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Things I wish people who write job postings would stop writing

120 pointsby littlestitiousover 10 years ago
- Random words to make me feel special: &#x27;guru&#x27;, &#x27;ninja&#x27;, &#x27;hacker&#x27;, etc.<p>- Random words that adds nothing: &#x27;professional&#x27;, &#x27;talented&#x27;, &#x27;passionate&#x27;, &#x27;awesome&#x27;. &quot;hmm, maybe I&#x27;m not awesome enough for this position&quot; - said nobody ever<p>- Describing your company like it just cured AIDS (if you company actually just cured AIDS, I will allow it). I only want to know what your company _actually_ does.<p>- Explicitly writing that the hired person will have to work a lot. &quot;let&#x27;s hire someone to do nothing most of the time&quot; - said no company ever<p>What you should write and you are (probably) not writing:<p>- What are some real tasks &#x2F; problems I might work with on a daily basis? I find it hard to be interested on positions that only mentions &quot;you&#x27;ll develop stuff&quot;. There&#x27;s a lot of stuff out there, please be clear.<p>- In case of remote positions, is the employee supposed to live near the company or can she be on the other side of the planet?

31 comments

IvyMikeover 10 years ago
Postings that use phrases like &quot;ninja&quot;, &quot;rockstar&quot;, &quot;crush code&quot;, etc, tell me something very, very important about the company.<p>Specifically, that I&#x27;d probably hate to work there.
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cekover 10 years ago
Best job description I ever wrote. This was while I was a Microsoft building a new team.<p><pre><code> Are you a lazy program manager who could care less about PCs, devices, networking, and other technologies in the home? Have you always dreaded working on a product that you would LOVE to use? Do you yearn to work in a huge, lumbering, group working on the same old stuff forever? If so, have we got a job for you! We are looking for a newbie program manager to hinder us in building the next version of Windows Home Server. Our team is ginormous, moves excruciatingly slowly and indecisively, and we are thoroughly hating life. And we need more PMs to suffer along with us! Interested? You will be a non-player helping to design and build the 42nd version of a product that has been around since before you were born. We are still in startup mode, and as part of a startup, you’ll have to do one task repeatedly over and over. You need to be ready and willing to do whatever I say when I say it even if it makes no sense whether that means screwing up features, angering partners, ignoring the community, creating bugs, and maybe even stealing a little code and hacking into a bank. We are in need of Program Managers with weak design skills; goof-offs who can take ownership of a user scenario area, ignore requirements, design a useless technology for technologies sake (forgetting about the user experience), and work with dev, test, UA, usability, etc… to cause them all to quit. And then do it again. Candidates should have poor consumer empathy, a deep dislike of cutting edge technology in the home, and the ability to cause political issues in small team where everything is already figured out and there’s nothing really left to do. Candidates must have less than 4 days experience as a program manager working on shipping products. Experience doing customer research and designing consumer UIs will immediately disqualify you. The less technical knowledge you have of networking, storage, and Windows server technologies the better. Candidates should have a B.A. in Basket Weaving or equivalent and should have been fired from their previous two jobs.</code></pre>
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mountaineerover 10 years ago
I&#x27;ve been tracking[1] the use of &quot;passionate&quot; in whoishiring threads, really getting out of control. It&#x27;s now become one of the 10 most frequent terms used in posts.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.ryan-williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-trends/2014/december.html?compare1=passionate" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ryan-williams.net&#x2F;hacker-news-hiring-trends&#x2F;2014&#x2F;...</a>
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mdm_over 10 years ago
&gt;&quot;hmm, maybe I&#x27;m not awesome enough for this position&quot; - said nobody ever<p>I think you&#x27;re underestimating the number of people who tell themselves things like that.
zerotoleranceover 10 years ago
How about kitchen sink technology lists? These tell me two things about a potential employer. First, their HR department uses keyword matching to filter resumes. Second, the person writing the JD is inexperienced or has an extremely low hiring bar.
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davesailerover 10 years ago
My favorite (from a long time ago now): &quot;Experienced in Lotus 1, 2, and 3.&quot;
Mimuover 10 years ago
In all honestly I don&#x27;t think this is just jobs ads. Just look at this place (hacker news) for example, everybody is using the term &quot;hacker&quot; to designate anything.<p>Today putting lettuce and meat together to create a salad is hacking.<p>I agree that this is ridiculous though, also I currently work in a company that was hiring a &quot;Jedi angularJS developer&quot;, I had 2 days experience with the framework when I signed (they knew, long story short they didn&#x27;t want me, the recruiter pass me a test that was not for me and I did way better than the original guy).
coldcodeover 10 years ago
Unless you written code for a rockstar, you are not a rockstar coder anyway. Why hire a Ninja, you won&#x27;t see them come in to work or leave anyway.
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twicover 10 years ago
An apparently genuine job ad that came to my attention today (i think it&#x27;s currently sweeping Twitter), from Sportacam in Finland [1]:<p><pre><code> What we can offer: - Meeting and partying with international sports superstars - Drinking beer instead of Jolt-coke - Making it rain on them hoes - Salary and&#x2F;or Equity Yes, this will all come true if you fit the criteria. We expect you to: - be totally gay for code - know how to build a robust back-end that can handle massive amounts of photos, videos and users - have at least 7-10 years experience in back-end development - be able to talk to other people </code></pre> Well, at least the &quot;be able to talk to other people&quot; is good.<p>[1] <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5YIQ01rfgQUJ:www.arcticstartup.com/jobs/2349" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;webcache.googleusercontent.com&#x2F;search?q=cache:5YIQ01r...</a>
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loteckover 10 years ago
Is there enough attention being paid to how the language used in job ads is, in the best case, subliminally advertising a company&#x27;s culture of ageism?<p>I can hardly think of a better way to advertise that you only want young people to apply than to advertise for a guru rockstar gamechanging ninja who is <i>awesome</i> and wants a vague job description.
davidgerardover 10 years ago
Joblint is now available as a service!<p><a href="http://joblint.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;joblint.org&#x2F;</a> - Test tech job specs for issues with sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails.<p>Library source: <a href="https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rowanmanning&#x2F;joblint</a>
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fredgrottover 10 years ago
I recently by mistake expressed interest in a startup on Angel.co found out later tha its one of these fake social startups building a mobile app on top of facebook and the founder is screaming about passion after 2 years going with no funding showing..yeah right..way to kill any interest whatsoever.
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benastonover 10 years ago
My favorite job advert was one for a large-ish company (200 people) that invited you to criticise their public-facing web application. The implication was that not following the instructions on the advert to a T would result in your application being ignored.<p>Clearly this was a lose-lose proposition.<p>Hilariously, I naively took them at their word and described amongst other observations how their application used far too many HTTP requests (i.e. they weren&#x27;t using concatenation) and that the page size was phenomenally large.<p>Needless to say I got no response.<p>Another time an in-house recruiter for a company that creates a light-blue VOIP client that everyone uses, mentioned that there were free soft drinks and that the executive management were really down to earth. At which point I moved the phone away from my mouth, took a breath and regained my composure.
matt6545over 10 years ago
I would like for them to hire a professional writer. It seems more common to cut and past.
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dpcanover 10 years ago
What I learned earlier this year on HN in another thread is that saying &quot;ninja&quot;, etc, paints the picture of the company&#x27;s culture. Keeping stick-in-the-mud guys like me away :) It just saves everyone some time.
diafygiover 10 years ago
Can you give an example of a good job posting? I try to make our postings as real as possible[1], and would love feedback.<p>The level of detail goes both ways, though. The vast majority of people who apply don&#x27;t even submit a pgp resume, which gives the impression that they didnt read the job description.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=66c8368e9c756e78" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indeed.com&#x2F;viewjob?jk=66c8368e9c756e78</a>
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francescaover 10 years ago
I think the reason why it sucks is because engineers don&#x27;t write job specs -- recruiters do. And a lot of recruiters don&#x27;t take the time to really learn about how and why engineers move from company to company. Often they don&#x27;t attract the highest quality talent because they attract talent that is &quot;just right&quot; and they don&#x27;t try harder to make their recruiting better.
yuncunover 10 years ago
Agreed. On the other hand, my favorite line to read is<p>- &#x27;Interested? Email me at ted@coolstartup.com, include hackernews in subject line&#x27;
EpicEngover 10 years ago
Hey, one just popped up: <a href="http://www.jobscore.com/jobs2/simplyinsured/software-developer/d9IZfSd10r46BliGakhP3Q?detail=Hacker+News&amp;remail=&amp;rfirst=&amp;rlast=&amp;sid=161" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jobscore.com&#x2F;jobs2&#x2F;simplyinsured&#x2F;software-develop...</a>
wmknover 10 years ago
You are going to hate everything about this requirement page then: <a href="https://www.bunq.com/nl/en/job/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunq.com&#x2F;nl&#x2F;en&#x2F;job&#x2F;</a><p>Actually it improved a little bit. Until a few weeks ago you had to sign an NDA to learn what the company actually does.
drinchevover 10 years ago
I totally agree. Ironically I think current economical situation flips the coin. Companies are fighting for developers rather than employees applying for jobs. In rare cases ( google, facebook, twitter, etc. ) these writing actually doesn&#x27;t exist.
theaccordanceover 10 years ago
No arguments from me regarding the first set of words, but the second set? Those do hold benefit when used properly to communicate context, especially with differentiating between a presumed core skill requirement and supplemental nice-to-have.
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ablyover 10 years ago
Ads that use language like that often go on to say suspicious things like &quot;build great exposure for your work&quot; and then finally come right out and say &quot;unpaid role&quot;.
GeoffreyKrover 10 years ago
Ninja was cool the first time it was used, not it&#x27;s a stupid word telling : &quot;you won&#x27;t get paid much but you&#x27;ll work on a mac book pro&quot;
duderificover 10 years ago
&quot;Gamechanger&quot; is the new &quot;rockstar&quot;
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mszyndelover 10 years ago
Actually a lot of people _can_ feel like they are not awesome enough.
JCJoverTCPover 10 years ago
&quot;rockstar&quot;
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jasonnerothinover 10 years ago
those are key words for young coders, nothing more
MichaelCrawfordover 10 years ago
What I&#x27;d really like to see, is a recruiter who actually looked at my resume from beginning to end before contacting me.<p>Finally, just a few minutes ago, I put a vacation response in my gmail account:<p><pre><code> Dear Friend, Thank you for writing, I&#x27;ll get back to you soon. If you are an agency recruiter seeking to place me in a job or contract position, please be advised that I find my own work. Please take me off your mailing list. Please delete my resume from your records as well. If you&#x27;d like to know why, please read this: Market Yourself: Tips for High-Tech Consultants http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.warplife.com&#x2F;tips&#x2F;business&#x2F;market-yourself.html Regards, Michael David Crawford, Consulting Software Engineer Solving the Software Problem mdcrawford@gmail.com Local Jobs, Local Candidates The Global Computer Employer Index http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.warplife.com&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;computer&#x2F;</code></pre>
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MichaelCrawfordover 10 years ago
Among my pet peeves is that when I search for telecommute jobs at Craigslist - which is often the case, as I am a consultant - it gets me posts that say &quot;no telecommuting&quot;.<p>It is quite cruel that the name of the employer is usually not provided: &quot;We are a hot startup in the cloudspace&quot; rather than &quot;Example.com is a hot startup in the cloudspace&quot;. This has the result that I apply to a lot more companies than I otherwise would, because there is no way I can learn more about the company _before_ apply.<p>See if you can find a recording of the original Apple Computer radio ad. It was on their very first developer CD - &quot;You can change the world!&quot;<p>Well I expect Apple did, but now everyone says they&#x27;re going to.<p>I&#x27;ve gotten to the point that when I see an ad seeking a &quot;rockstar coder&quot; I just don&#x27;t apply.<p>How about a job posting that&#x27;s looking for someone with more than ten years experience?<p>Someone whose products got reviews in the trade press, or sold well?
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MichaelCrawfordover 10 years ago
I&#x27;m looking for the kind of job where I can stare out the window all day long, but then write one single subroutine that just works the very first time, and that not only is compliant to spec, but exceeds expectation.<p>Rock stars blow their royalties and ticket sales up their noses, sleep with groupies, trash hotel rooms and die young.
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