Here is my list:
Pros
- which kind of technologies are used
- involvement in open source community
- description of a typical day of work<p>Cons
- a low level description of the role
- annual salary missing
Pro:
- What tech you actually work with. Don't list equivalents. If the people knew the area they would already know if they have equivalent skills.
- Salary range and years of experience.
- What kind of actual real world user problems are you solving?<p>Cons:
- Anything about culture (it's always bullshit), team player, or being emotionally mature
- Useless fluff about "loving to work in a fast company", or how you were #1 2012's disposable ezine of the week's company to work for.
- Not saying what the job is, but just saying what tech you will be using, as if that is enough.
- You can't tell the description is any different between Intern/Junior/Senior/Architect level roles other than "years of experience"
Pros: What the actual job is, the industry sector and the pay<p>Cons: Guru, Ninja, Rock Star and Passion. I am 55 with a shit pension and your 'Uber for salads' is not something I am passionate about. Never will be.<p>Complete put off: Other than the cons is reading the ad and not knowing what the job or company is about. If you can't spell it out your are either incompetent or deceitful.
Pro: link to company career page with overview of hiring/onboarding process.<p>Exaggerated, but not by much is:<p>Con: Blanket requirements of conflicting language paradigms. Like, expert in (enter no less than 6 JS frameworks and build tools), also python, ruby, C#, and some Erlang is a plus. Oh, you also know AWS, and every RDMS and noSQL technology, MS SQL Server experience a plus.
Pro:<p>software stack<p>policy about open source software<p>Salary Range (allowed to be wide)<p>Con:<p>If you are trying to hide the company name, I dislike this but understand you are likely a recruiter working on commission.<p>In order to attract people who are passionate, you need to include the work domain. If you don't post the work domain, then you are wasting my time.
Con: a Bachelor, Masters or PhD in {a specific field}.<p>Consider rephrasing to "PhD with publication record, or MSc with 3 years of work experience, or BSc with 7 years of work experience, 3 of which at {a specific advanced level}".<p>I understand if the job requires a certain minimum education background, but how can you possibly consider holders of all three of the above degrees, without stating the specifications for each degree? Can I still apply if I'm just about to get a BSc, or would you require some amount of work experience? Am I competing directly with PhDs? Confuses the hell out of me. I once applied for a SWE I position that had that kind of degree requirement during my senior year. Passed two phone screens, even handled questions about computer vision and deep learning well during the on site round (answered beginner and intermediate level questions well, was honest to admit my limits when asked about advanced topics). Two days after the interview I went back to check the job posting, and it was somehow changed to say Principle Computer Vision Scientist then I was like "oh there goes my chance". Needless to say I wasn't selected. It makes sense for them to select candidates with advanced degrees if they are really looking for a Prin. Scientist. But please, spell out the requirements so that candidates make informed decisions about whether to apply. It saves both parties valuable time.
What really turns me off is acronyms about internal systems nobody outside of the company offering the job knows about.<p>Additionally job descriptions full of filler text trying to make the job seem more important than it is. The usual blabber about team players and competitive compensation, etc.
"Remote" positions where you can work from home every other Friday. If a position is under a butts-in-seats management style, the word "remote" should not be found anywhere in the description. Some remote positions have geographical limitations, which can be understandable from a tax perspective, but I also don't like to see "remote" positions open only to people in a specific timezone.
If a position's salary varies from what is typically expected in the industry for an area (roughly different than the average salary found on Glassdoor, just as an example), then the salary or a warning should be listed in the description. Nothing pisses me off more than going through the motions only to get a lowball offer by a company hoping to rip me off. It is super demoralizing, even when I have other offers that are good.
Having a requirement for knowing utility libraries. i.e. jQuery, underscore.js, MooTools, etc.<p>I understand requiring frameworks (i.e. Anguar, React), but jQuery? Come on.
Pro: Concise and to the point, no waffle or any of that new age "growth hacking, rockstar" nonsense - don't try and dress a job up as something it's not. Tell me roughly what salary range you're offering in, and tell me what I'll be working with. I want to know about your product/s, and how the job I'm looking at relates to it.<p>Cons: Babbling on and on about your 'culture' or how much coffee you all consume. Being vague, and not actually describing the job. Not listing other requirements like excessive travel, on call, the fact that your office is 200km away from civilisation etc.<p>Not relevant to me now, but in general - don't call something a 'Junior' position and then ask for 5+ years of experience, and then don't follow that up by saying "Oh but it's the most Junior role in our company". That's bullshit, and you know it, you're just looking for an excuse to pay someone less.
Pros:<p>$ listed up front<p>Actual details on health insurance.<p>Cons:<p>Anything about dogs, beer, snacks, ping pong, or company outings on weekends or after hours.<p>The word "startup".
Pro: a description of not only what work you expect me to do, but also who I'll be doing it with. Team size, experience level of other team members, my role in the team.<p>Con: Anything about fun company events and free drinks. I'm looking for work, not booking a cruise.
I have applied to a bunch of positions and I can pretty much tell what posts are cookie cutter posts: a developer position opens up and the listed languages to be proficient are all the popular ones with vaugaries at best on the exact nature of the role.
Pros: Whatever tools, back-end lang/framework I like<p>Cons: Whatever tools, front-end lang/framework I hate. (Yes, React and friends)<p>Not a joke, this is my real struggle. I love backend, and I love working with ui designers, elegant elements, so love frontend.
[PRO]
- Detailed Job Description, including:
Company Info + Role Responsibilities + Salary + Benefits<p>[CON]
- Entry level salary requiring 3+ years of experience
Pro: Linux, scientific computing, not-for-profit organization, high-tech (if it really is), contributing to open-source<p>Cons: OSX, Windows, advertisement industry, bank, legacy systems, COBOL, calling the company "high-tech" when they mostly do what everybody else does, e.g. writing CRUD systems or do elementary data plumbing.
Sometimes in Dutch vacancies for freelance roles, I see the following remark with regards to hourly rate:<p><pre><code> "scherp aanbieden" (=> "offer sharply"?)
</code></pre>
I see this reasonably often in mailings of recruitment agencies. I hate this and I wouldn't be very tempted to apply.
I hate almost everything relating to culture. I have bills to pay and I don't particularly care that you have some flavor of Street Fighter II. Tell me what stack you use, the pay, and if you'll pay for my gym membership.
Cons: jack of all trades positions. The ad generally lists technologies/skills the company uses, might use in the distant future or the CTO has heard about in the last conference he attended.
Pros:<p>- Stack<p>- Salary range<p>- Remote possibility<p>Cons:<p>- Any kind of synonym for rockstar, ninja, hero<p>- We are hiring (but actually not hiring, just wasting others time)
Cons: Below market salary AND tiny stock options. If you're offering a Sr. Engineer a $50k-$70k salary, then offering 0.1%-0.25% of the equity is unacceptable.
I despise seeing "salary - DOE" like nothing else.<p>Also hate it when ads describe the company ad nauseum and not much about what the actual work or tools are.