Your Job Posting Tells the Story of Your Bad Hires

Friday night, 7 p.m. You reopen the file from last time. You change the job title, you tweak two lines in the duties, and before publishing, you add something: “Must be autonomous.” You hadn’t put it last time. This time, you do.

That line, added in ten seconds without thinking, is the subject of this article.

Because you never write a job posting from scratch. You write over the previous one.

A job posting is an archive

Look at yours closely. Every requirement arrived one day, for a specific reason.

“Autonomous” appeared after the person you had to chase three times a week. “Rigorous” after the billing error that cost a client. “Handles stress well” after the departure in peak season. “Adapts well to change” after the one who never accepted switching suppliers.

Taken one by one, these requirements seem to describe a job. Strung together, they describe something else: the list of what you never want to go through again.

It’s not a writing flaw. It’s a perfectly human reflex — you learn from what went wrong, and you try to guard against it. The problem is the method chosen. You pile corrections into a text, hoping a single word will keep the feared scenario away.

The result: your posting doesn’t paint a portrait of the role to fill. It draws up an inventory of your last failed hires.

Translating a job posting

Here’s a real case, taken from a posting on Québec emploi. A retail clerk position. The “desired profile” section fits in a single sentence, punctuated with semicolons, threading together honesty, energy, rigour, stress tolerance, autonomy, diligence and punctuality — and about fifteen other qualities, from discretion to the ability to lift fifteen pounds, by way of protecting the company’s assets.

More than twenty requirements for a clerk position.

None of these lines is absurd on its own. Together, they no longer describe a job. They tell a story — and it’s readable.

It’s not bad faith on my part, and it’s not a bad employer. It’s an employer with experience. Every line was paid for.

The problem is that candidates read it that way too. Maybe not consciously, but they feel it. A list of twenty requirements for an entry-level job doesn’t read like rigour: it reads like distrust. And the autonomous, honest, punctual person you’re looking for — the one who has choices — closes the tab.

The word protects you from nothing

The first effect is mechanical. A list that only keeps growing ends up describing a person who doesn’t exist. By adding, you subtract — from your candidate pool, and from the posting’s credibility.

But there’s something more troubling.

Take the requirement you added Friday night. “Must be autonomous.” Ask yourself honestly what it prevents. Will a candidate who needs guidance close the posting thinking “this isn’t for me”? Of course not. They don’t see themselves as someone who lacks autonomy. No one sees themselves that way.

The word doesn’t filter. It sorts nothing, screens out no one, tests nothing at all. It does one single thing: it reassures you at the moment you hit publish.

And that’s exactly where the bad hire gets made. You took a legitimate fear, grounded in real experience, and you filed it away in a text instead of handling it in your process. You checked the box. Three weeks later, in the interview, you’ll ask no question about autonomy — it was written in the posting, the matter is settled.

Except it wasn’t. It was only written.

Don’t erase them — move them

This isn’t about emptying your posting of its requirements for the sake of openness. These scars are valuable information: they tell you exactly what made your last hires fail. It would be absurd to throw them out.

What needs to change is where you put them.

A fear written into a posting does nothing. The same fear, phrased as a question, becomes a tool. Let’s take the clerk’s four.

Afraid someone won’t be autonomous? Don’t write it. Ask instead, in the interview: “Tell me about a time you had to decide on your own, with no one to ask.” An autonomous person has a story. The other has a definition.

Afraid of lateness? That’s not a requirement, it’s a condition of employment. Say it plainly in the posting — “we open at 7 a.m., punctuality is essential here” — and check it during the probation period, which exists precisely for that.

Afraid someone won’t adapt? Describe what has changed at your company over the past two years, and ask the candidate what they think of it. You’ll learn more in two minutes than with the word “flexible” repeated three times.

Afraid things will crack in peak season? Then talk about that Saturday in December. Describe it. The right candidate won’t run — they’ll tell you how they’ve already lived through it elsewhere.

You’ll notice the shift: you move from the adjective to the situation. The adjective claims; the situation recounts. And a person who recounts lets themselves be assessed, which no list of qualities will ever allow.

Three questions to reread yours

You don’t need to rewrite your posting. Reread it, line by line, with three questions.

Give it ten minutes. You’ll probably drop three or four, and your posting will be shorter, clearer, and more honest about what the role really asks.

What you’re looking for doesn’t write down

Back to Friday night, 7 p.m.

The line you’re about to add describes someone you knew. Not someone you’re looking for.

That’s the limit of the exercise: you can stack adjectives as long as you like, you’ll never write a person. Autonomy, rigour, composure — none of it reads in a text, not in yours, not in the résumé they’ll send back. It’s observed in someone. Two minutes are often enough.

So keep your scars. They taught you something. Just put them where they can be useful: in your questions, in your probation period, in the way you look at people.

And let your posting describe the role.