A job post is an advertisement, and most are written like a notice.

Most job posts are written by the person who is busiest because the job is empty. They copy the last one, change the designation, and post it on LinkedIn and three WhatsApp groups. It reads like a notice on the society board: Required, Content Writer, Minimum 2 years, Good communication skills, Salary as per industry standards.

Then the applications come. Forty of them, mostly from people applying to everything, and not one from the person who would have been right. That person saw the post too. They read it on their phone at lunch, at a job they already have, and decided it wasn't worth an evening.

Who is reading, and what they are deciding

The reader you want is employed. They are curious rather than desperate. They are deciding whether to spend an evening on a CV and a cover note for a job they know almost nothing about. The reader you don't want is applying to every post with the word Writer in it, and will apply to yours whatever it says.

So a job post has two jobs. Make the right person apply, and make the wrong person not. A post that says nothing specific does the opposite: it gives the good candidate no reason and the rest no filter.

Describe a Tuesday, not a designation

“Content Writer” tells the reader which drawer the job sits in. It does not say what they will do. Write the first paragraph as a day at the job. Two made-up examples:

• A D2C brand in Ahmedabad. “You'll write product pages for about twenty new items a month, captions for six posts a week, and one email on Friday. You'll work with the founder and one designer. The founder has opinions.”
• A CA firm. “You'll ghostwrite LinkedIn posts for two partners, two each a week, from a thirty-minute call with each of them on Monday.”

Both are honest, and both tell a good writer in ten seconds whether this is their kind of work. The second also says there will be calls with partners, which some writers want and some would pay to avoid.

The requirements list is where good people leave

Two to three years. Excellent communication skills. Self-starter. Team player. Works well under pressure. Go-getter. None of these can be checked, and all of them are read. A good candidate sees “works well under pressure” and hears “we are understaffed”. They see “self-starter” and hear “nobody will brief you”. We wrote about the words that make every brand sound the same. Hiring has its own list, and it does the same damage.

Replace the list with the three things you would genuinely reject someone for lacking. For a writer: writes a clean paragraph in English, can take a brief and feedback, keeps a deadline. If you need Gujarati, say so. If the years don't matter and the writing does, say that instead, and you will hear from the person with fourteen months and a good portfolio, who was about to skip you.

Say the salary

The candidate you want already has a salary. Your post has to beat it, and it can't if it won't say a number.

“As per industry standards”, “negotiable” and “best in the industry” are three ways of writing nothing. The good candidate reads them and does the arithmetic: an evening on the application, a test, two interviews, and then a number that might be lower than what they have now. Many close the tab there.

Write the range. ₹30,000 to ₹40,000 a month, say, or whatever yours is. If you truly cannot publish it, say so, and say when they will hear it, which should be before the test rather than after the second interview. The number also turns away the wrong people, which is a kindness to them and to your inbox.

Say how to apply, and what happens next

“DM for details” and “send CV to hr@” leave the reader guessing what to send and what happens once they have. Tell them, in order. Send three things: a CV, two pieces you wrote, one line on why this job. We reply to everyone by the 30th. There is one short paid test and one call. The job starts in December. It is the same sentence that belongs on a Contact page: what happens after the button is pressed.

If you are hiring a writer, make the test a real brief, small and paid. We published the brief we use, and it makes a fair test because it is what the job actually is. A candidate who writes well from a good brief and badly from a vague one has told you something about the brief, and nothing about themselves.

The forward test

A good job post gets forwarded. Someone reads it, thinks of a friend, and sends it with “this sounds like you”. That only happens when the post says enough for the friend to be recognised in it. “Content Writer, 2 to 3 years, good communication” sounds like nobody in particular, so nobody sends it to anyone.

Open your last job post and cover the company name. Could any company in the city have posted it? If yes, start again with the Tuesday, add the number, and say what happens next. It takes an hour, and it saves you the forty applications you were going to read on Sunday night.