- An “About the company” intro that runs four paragraphs. Move it to the end or strip it.
Job posting vs. job description
Two different documents. A job description is internal — the role’s responsibilities, level, scope, used for compensation calibration and performance review. A job posting is the public-facing distillation written for one purpose: get the right person to apply.
Where Join fits
Join’s posting flow includes a salary-band field by default and a structure that nudges authors toward specifics over buzzwords. See the features page.
