Nine phrases in a job ad and the kind of applicant each one brings

Every line in a job ad is a filter. Some filter for the thing you want. Most filter for something adjacent, and a few filter in reverse, driving away exactly the people you were hoping to reach.

The mechanism is straightforward. Applicants read an ad as evidence about a workplace they cannot see. Vague language reads as concealment, specific language reads as confidence, and both effects are stronger among candidates who have options.

1. Competitive salary

This phrase costs you the strongest applicants and keeps the weakest. Someone with a current job and three conversations going will skip a posting with no number, because comparing is the whole point of their search. Someone with no options applies to everything.

The mechanism is asymmetric information. You know the number and they do not, and the only reason to withhold it that they can imagine is that it is disappointing.

Write instead: a range you will honor, and the basis. Hourly or salaried, and what the top of the range requires.

2. Fast-paced environment

Read as understaffed. Sometimes accurately. It attracts people who like chaos and repels people who deliver steadily, which is usually the reverse of what a growing shop needs.

Write instead: the actual rhythm. Four jobs a day. Deadlines twice a month. Two busy seasons and two quiet ones. People can decide whether that suits them.

3. Wear many hats

Read as no defined role, and by experienced candidates as a sign that the previous person burned out. It does filter effectively for generalists, which is fine if you want one.

Write instead: the list. If the job really is invoicing, scheduling, purchasing and front counter, say those four things. Naming them is more attractive than the metaphor, because the metaphor could mean anything.

4. Must be a team player

Carries almost no information because nobody self-identifies as the opposite. What it signals to a reader who has been around is a workplace where someone recently pushed back on something.

Write instead: how the work is actually shared. Two people cover the counter together. Jobs are assigned in a morning meeting. Concrete facts do the filtering.

5. Rockstar, ninja, guru

Narrows the pool by age and by temperament, and rarely in a direction anyone chose on purpose. It also sets an expectation of exceptional performance without a matching expectation of exceptional pay, which experienced applicants notice.

Write instead: the title someone would put on a resume. Job titles are how people find you in a search, and invented titles are invisible.

6. Entry level, three years experience required

The contradiction reads as an employer who wants senior work at junior pay. It empties the pool from the top down.

Write instead: either the experience or the pay grade, whichever is real. If you genuinely will train, say what you will train and what you will not.

7. Other duties as assigned

Harmless as legal boilerplate at the bottom, corrosive when it appears in the body. Placement is the whole difference. In the responsibilities section it reads as an admission that the list above is not the job.

Write instead: leave it in the formal description and out of the ad.

8. Immediate start

Filters hard for the unemployed and against everyone currently working a notice period, which is most good candidates. If you truly need someone next week, that is worth knowing about the state of your scheduling.

Write instead: the real target start date, and a note that you will wait for the right person's notice.

9. No phone calls please

Reasonable and widely used. It reads as high volume, which reads as long odds, which reduces effort on the applications you receive. A small employer usually benefits from the opposite signal.

Write instead: a named person and how to reach them. A shop where an applicant can talk to the owner has an advantage no large employer can match.

What the good version has

Ads that produce short, strong pools tend to carry the same six items.

• A pay range and how it is paid.
• The schedule, including whether nights or weekends are part of it.
• The location, and whether any of it is remote.
• Four to six specific duties, written as things a person does.
• What is genuinely required, separated from what is preferred.
• Who the person reports to and how large the team is.

That ad is shorter than the one it replaces and it produces fewer applications. Fewer is the point. Every applicant who reads the schedule and self-selects out saved you a screening call, and the ones who remain have already agreed to the terms that most commonly break a hire in the first month.

The filter you write on purpose does work that the interview would otherwise have to do badly.