Ask HN: Which of these Job Ad writing strategies do you use?

Hey there!

Imagine you are a developer. You need work. You decide to go to your usual job boards to have a look. And then…

…That feeling when you are looking for a job and you wade through hundreds and hundreds of job ads that all look alike, they all read like a dry laundry list of requirements, and they all feel like they come from one big boring corporation that you DON’T want to work for? (And the only reason you are putting up with the torture is because you HAVE to find a new gig to pay the rent.)

I’ve been that developer so many times…

After more than a decade working as a software developer, I’ve come to the conclusion that job ad writing practices are screaming for improvement if startups are to:

  - Attract and retain top talent
  - Attract and retain more diverse talent
  - Instantly grab attention and excite their ideal candidate
  - Convey their core values across in a clear and compelling way

There is this saying that goes, “To fix the problem you need to fix your thinking about the problem.”

I want to have a stab at help fixing this problem so I want to find out how do we think about the problem :)

I am curious to learn what your strategies are when it’s time to hire a new team member. How do you decide what to put into a job ad? Who writes it? Do you have a clear objective in place when you write it? Is it just a copy/paste exercise for you?

I observed few practices that are in circulation:

  - Hire a recruiting agency and leave everything to them
  - Have that one job ad that was written since the beginning 
    of time and repurpose it over and over again 
    (with few tweaks here and there)
  - Quickly throw together few acronyms & specs
  - talk with the team about the requirements for the new position 
    and then spend weeks crafting the ad

What is your “modus operandi”?

Thank you so much for reading this!