Top 5 job advert requirements for your dream hire + 5 job advertisement samples

A good job advert is the cornerstone of your hiring process. It doesn’t matter how many jobs boards you post on, or how attractive your benefits are – if you can’t tell candidates why your role is worth applying to, then your company isn't getting the applications it needs.

In this post, we’re going to show you how to write a good job advert – one that attracts great candidates, whilst also making sure you receive only high-quality and highly relevant applications.

What is a job advert?

A job advert works as an announcement that a certain role is open to applications. It’s what you post on job boards or upload to your own company hiring page when looking to grow your team.

A well-written job advert is your chance to ‘sell the role’ to potential applicants. It's an opportunity to show off the vacancy to candidates and make sure you’re attracting only the right people to the role.

What is the difference between a job advert and a job description?

Remember – a job advertisement is not the same as a job description or a job spec. A job advert is outward-facing, designed to attract and excite the right kind of candidate.

A job description is more for internal use, where the full responsibilities and expectations of the role are laid out more comprehensively.

Getting started on your job advert

One really important part of the hiring process is a step that I call identification and alignment. Long before you start writing your job advert, you need to spend some time identifying exactly the role you’re hiring for and what their specific responsibilities will be.

To do that properly, you’ll need to bring in the other stakeholders involved in the hire (that’s the alignment part) to make sure everyone is on the same page. You’d be surprised how easy it is for people working in the same office to end up with very different ideas of what a new role will encompass!

I’m not going to cover that stage here – it's a whole blog post in its own right. I’m going to assume you’ve already identified the company’s needs and got everyone aligned on the role, so we can focus on the process of writing the job advert itself.

If you want help with your hiring process and what comes after the job advert is live, maybe it's time to have a look at Charlie Recruit.

How to write a job advert

Before we get started… let’s think about your dream candidate.

You might have heard marketers talk about focussing their efforts towards an 'ideal buyer persona' – the same principle applies here. What does your ideal hire look like?

If you’ve completed that process of identification and alignment, then you should already have a really clear picture of the tasks and responsibilities to be carried out by this new role.

That's a great place to start.

You’ve already got a comprehensive list of what that person is going to be doing day-to-day – now you just have to find the person that fits. You do this by working backwards.

Get that list up in front of you. What would somebody need to do those tasks well?

• What hard skills would they require?
• What personal characteristics would be useful?
• Would a certain professional background be a good fit?
• How many years of experience would they need? Is it an entry-level role or is more seniority required?

Once you’ve got those characteristics down, you need to rank them in order of importance. Visualising the ‘dream candidate’ is a useful focussing exercise, but in reality, that person doesn’t always exist.

You usually won’t get every single thing on your list, but ranking them allows you to determine which characteristics are the most valuable and which might be just ‘nice-to-haves’.

How do I structure a job advert?

The traditional job advert format looks a bit like this:

• Job title
• Salary
• Location
• Introduction to your business
• Role and responsibilities
• Key requirements (qualifications and skills)

There’s nothing to say you have to use this format (we actually do our job adverts slightly differently) but it is a useful way of breaking down the different components candidates will expect to see.

We’re going to work our way through this format step by step, breaking down exactly how to write a job advert that’s going to bring in your dream hire.

1. The job title

In today’s hiring landscape, job titles are strange things.

Think about how applicants look for jobs today... mainly, it’s by searching for them online.

Job titles aren’t just job titles anymore – they’re an important part of SEO-optimising your advert so that it shows up in the right search results.

Think back to that dream hire, and imagine what they would be searching for online. What are they typing into search bars? What keywords are they using?

Don’t be afraid to test a couple of variations, either. Keep an eye on your pipeline – if you see the pipeline filling up then you know you haven’t got it quite nailed.

Just remember...you’ve got to temper this SEO-optimised approach with some common sense! Whatever job title you use, make sure it’s also a faithful representation of the role.

2. Salary

In an ideal world, every job advert should include a salary bracket. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. It helps to save you a lot of time on any needless back and forth with candidates, trying to figure out salary expectations and whether it fits in with your budget.
2. From a candidate’s viewpoint, including a salary bracket is just the right thing to do. It gives them some welcome clarity over what can often feel like a frustratingly opaque process.

3. Introduction to your business

There’s an old saying in marketing that says people buy with their emotions first, and then use logic to rationalise their purchase afterwards. I don’t think it’s much different in the world of hiring.

Applying for a new job is an innately aspirational act – so take this opportunity to communicate what is aspirational about a move to your company.

What is exciting about working for you? What makes it a good opportunity? Why should your dream candidate apply to work with your company, when there are so many good openings elsewhere?

Every company is unique, so I’m not going to try and tell you exactly how you should go about this. But if you’re looking for inspiration, I’ve often been impressed by how Verve talk about what sets their company apart.

4. Role and responsibilities

This is probably the most important section of any job advert. If you’re going to spend extra time anywhere, then make it here.

A ‘Head of Marketing’ job title really gives no indication of what that person is going to be doing 9-to-5, Monday to Friday. It could mean something totally different from one company to the next.

Before applying to any job, candidates will want to see that it is the right fit for their professional and personal development. Will they be spending time developing the skills they want to perfect? Will they find the work they do engaging and challenging?

I don’t know personally what gets a Product Designer excited about a new role – but I can talk to people at Charlie who do, and use their understanding to inform the advert. This is a great way of making your job advert genuinely exciting for candidates.

The job ad below is a great example. Look at how much detail the advert goes into on the specific responsibilities – you can tell that it was written with a high level of input from the wider team.

I also think framing the role responsibilities through the lens of ‘What will you achieve in the next 12 months?’ is a really great touch. It really helps give the advert a tangible sense of realness, while also keeping that aspirational aspect.

5. Key requirements (qualifications and skills)

Remember that list you drew up, detailing your dream candidate’s background and skill set? This is where it comes into play.

If there’s anything on your checklist that’s an absolute dealbreaker, then don’t be afraid to communicate that on the job advert. You want to make sure you’re getting applications from candidates who are right for the role – if you're convinced your new hire will need a certain qualification, then communicate that desire.

4 samples of job adverts from CharlieHR

1 – Job advert for Customer Success Associate

In this role you will:

• Manage a portfolio of Charlie customers, responsible for their onboarding and setting them up for long-term success on the platform
• Conduct 1:1 calls with customers to improve feature awareness and adoption, and generate upsell revenue
• Run recurring, impactful webinars for our customers at scale, helping them to get maximum value from our product
• Play a pivotal role in our churn reduction strategy, through identifying new opportunities to deliver value to customers and enhance their experience
• Gather and report on customer feedback in order to increase our understanding of customer needs across the business (e.g. NPS, inbound live chat feedback, feature requests, churn feedback)
• Advocate for our customers and their needs internally, using data-backed insights
• Work collaboratively as part of a small and agile team, and develop strong relationships with other functions across the business (e.g. sales, product, marketing)

You must have:

• 2-3 years of customer success or account management experience within B2B tech/SaaS
• Experience providing customer success management to SMEs at scale
• A track record of upselling and cross-selling products or services
• Ability to present in front of multiple stakeholders - you can concisely and confidently articulate the value of our product via webinars and demos
• Strong commercial awareness, with an understanding of the SaaS B2B landscape - you’re revenue-driven and make decisions using data
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills - you’re great at making concepts simple and easy to understand
• Empathy and the ability to build strong relationships, both internally and with customers
• An experimentation mindset - you’re not afraid to try new things, learn from experiences, and get “scrappy”
• Self-awareness and humility – you know that honest feedback is how you grow, and you’re not afraid to ask for help

Let us know if you have: (all of these are desirable, but none are required)

• Interest or background in HR/employee wellbeing tech
• Experience using Intercom for customer support, proactive messaging and reporting
• Experience using Hubspot, Heroku dataclips and CS tools
• Sales or SDR background

We will still consider applications even if you don't meet every single one of the above requirements, so don't be put off if you don't match them absolutely perfectly!

We cannot offer visa sponsorship and you must be able to work in the UK.

The Way We Work

How we're crafting ownership, belonging and structured flexibility:

• A team of 42 that genuinely enjoy spending time together, with regular in-person and remote events to foster connection
• 9 day fortnights; our adjusted work week. We have every other Friday off work and have a meeting-free Wednesday on the five-day weeks to give time for deep work
• Hybrid-first approach; we optimise for office and remote working to be valued equally, and to be equally valuable
• Live anywhere in the UK; we have 6 set days per year that we require the team to be together in our London office, but you have the flexibility to live anywhere in the UK
• 90 bookable "nomad working" days outside of the UK in any timezone each year
• No fixed working hours; you take ownership over how you get your work done
• An amazing office space in East London's pet-friendly Second Home, and membership access to their wider London and LA locations.
• “Exploration days” when you can work on whatever across the company
• We have review cycles 2x a year using our transparent career progression framework, and dedicated personal development time

You can find out more about the way we work at Charlie by checking out our Handbook here.

Compensation Package

• A benchmarked salary from £39,500 - £45,000, based on your level within our progression framework

Benefits

£750 yearly Work Your Way budget (to put toward things like travel to London for company events, getting your home office setup and your L&D)

• £300 yearly nomad working budget (£200 of this can be used toward cost of living each year)
• £30 monthly wellbeing budget
• Private Health Insurance through Vitality
• 25 days annual leave + public holidays
• 4 bookable “Personal days” per year for when you can’t bring your full self to work
• A sabbatical of up to one month paid at 50% of salary, for every 3.5 years worked at Charlie.
• Enhanced Equal Parental Leave policy

2 – Job advert for Product Designer

In this role you will be responsible for:

• Collaborating with product managers and product developers to deliver meaningful impact to our customers and the business across the full life cycle
• Researching and understanding the problem space for our users and customers
• Implementing methods or tools to achieve the right outcomes in the right situations
• Turning research insights into solution concepts in collaboration with your team
• Communicating your ideas and plans to the team in an engaging way
• Working with your team to improve and deliver solutions to our customers
• Pushing the boundaries of how good our UX can be by measuring its performance and impact

Working with other product designers:

• Sharing the right amount of context with other product designers so they can give you valuable feedback on your work
• Giving actionable feedback to product designers on other teams
• Actively participate in building and delivering the Design Strategy for the next few years
• Inspire the product design function and help implement new ideas and processes

Understanding business context

• Being a user advocate across the whole business
• Delivering business impact at the heart of everything you do
• Feeding into product and business decisions

You must have:

• 3+ years of experience as a Product Designer in a SaaS or B2B setting
• Experience leading user research sessions and extracting actionable insights
• Experience making design decisions based on data and customer insights
• Experience working with a cross-functional team and other stakeholders
• A strong appetite for measuring the impact of your work and that of your cross-functional team
• A problem solver mindset bringing together customer value and business results
• An eye for design details and experience using a design system to produce high quality solutions
• Strategic thinking about our product and our vision
• Self-awareness and humility; you know that honest feedback is how you grow and you’re not afraid to ask for help

Let us know if you have: (desirable but not required!)

• Understanding of Job-to-be-done research
• Experience working with a Product Marketing team
• Built or maintained a high quality design system
• An eye for UX Copywriting

We will still consider applications even if you don't meet every single one of the above requirements, so don't be put off if you don't match them absolutely perfectly!

This is a full-time role. We cannot offer visa sponsorship and you must be able to work in the UK.

The Way We Work

How we're crafting ownership, belonging and structured flexibility:

• A team of 42 that genuinely enjoy spending time together, with regular in-person and remote events to foster connection
• 9 day fortnights; our adjusted work week. We have every other Friday off work and have a meeting-free Wednesday on the five-day weeks to give time for deep work
• Hybrid-first approach; we optimise for office and remote working to be valued equally, and to be equally valuable
• Live anywhere in the UK; we have 6 set days per year that we require the team to be together in our London office, but you have the flexibility to live anywhere in the UK
• 90 bookable "nomad working" days outside of the UK in any timezone each year
• No fixed working hours; you take ownership over how you get your work done
• An amazing office space in East London's pet-friendly Second Home, and membership access to their wider London and LA locations.
• “Exploration days” when you can work on whatever across the company
• We have review cycles 2x a year using our transparent career progression framework, and dedicated personal development time

You can find out more about the way we work at Charlie by checking out our Handbook here.

Compensation Package

• A benchmarked salary from £50,500 - £55,500, based on your level within our progression framework

Benefits

• £750 yearly Work Your Way budget (to put toward things like travel to London for company events, getting your home office setup and your L&D)
• £300 yearly nomad working budget (£200 of this can be used toward cost of living each year)
• £30 monthly wellbeing budget
• Private Health Insurance through Vitality
• 25 days annual leave + public holidays
• 4 bookable “Personal days” per year for when you can’t bring your full self to work
• A sabbatical of up to one month paid at 50% of salary, for every 3.5 years worked at Charlie.
• Enhanced Equal Parental Leave policy

3 – Job advert for Software Developer

In this role you will:

As a Charlie product developer you’ll be responsible for:

• Build and improve CharlieHR, a modern monolithic Ruby on Rails application
• Use our design system to ship functional and beautiful features
• Be part of a cross-functional team with other developers, designers and product managers
• Work with developers of all experience levels, with lots of opportunities to learn and teach
• Feed into product and business decisions

You must have:

• Professional experience with Ruby
• A good understanding of web application development
• Experience writing automated tests for your work
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Self-awareness and humility – you know that honest feedback is how you grow, and you’re not afraid to ask for help

Let us know if you have: (all of these are desirable, but none are required)

• Professional experience with Ruby on Rails
• Experience with pair programming
• Knowledge of relational databases and SQL (we use PostgreSQL)
• Worked in cross-functional way with product managers and designers

We will still consider applications even if you don't meet every single one of the above requirements, so don't be put off if you don't match them absolutely perfectly!

Compensation Package

• A benchmarked salary from £48,000 to £52,000 based on your level within our progression framework

Benefits

• £750 yearly Work Your Way budget
• £300 yearly nomad working budget
• £30 monthly wellbeing budget
• Private Health Insurance through Vitality
• 25 days annual leave + public holidays + 2 additional days off over Christmas
• 4 bookable “Personal days” per year for when you can’t bring your full self to work
• A sabbatical of up to one month paid at 50% of salary, for every 3.5 years worked at Charlie.
• Enhanced Equal Parental Leave policy

Equal Opportunities Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer and believe in the power of a diverse, inclusive team.

We welcome all applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of race, sex, disability, religion / belief, sexual orientation or age.

Please let us know if you require anything which would enable your success throughout our interview process.

This is a permanent full-time role. We cannot offer visa sponsorship and you must be able to work in the UK.

The Way We Work

How we're crafting ownership, belonging and structured flexibility:

• A team of 38 that genuinely enjoy spending time together, with regular in-person and remote events to foster connection
• 9 day fortnights — our adjusted work week. We have every other Friday off work and have a meeting-free Wednesday on the five-day weeks to give time for deep work
• Hybrid-first approach; we optimise for office and remote working to be valued equally, and to be equally valuable
• Live anywhere in the UK; we have 6 set days per year that we require the team to be together in our London office, but you have the flexibility to live anywhere in the UK
• 90 bookable "nomad working" days outside of the UK in any timezone each year
• No fixed working hours; you take ownership over how you get your work done
• An amazing office space in East London's pet-friendly Second Home, and membership access to their wider London, Lisbon and LA locations.
• “Exploration days” when you can work on whatever across the company
• We have review cycles 3x a year using our transparent career progression framework, and dedicated personal development time

4 – Job advert for Business Development Representative

In this role you will:

• Host live demos for potential customers (group and 1 to 1), encouraging them to sign up to CharlieHR
• Manage your own pipeline and pushing leads through each stage of the sales cycle
• Work collaboratively with the Head of Sales and Customer Success Team to ensure our goals and strategies are aligned
• Use a data-driven approach to sales to work out what is and isn’t working
• Assist in generating creative and scalable ways to acquire and engage leads
• Work with the marketing team to optimise email outreach campaigns
• Feed back insights from potential customers to the product team

You must have:

Passion about sales: Whether it’s hitting targets, the power of persuasion, or figuring out what makes people tick - sales is what gives you energy!

• Excitement to be a trailblazer: You will be the first one on the sales team so you’ll be setting the standards in a fast-paced and agile environment
• Results & data-driven mindset: You like diving into the numbers and figuring out the WHY behind the results
• Proactivity, organisation and detail-orientation: Sales at Charlie is high-volume, you’ll be managing a lot of leads, keeping the momentum of conversations going, and not letting things slip through the net.
• Self-starter attitude: You can work alone but also motivate and influence other teams when needed
• Resilience, determination & adaptability: Sales can be a rollercoaster, you have to pick yourself up after a set back, work out what went wrong and try again
• Passion for improving workplaces: We want you to love what you do and have genuine interest in helping small companies Make Work Better
• Self-awareness and humility: You know that honest feedback is how you grow, and you’re not afraid to ask for help

Let us know if you have:

• SaaS or B2B experience
• Startup experience

This is a permanent full-time role. We cannot offer visa sponsorship and you must be able to work in the UK.

Benefits

• £750 yearly Work Your Way budget
• £300 yearly nomad working budget
• £30 monthly wellbeing budget
• Private Health Insurance through Vitality
• 25 days annual leave + public holidays + 2 additional days off over Christmas
• 4 bookable “Personal days” per year for when you can’t bring your full self to work
• A sabbatical of up to one month paid at 50% of salary, for every 3.5 years worked at Charlie.
• Enhanced Equal Parental Leave policy

The Way We Work

How we're crafting ownership, belonging and structured flexibility:

• A team of 38 that genuinely enjoy spending time together, with regular in-person and remote events to foster connection
• 9 day fortnights — our adjusted work week. We have every other Friday off work and have a meeting-free Wednesday on the five-day weeks to give time for deep work
• Hybrid-first approach; we optimise for office and remote working to be valued equally, and to be equally valuable
• Live anywhere in the UK; we have 6 set days per year that we require the team to be together in our London office, but you have the flexibility to live anywhere in the UK
• 90 bookable "nomad working" days outside of the UK in any timezone each year
• No fixed working hours; you take ownership over how you get your work done
• An amazing office space in East London's pet-friendly Second Home, and membership access to their wider London, Lisbon and LA locations.
• “Exploration days” when you can work on whatever across the company
• We have review cycles 3x a year using our transparent career progression framework, and dedicated personal development time

You can find out more about the way we work at Charlie by checking out our Handbook.

Sounds like a lot? Out Charlie Recruit platform can also help you write unique job ads with AI - check it out today and get a free demo.