Why No One Applies To Your Job Posting

Years ago, when the number of available candidates far outnumbered the number of open jobs, startup recruiters could simply pepper popular job boards with a job posting and expect applicants. Now that the talent supply-and-demand ratio has flipped, however, recruiters are having to work harder to encourage inbound applicants.

In fact, many recruiters are struggling to get any inbound applicants at all from their job postings.

In the current talent market, the job postings that perform the best aren't necessarily the ones that are posted to as many sites as possible, but rather the ones that do the best job of marketing their position to candidates.

After looking at the highest, and lowest, performing job postings on Wellfound, we've identified a few reasons why candidates might be passing up your posts.

1. Your salary range isn't enticing—or realistic

If you have some trepidation about posting salary information, either because you think it disadvantages you in salary negotiations or you simply prefer to keep things private, you should know that across the board, job postings with salary data get more applications.

Posting a salary range, however, is not enough on it's own. You need to post a range that candidates find exciting and believable. This can be deceptively tricky.

The ideal salary range varies depending on the tier of compensation you're offering:

• For roles offering less than $100,000, the most applied-to jobs have a salary minimum that is 57% of the salary maximum. For example, $45,000 - $80,000 would roughly fit this profile.
• For roles offering between $100,000 and $200,000, the most popular jobs have a salary minimum that is 68% of the salary maximum. For example, $120,000 - $175,000 would roughly fit this profile.

The key with these salary ranges is that high-end is big enough to be exciting, but it is close enough to the salary floor to be believable. If a salary range says $50,000 - $250,000, candidates cannot judge how much they'll realistically be offered.

Of course, before you can pick the right salary range, you need to ballpark the industry standard salary for your role. This number will vary quite a bit depending on the role you're hiring for, but we have a free salary tool that will give you that data.

2. You don't explain what a hire will actually do

Roughly 65% of the most applied-to job listings on Wellfound share the explicit responsibilities of the role they're hiring for. By “explicit responsibilities,” we mean that they describe the exact results the role is responsible for, the projects they will be working on, and some description of what their daily work will entail.

This is not the same as posting a vague, high-level overview about how whoever is hired for the role will “contribute across the stack to projects, be responsible for maintaining high code quality, and take the lead on new initiatives.” That type of description doesn't differentiate your posting from the thousands of other engineering job postings, and gives candidates no reason to be excited about joining you.

By explicitly defining the type of work a new hire will be doing, the technologies they'll be working with, and the results they will be responsible for delivering, you can cut through the noise created by the deluge of open job postings.

For example, imagine a candidate has a lot of experience with Python, is interested in machine learning, and likes working independently on projects. This describes plenty of engineers. If your job description explains that:

• Your team uses Python.
• The role will require engineers to implement machine learning systems.
• Your team is in its early-stage, meaning engineers will largely work independently on features.

You are going to pique that engineer's interest. You're also, as an added bonus, going to ward off engineers who aren't interested in any of those things, which will increase the overall quality of the candidates who apply to your jobs.

If you don't explain what new hires will actually be doing when they join your company, they have no reason to be excited, and your job listing gets passed over. It's not about posting a description that targets the broadest set of candidates possible. It's about writing a job description that attracts the candidates you want most.

3. You're unnecessarily limiting your candidate pool

The most popular job postings on AngelList, on average, request a minimum of about 2 years of relevant prior experience from candidates. Logically, by setting the experience minimum relatively low, these jobs open themselves up to a wider pool of candidates.

The obvious pushback to this is that some roles simply need more experienced candidates. While this is true in some cases, in the majority of cases it actually is not.

As we've discussed before, startups with higher experience minimums tend to end up hiring “underqualified” candidates. The reason is that experience minimums, typically, are simply a way to filter for competency—and often times, startups will find an under-experienced, but completely capable candidate before they find a candidate with the ideal years of experience.

For most roles, setting a lower experience minimum will encourage more applicants, while an efficient screening and interview process will weed out candidates who are incapable of handling the role.

However, there are some roles—typically more senior roles—that will simply require more years of experience. This candidate pool, obviously, is smaller. While you can still optimize your job post to appeal to as many candidates as possible, you likely will need to supplement your recruiting efforts with some outbound sourcing.

Popular job postings cut through the noise

Recruiting is marketing, and to get a little meta, you can think of your job posting as advertising. Candidates have thousands of job postings to sort through, and you only get a few seconds—if that—to catch their attention.

The keys to doing that effectively are to offer exciting-but-believable compensation, to signal exactly who this job is perfect for, and to make the role approachable to anyone who might be capable of succeeding in it.

If you do this effectively, you'll see a spike not only in the volume of your inbound candidates, but in the quality of candidates in your pipeline.