Careers page copy

What careers page copy is

Careers page copy is the page that says what it is like to work for you and the job adverts that sit under it. It covers the work, the pay, the hours, who a person reports to, how the hiring runs, and the parts of the job people find hard. It is a selling page with an unusual requirement: it has to repel as many readers as it attracts, in the same paragraphs.

It is not a recruitment advertisement dressed as a culture statement. A page about passionate people who love what they do describes every employer in the country and tells a candidate nothing, so the applications it draws come from people who read nothing specific, there being nothing specific to read. It is also not the about page, which is written for a buyer deciding whether to trust you, not for someone deciding whether to spend their working life with you.

When you need one

You need one when you are getting applications but not the right ones, and every shortlisting round is mostly discarding. That is a filtering problem, and filtering is done with words before it is done with time.

You need one when people leave inside a year. Most early departures are not about pay. They are about a job that turned out to be different from the one described, and the description is a page you control.

You need one when you are hiring against businesses that can pay more. You cannot win on the number, so you win on being specific about everything else, and specificity is only believed from someone willing to state the drawbacks too.

You do not need one if you hire one person every three years through people you already know. An honest paragraph on the page about the business serves that, and the money is better spent elsewhere.

What goes in it

The page has to be usable by a candidate deciding not to apply. That is the standard.

• The work, described in a day. What the person does between arriving and leaving, in order, with the proportions right. Most job descriptions list responsibilities; almost none say where the hours go.
• The difficult parts, named. The season when it is sixty hours. The two clients everyone finds hard. The first six months of learning a system with poor documentation. The drive. Say it in the employer's own voice, without apology or spin.
• The pay, as a range. Withholding it costs you the candidates who will not apply blind, and they tend to be the ones with options. If there is a reason the range is wide, give it.
• Who they work with and for. The size of the team, who they report to, and whether that person is in the same building.
• What the job is not. The promotion that does not exist, the travel that is not optional, the remote arrangement you will not offer. This paragraph does more filtering than the rest of the page together.
• The hiring process and the timetable. How many stages, what happens at each, how long the wait is, and whether everyone hears back.

Every claim about the culture has to be attached to something a person could witness in their first week. If it cannot be, it comes out.

What you get

The careers page. Six hundred to nine hundred words covering the work, the pay approach, the difficult parts, the hiring process and the action, with the title tag and meta description.

One job advert written in full. A complete advert for the role you hire most often, in the form you can post as it stands.

A pattern for the rest. The structure with notes on what has to be rewritten for every role and what may be reused, so a manager writing an advert on a Friday afternoon does not fall back on the adjectives.

A screening note. The three questions to ask at first contact that check whether the applicant actually read the difficult-parts section. That is where the filter is verified.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A twenty-person landscaping firm in the Fraser Valley hires eight seasonal crew each spring. Its careers page says the company is growing, values teamwork and offers competitive wages. Applications arrive in the hundreds, most from people who have never done outdoor work, and by July three of the eight hires have gone.

The rewritten page opens with the shape of a working day from a quarter past six, including the loading, the drive and the two hours of cleanup that nobody mentions in interviews. It states the hourly range in CAD and how it moves after one season. Then a section headed plainly as the hard parts: rain does not cancel the day, the first three weeks hurt, and August is six-day weeks. It says the job is not a route into design work, because that question came up at every interview and was answered kindly and misleadingly. Applications drop to a manageable number, the ones who arrive quote the six-day weeks back at the crew lead, and seven of the eight finish the season.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. The roles you hire, what goes wrong in hiring now, and who has left recently and why. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Scope, price and dates agreed before anything starts.
3. Conversations. Two to four working days. Whoever supervises the role, one person doing it now, and where possible one person who left. The leaver is usually the most useful half-hour of the job.
4. The hard-parts list, agreed with you. You see what I intend to publish about the difficult side and approve it before a page is written. Nothing goes on that you have not signed.
5. The draft and one round of changes.
6. Final page, the full advert, the pattern and the screening note. Delivered together.

Two weeks from first call to final copy is typical, a little longer when a departed employee has to be tracked down and asked.

What it costs

Careers page copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. What moves the number is how many roles are covered, how many people have to be interviewed to describe the work accurately, and whether adverts for several roles are written or only the pattern. The figure is agreed in writing before anything starts, and the pricing page shows the four ways of working and how a quote is built.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. A candidate who believes the page goes looking at the people, so short credible biographies get written. The description of the work turns out to be the honest basis for what a new hire is given in week one. And the same plain voice is usually wanted for the announcements your existing staff receive, which are read more sceptically than any careers page. None of that is assumed. The careers page is a complete piece of work on its own.