A job ad is not a job description. The description is an internal document that lists duties. The ad is a piece of marketing aimed at someone who is scrolling, not reading, and who will decide in a few seconds whether to keep going.
Most ads fail because they were written for the employer rather than the candidate — a list of requirements, no salary, and three paragraphs about the company before anything the reader cares about.
Get the title right, because it is most of the visibility
The title determines whether the ad is ever seen. It is what people search, what job boards index, and what appears in an alert email.
- Use the name the market uses, not the internal one. "Customer Success Manager" is searched; "Client Happiness Partner" is not.
- Keep it to the role. Seniority and location belong in their own fields, where filters can find them.
- Drop the internal grade. "Engineer II" means nothing outside your company.
- Do not stuff it with keywords. It reads as spam and boards down-rank it.
Should you include the salary?
Yes, and it is not close. Adverts without a salary get fewer and worse-matched applications, because the people with options filter them out rather than enquire. In a growing number of places disclosure is also a legal requirement, so the question is increasingly moot.
If the range is genuinely wide because the level is flexible, say that and explain what moves someone up it. A stated range with a caveat is far better received than silence.
Structure it for someone who is skimming
Assume the first read is a scan. Front-load whatever would make the right person stop.
- 1Open with the role and the offer in two or three lines — what they will do, roughly what it pays, where it is based, and the working pattern.
- 2Then what the job actually involves day to day. Concrete tasks, not responsibilities in the abstract.
- 3Then what you genuinely need. Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves and keep the must-have list short.
- 4Then the company, briefly, and only the parts relevant to the person doing this job.
- 5Then the process and how to apply, including how many stages and roughly how long it takes.
Short paragraphs, plain words, no unexplained internal acronyms.
The requirements list is where good candidates are lost
Long requirement lists narrow your applicant pool in a way that is neither random nor helpful — the effect falls hardest on candidates who assess themselves strictly against every line, which correlates poorly with actual ability.
Keep the must-haves to the things that genuinely disqualify. Everything else goes under nice-to-have, and say plainly that you do not expect every box ticked. It is a small change that visibly widens who applies.
Where to place it
The general boards give reach and a lot of noise. Niche boards give fewer, better-matched applicants. Your own careers or job page is the one channel you control, and it should be the destination the others point at.
For any role where quality matters more than volume, referrals and direct sourcing will still outperform every board. Advertising is a supplement to sourcing, not a replacement for it, and treating it as the whole strategy is why some roles stay open for months.
Write for search without writing for robots
Job boards and search engines both index ads. Use the words candidates actually search — the common job title, the real tool names, the location as people say it — naturally in the text. That is genuinely all the optimisation an ad needs.
If your ad lives on your own site, structured job posting markup helps it appear in job search results. Most modern recruitment platforms emit this for you.
Make applying easy
Every additional step loses people, and the ones you lose first are the ones with options. Ask for a resume and the two or three things you genuinely need. Do not make someone create an account, re-type their resume into a form, or answer screening questions that a thirty-second conversation would cover.
Test it yourself on a phone, end to end. Most application processes have never been completed by the person who commissioned them.
Measure and rewrite
An ad is a draft until you have seen who it attracts. Watch views against applications, and applications against how many were actually relevant.
- Plenty of views, few applications — the offer is unconvincing or the salary is missing.
- Plenty of applications, few relevant — the title or the requirements are attracting the wrong people.
- Few views — a title or placement problem, not a copy problem.
Change one thing at a time and give it a week. Most roles are filled by the second version of the ad, not the first.
