Stop Writing Job Postings That Attract the Wrong People

I’ve interviewed hundreds of people across multiple startups. The biggest mistake I see hiring managers make isn’t in the interview room - it’s in the job posting itself.

Most job descriptions read like a grocery list of requirements. Five years of this, proficiency in that, Bachelor’s degree required. You think you’re filtering candidates, but you’re doing the opposite. You’re attracting the wrong people and pushing away the ones you actually want.

What A Players Actually Want

After all those interviews, I noticed a pattern. The best people - the ones who became key contributors - didn’t care about titles or corner offices. They cared about three things, in this order:

1. Transformation through learning - They wanted to get better at their craft
2. Fun - They wanted to work somewhere they actually enjoyed being
3. Money - Yes, it mattered, but it was third

A fourth thing came up too: making an impact. Changing something that matters. Not everyone cared about this, but the ones who did cared deeply.

Harvard Business Review found that 80% of candidates won’t apply to jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the requirements. Think about what that means. Your laundry list of qualifications is filtering out confident, capable people who know they can learn quickly. Instead, you’re getting people who check boxes but might lack judgment about their actual abilities.

The Five-Step Job Posting

Here’s how to structure a job posting that does double duty - pulling in A players while pushing away everyone else.

1. Use a Real Title

Skip the “Marketing Ninja” or “Happiness Advocate” nonsense. Use industry-standard titles that people actually search for. If you’re hiring a senior engineer, call it that. Clever titles make it harder for good people to find you.

2. Answer “What’s In It For Me?”

This is where most job postings fail. They lead with company history or a boring mission statement. Start with what the candidate gets.

Think about army recruitment commercials. They don’t start with organizational charts. They show you flying helicopters and supporting worldwide missions. They let you visualize yourself in the role.

Do the same thing. Talk about:

• Taking pride in challenging work
• Working with people better than you
• Growth and recognition
• Job stability with life balance
• A mission that matters

Make it concrete. Not “opportunities for growth” but “you’ll be designing systems that handle millions of requests” or “you’ll work directly with the founding team on product decisions.”

3. Share What You’re Passionate About

This is your “why we do this” section. Be genuine about what excites you about the company. If you’re building infrastructure for AI agents, talk about why that matters. If you’re solving a specific problem, explain why it needs solving.

This isn’t marketing copy. Write like you’re explaining to a friend why you love what you do. If you can’t do this authentically, that’s a signal about your company culture.

4. Describe the Position in Second Person

Use “you” constantly. Let them see themselves in the role.

“You’ll design data pipelines that process terabytes of information daily. You’ll own the architecture decisions for our ingestion system. You’ll work with a team of three engineers who’ve built systems at scale before.”

This does two things. First, it helps the right people visualize themselves succeeding. Second, it makes the wrong people self-select out.

Talk about accountability. A players love being held accountable - they want to know what winning looks like. C players run from accountability. When you write “you’ll be responsible for reducing query latency by 50%” or “you’ll own the customer onboarding experience end-to-end,” you’re filtering.

Here’s a trick: describe experience without requiring it. Instead of “5 years of Python experience required,” write “you’ve built production systems in Python. You’ve debugged memory leaks and optimized performance bottlenecks. You’ve made architectural decisions that affected multiple teams.”

People who’ve done this work will recognize themselves. People who haven’t will know they’re not qualified. You get filtering without the arbitrary requirements.

5. Close With a Clear Next Step

Tell them exactly what to do. “Send your resume to [real person’s email].” Not hr@company.com or noreply@whatever. Use a real person’s email. It signals that humans are involved in this process.

I like to add an optional challenge for A players: “If this position is perfect for you and you want to move fast, send me three sentences explaining why this role fits you and what you’ll contribute. I’ll prioritize those applications.”

This gives top performers a way to jump the queue. It also filters out people who aren’t sure they want the job. I don’t want to waste time with tire kickers.

What This Looks Like in Practice

At one of my previous startups, we rewrote our engineering job postings using this approach. The change was immediate.

Before: 200+ applications, maybe 10 worth talking to, interviews that went nowhere.

After: 40 applications, 30 worth talking to, multiple strong hires.

The key shift was stopping the spray-and-pray approach. We stopped trying to attract everyone and started being specific about what we offered and what we expected. The best people responded. The rest filtered themselves out.

Questions to Ask Yourself

• Does your job posting reflect what A players actually care about, or just what you think they should care about?
• Are you using requirements as a lazy filtering mechanism instead of writing a posting that attracts the right people?
• Would you apply to your own job posting? Would it excite you?
• Is there a real person behind your hiring process, or does it feel like applying into a black hole?

The best people have options. Your job posting is competing with dozens of others. Make it worth their time to read, and make it clear whether they should apply. Everything else is noise.

Teros is your founding engineering team for early-stage startups. With over a decade of experience partnering with Bay Area companies, we specialize in building high-performing teams across software development, machine learning, cloud-native solutions, and infrastructure.

We've helped startups scale from pre-seed to post-Series A, providing the technical expertise and talent you need to succeed. Whether you need full-stack development, DevOps automation, cloud solutions, or team augmentation, we're here to help you build something great.

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