How to read a job posting, in plain English

A job posting is written to attract you. It is not written to tell you everything. This is how to read a job posting: slowly, all of it, in a set order. If you have ever searched for how to read a job description, it is the same skill.

The examples below come from three real listings we have written about: Fluence, Lemon.io and Askable. Read the whole listing first. Then go through these seven steps.

1. Who is hiring, and what is only their claim?

Start with the company. Then sort what they say into two piles: things you can check, and things they simply claim.

Lemon.io says it has been in business for 10 years, has 60 people across Ukraine, Europe, Canada and the US, and processes over $16M a year in GMV. That is a company describing itself. It is useful, but it is not proof. Treat it as a claim until you have seen it somewhere else.

2. What is the work, in plain words?

Ignore the title for a moment and read the duties. A title can mean different things at different companies.

The Lemon.io listing is titled Head of Engineering. The duties say it is not a management-layer role, and that you would be hands-on and work with the founder. The title alone would not tell you that.

3. What do they ask for, and what is only a plus?

Listings mix what you must have with what they would like. Read the words around each item. “Required”, “must” and “at least” mean one thing. “Plus”, “bonus” and “preferred” mean another.

The Fluence listing asks for at least 3 years as a full-stack or front-end-heavy engineer. It lists AWS Bedrock and CloudTrail, and Datadog and Sentry, as pluses, and Convex as a bonus. A reader who has the first but not the second can still apply.

4. What is the pay, and in what currency?

Find the number, then find what it is per: per hour, per month, per task, or per year. Then find the currency.

The Askable listing pays US$1,000 for each task that passes review. That is not per hour. It says most tasks need more than one round of review, and it does not say how long a task takes, so you cannot work out an hourly rate from it.

Many listings do not state pay in the text at all. The Fluence and Lemon.io listings do not. Job boards sometimes show a range of their own, and that is not the same as the company stating it. When pay is missing, that is information. It is the first question to ask.

5. Where can you work from, and when?

Look for words about location, time zones and working hours. Do not stop at a label such as “Worldwide” at the top of the page. A label is a filter on a job board. The text is what the company wrote.

Askable says, in its text, “Remote, any location”. The Fluence listing does not say where you may work from. Lemon.io names where its own team is, which is not the same as saying where it will hire. We read nine listings labelled Worldwide to see how often the text agrees with the label: see what remote jobs worldwide really means.

6. What is the process, and what are the terms?

Read how you get hired and what you agree to.

Fluence starts with a take-home project, then an interview, then a six-month contract. Askable has a screener interview, then proposals, then reviews, and its terms say your work must be your own to license and must not be published. Terms like these decide whether the work is right for you, so read them before you start, not after.

7. What does the listing not say?

Last, write down what is missing. This is the step most readers skip, and the one that protects you most.

Make a short list: pay, location, hours, contract length, who employs you, how you are paid, whether a test is paid. Anything on that list that the listing does not answer is a question for the company. On every write-up we publish, we show these gaps as Not stated.