Placing an advert for developer – what should be in the Advert?

Question

Hi I am busy working out the wording for advert for a junior software developer. The Ad will be place in a number of web sites. What should be in the Advert?

Answer 1

You generally want a breakdown of exactly what sort of skills you are looking for. You want it worded as simply as possible, and completely devoid of "markety speak".

You don't want to endorse buzzwords such as "fast paced" because you don't want to be telling people they'll have a stupidly high demand on them that will make their life miserable.

Be objective, ditch anything touchy-feeley or imperative/subjective statements about what your company is.

What an employee wants to know:

• Will their employ be 'sane'
• Will their employ be stable and reliable
• Will their employ give them space to stretch their legs and experiment a bit
• Will their employ be satisfied with their capacity to work for them.
• How much will employee have to stretch beyond their current understanding just to fit in.

Your average potential will be looking through dosens of listings, and you want them to be thinking either "yeah, I can do that" or "mm, too hard for me" ( Because you want to try weed out the people too far below the threshold in advance, if you're unclear, you'll get people who've never coded a line in their life and only used pre-generated code which they have only modified the theme on, thinking they're fit for the job ).

The next thought you want them to be thinking after considering the "can i meet the requirements" is "how much does it pay" and "will this place be less than torture"

Answer 2

Salary.

1) If you state the salary, then some people won't apply because it's too low. But they wouldn't have taken the job anyway, so you'd have been wasting your time considering them.

2) If you don't state the salary, or say "salary negotiable", or "competitive salary", or "salary dependent on experience" without a stated range, then some people won't apply because they wrongly guess that it's too low. They might have been the person you hired.

That said, if your organisation is such that the salary is "as little as we can get away with for the person we decide we want", then you're stuck with 2.

Answer 3

Depends on what type of a junior developer you are looking for. At a minimum, I'd suggest you briefly describe the types of projects the developer will be working on, as well as the team in which the developer will be working: the culture, experience, software development approach and technologies.

Answer 4

Be honest. And if honest is not enough to attract poeple, then you have a bigger problem then your ad.

Answer 5

The technologies and languages used, project management style, the type of projects undertaken, where you are and how much you're looking to be paying.

Example

We are looking for a .NET developer to join an agile team creating ASP.NET MVC websites in C# based in Nottingham. 20-25k.