Ask HN: What info do you wish every job posting included? There seems to be a broad range of different approaches to job postings. Some have salary info, some don't. Some describe their interview process, some don't. If you had it your way, what info would every job posting include? |
You can choose to be coy about it, but you will have to tell me eventually, so you might as well let me know up front. It will save time for all of us.
I'm quite happy to find a phone number and call the company directly if I want to know something. In my experience that gives me a huge advantage over 99% of candidates who are only willing to read adverts passively.
Also, a note indicating whether or not managers refer to people as "resources". Also, the name of the actual development methodology (if any) that is in use (eg, don't just say "Agile" - tell me if you're doing Scrum, SAFE, XP, Crystal, UP, or your own made-up thing, etc).
Exactly. It's ridiculous to do that.
What's arguably even worse is when you know that the company knows what your salary expectations are ahead of time, and they still go through the entire process, and then at the end either come up with an offer that's way below your bar, or decline to make an offer because "paying you that much would create a disequity on the team". Yeah, I got that last one once... AFTER going through two rounds of interviews. I'm thinking "if you knew you weren't willing to pay me what I was looking for, why did you waste hours of my time interviewing?!??"
This made me chuckle. It's a pretty accurate measure of a companies culture though.
Ex. "I could get more people on my team if we had less overhead".
It helped that our lead Agile Coach was the main advocate of this particular approach.
Calling people "resources" and treating them as fungible, disposable, commodities is extremely dehumanizing and is emblematic of the typical corporate newspeak bullshit that some people use as a dodge to avoid facing the fact that their actions affect actual people.
The standard one-line HN Who's Hiring summary is also more informative than most the boilerplate crap I come across. Example:
> FormulaFolios | Full-Stack Rails Developer | Costa Mesa, CA | ONSITE Full-Time | $80k-100k
As a hiring manager, I've put a great deal of thought and effort not only in our job posting but in our whole process. It requires extra effort for sure, but having been on the other side of the process and suffered the many indignities of job hunting, I try to be spare our applicants from them as much as possible.
This means responding within 48 hours to any applications and notifying applicants when they've been rejected for consideration as soon as possible. These messages are all templated but I tailor them to each candidate.
Since I take some pride in our job postings, here's our most recent one:
https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/172538/full-stack-rails-devel...
(We're closing it soon so link will probably be dead by end of the week.)
However, very little job offers are actually "offers" but rather "requirements list".
I recently interviewed at a lunch meeting, and then second interview in a coffee shop (very casual interviews). By the end of the second interview they wanted me to make a suggestion for their offer. I said I needed to see their offices and look at their product before I'd consider moving from my current position.
I was rather taken aback that they didn't really consider I might want to see the environment I'd be spending a lot of my time, nor want to see what I was going to be working on.
Eventually I got to see the offices and the product, I loved the product but just couldn't jive with their office. It wasn't terrible or anything, but compared to where I work now I wasn't prepared to make the switch.
I feel extremely fortunate to be able to be picky about where I work. Every day I come to work I think about how fortunate I am to be happy with my work.
I wish they could just say, "we already have someone we want to hire but the dean is making us do an formal search." I know they can't really say that but it would be nice if they could say something like "we want someone to teach X, Y, and Z," "we have listed a bunch of specialties but we really want someone who researches X," "this is a new position," or "the person that had this job retired."
How many hours of meetings each week? What fraction of my time is spent outside creative software development (req specing, designing, and coding)?
We have something like that in France, that's called "Welcome to the jungle" (Guns N' Roses reference maybe), but again, you mainly see photos of the coffee machine.
2) a commentary on the position by someone at the same or equivalent role at the company
Salary. Over here in .be, it's very difficult to compare salaries. When posted at all, it's usually a single monthly number before tax. It's impossible to compare that with other postings, because one offer might contain a better pension fund, or a company car (what kind?) or meal vouchers (worth?) and dozens of other potential forms of non-cash wages. I'd much rather see an annual number which includes the net worth (or employer cost?) of all that nonsense.
Company size and/or size of whatever the team the ad is for.
Office, pictures or description.
- Team Size
- Can I choose my own tools, or are you going to force Eclipse on me (deal-breaker)?
- Office environment. Open (no thanks)? Cubes (Meh)? Private offices (nice)?
- Salary range
- Average number of hours per week. Don't say 40 if it's really 60.
- Employee development. Do you send people to conferences (this is rare nowadays, and can really differentiate you as an employer)? Tuition assistance/reimbursement? Books?
- Health care benefits information (This is so variable that I always ask for this information before accepting an offer).
Why does a "real need" have to be urgent? In my team, all important needs are covered, but we still add new people when budget is available because there's always more stuff in the backlog. Six people can usually do more than five, and 21 people can usually do more than 20. (Although 20 people do not necessarily do more than 5 because [insert comment about middle management culture] but that's not my point.)
Also:
> - Health care benefits information (This is so variable that I always ask for this information before accepting an offer).
This bullet point sounds absurd to my European ears.
Because continuously reposting the same position for months/years and interviewing hundreds of candidates just in case a god of computer science happens to apply to your company wastes candidates' time and makes us hate you ("He would be prefect except for that thing he does with his eyebrows while he talks, so let's pass and wait for a better candidate.")
> This bullet point sounds absurd to my European ears.
I'd rather my employer just hand me a (large) wad of (tax-free) cash and say "Go buy yourself some health insurance", but that's not what happens. My current employer's prescription drug plan (Express scripts), for example, is the worst thing in the universe. I'd much rather be able to shop around.
- A link to senior executives explaining their worst mistake and what they learned from it;
- The same, but their actual reaction to: “What are your corporate values? -- Those are the same corporate values as Enron.”
- Noise curve in the office;
- what the interviews are testing for.
I can work with terrible people if they can communicate. And I can learn to hate the softest soul if we can't get on the same page.
If the company is private, a link to a fiscal summary equivalent to the SEC's 10-K.
If any of the statements above are intentionally misleading, the job candidate is due compensatory damages.
"If the company is private, a link to a fiscal summary equivalent to the SEC's 10-K."
Good luck with that.
In practice, though, assessing the financial future of an employer before committing your most essential resource, time, is important.
Even though it may be technically accurate, I don't really see that as an "open floor plan". To me, "open floor plan" means a bunch of desks strewn all over with no dividers.
I love cube farms (and I generally prefer conservative, enterprisey companies), and I refuse to work at a company that uses open offices like I described above, so it matters to me.
If someone wants to hire me but their software development position happens to be in an environment that we know I'll do poorly in, then let's talk about what else is available.
Learning new technologies quickly, being able to pick up details from context, dealing with imprecise or conflicting requests, working backwards from a problem to find the root cause, designing future-proof systems, working in a fast-paced environment? I can segue these skills into almost anything.
I don't want to be shoehorned into "$(lang) developer", or even "developer", especially if it means I have to work in an open floor plan. Nobody should want to hire me for that, either, because it's the worst environment for me to do that work.
The previous company where I worked eventually ended up with open floors - once they grew and moved to a new building - but also provided closed rooms in the location before that.
I also happened to worked at our client's office, a large IT company based in Berlin, they had rooms again.
YMMV - depending on your location perhaps - but based on my experience it's not extraordinary at all.
- Salary range for that specific position (not for the whole department (I've seen that))
- Remote work policy
- Visa sponsorship policy
- Vacation policy
- Interview process
- Link to future manager's technical background
Neither of them had any mention of these activities in the postings, and both of them were specifically for EE's with requirements to understand antenna and radio systems. The interview started to shed light that it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but certainly there would be the opportunity, so I was told.
To me, a disclaimer that mentions you may not be doing anything actually related to this posting would be nice.
Generally speaking:
1) what is the actual, physical, tangible, product?
2.) What is my actual, specific, day-to-day role for this product? Or how will I fit into the creation of this product?
Fully remote? Yes or no would suffice. I just might _be_ that aforementioned purple secret squirrel for your role, but my 50 square-mile chunk of rock might be nowhere near your 50 square mile chunk of rock. Would this discrepancy be resolvable by a convenient global communications network and low-latency link to same, or are you mired in last century's "manager must be able to see your butt in a chair at all times" model of employment?
Salary (Competitive salaries aren't competitive, they are average).
Vacation policy.
Remote work options.
Office plan (Do I have my own office?).
Tooling used (including hardware provided and upgrade policy).Usually HR policies are treated as a second thought and presented to you after you've accepted employment, but these details will impact you and your quality-of-work. For instance, places that require doctor's notes will have people come in to work while sick more frequently, meaning you can expect to get sick more, etc.
Huh? When I'm sick, I automatically go to the doctor, so I always have a doctor's note.
If, on the other hand, I work somewhere that has a 'doctor's note' policy, I'll probably convince myself the cold is 'not that bad' (certainly not worth losing pay or whatever the HR penalty is for not having a doctor's note), come in to work and get coworkers sick. Others do the same. Over time, this adds up. I've worked at places that strictly enforce 'doctor's note' policies and basically it means everyone has colds all the time, and if you work there, so will you.
I would like to know this about a work environment before I join.
* Salary range
* Actual responsibilities and day to day activities. If the job is going to be to hack on some awful legacy code base then you should say that.
* How large is your company, where are you at with funding, and where are you at with product development.
* Interview process
I've been using this approach for the last 2-3 years and I have found it to be successful (across 2 companies) and worth the extra effort. I haven't received any negative feedback about our process (which I don't take to mean there isn't any or the process is perfect) and I haven't regretted any of the hires we've made (probably around 12 in total). Even when I have to send out a rejection notice, I often get thanked by the candidate for it.
One other important point is that I've worked with management and my team to constantly refine and improve our process. Their buy-in is critical and I feel it needs to be an agile process just like our software development process.
So that may be the difference here, because I have a septum deviation, which means that my nose is permanently somewhat stuffed. But when I have temperature and feel sick, I absolutely go to the doctor every time. There's a few things that a doctor can do and I can't that can distinguish between "just a cold" and something more serious. For example, I cannot look into my own throat or into my own ears.
Your other comments indicate to me that this may be a cultural difference though. In Germany, it's normal to ask a coworker who appears to be sick to go to the doctor. Everywhere I've worked so far, there's a shared awareness that working while sick is a huge cost on the entire team. That goes for managers, too: They know that when e.g. a workplace accident happens and the person causing it was sick, the insurances are going to be asking a lot of uncomfortable questions.
Had I been applying direct (no recruiter involved) I probably would not have gone through that much process without demanding more details. Knowing what I know now, I definitely wouldn't.