Job Posting

A job posting is the external, persuasive advertisement an organization publishes to attract candidates for an open role. It's adapted from the underlying Job Description but written for a completely different audience and purpose: convincing a stranger scanning a job board to apply, not documenting the role for internal use in performance review or compensation banding.

Job posting vs. job description

• Job description — the internal source of truth: accurate, durable, and used in contexts (compliance, leveling, performance review) where marketing language would actually get in the way.
• Job posting — the outward-facing version: trimmed, marketed, and tailored to attract applicants, written and re-published each time a role opens rather than kept as a permanent reference.

Writing the job description first and adapting the posting from it — rather than writing the posting from scratch — keeps the two from contradicting each other, and gives the posting a stable source to be checked against as the role or its requirements change.

What to keep, trim, and add

• Keep — the actual title (adjusted to a market-recognizable term if the internal leveling name is meaningless to outside candidates), the core responsibilities, and the qualifications that are genuinely required to do the job.
• Trim — internal pay-band mechanics, internal reporting-chain names and org-chart detail, and dense essential-functions or compliance boilerplate that belongs in the internal document, not an ad meant to be read in under a minute.
• Add — selling points that don't belong in a role definition at all: culture, growth path, notable projects, benefits highlights, and a summary or hook written to make a good-fit stranger want to read further, plus clear application instructions.

Common pitfalls

• Posting drifts out of sync with the underlying job description — a posting typically gets copied across several job boards and often reused verbatim for the next opening, so once the role's actual requirements or reporting line change, the live posting can keep advertising a stale title, an out-of-compliance salary range, or qualifications the role no longer needs — usually for longer than the internal document does, since nobody's job is to notice a public ad going stale.
• Laundry-list requirements deter applicants — the same "every nice to have becomes required" problem the underlying job description can fall into, but sharper here: a posting is public and self-service, so a candidate who doesn't check every box simply never applies and no recruiter ever gets the chance to say "apply anyway" — every extra line item in a public posting directly shrinks the funnel with no one around to correct the impression.
• All compliance, no pitch — a posting copied straight from the internal job description with nothing trimmed or added reads as a legal notice, not an invitation, and undersells the role to exactly the candidates worth attracting.
• Same posting live in multiple places, updated in only one — a correction made on the company's own site but not on the job boards it was cross-posted to leaves outdated versions actively misleading applicants.
• Missing or inconsistent salary range — omitting it, or posting a different range across duplicate listings, in jurisdictions that require pay-transparency disclosure.

Learn more

• Job Description for the internal, durable document a posting is adapted from.
• Inclusive Language for avoiding coded or gendered wording that skews who applies.
• Resume and Cover Letter for what candidates submit in response to a posting.