Keyboard Jobs

Jobs for software developers, geeks and cyborgs

Creating job ads

Last updated 14th September 2022

Overview

When posting a job listing there are several things which can help to attract the right candidates:

Job Title

We recommend descriptive down-to-the-point job titles. Try to avoid overly generic job titles such as Software Engineer. Keyboard Jobs is a job board specifically targetted at software developers and IT personnel. Therefore it is given that most job listings will be aimed at software engineers. Try to be more specific by including seniority, skills or other important aspects of the job in the job title.

Bad job titles:

  • Software Engineer
  • Junior Software Developer
  • Team Lead

Good job titles:

  • Mid-level Java and React Developer (Fullstack)
  • Junior PHP + MySQL Developer
  • Azure Cloud Architect (.NET and C#)
  • Hands-on Team Lead (AWS, Go, Node.js, Vue.js)

It is normal that the actual position requires more skills than the ones listed in the job title. The job title is a good place to highlight one or two key technologies which are must-haves for a candidate. Other secondary technologies, programming languages and nice-to-haves can still be listed in the following job description, but a good job title will ensure that your job listing will be found by the right candidates.

Job Description

The job description is the main area where the job position should be described to prospective job seekers. This field can be physically expanded by moving the mouse cursor to the bottom right corner of the field and drag it further down the screen. It also accepts Markdown as a human readable text editing language. Markdown gets automatically converted into beautiful HTML as soon as the job has been posted. You will be able to see the final job posting on the preview screen before being taken to the checkout page.

In your job description try to include topics such as:

  • What team/project are you hiring for
  • Key requirements and experience required for the job
  • Company/Team culture
  • Benefits
  • Details about the application process

Try to refrain from talking too much about the company itself in the job description. You will have a chance to describe your company in more detail in the Company Description field afterwards.

Employment Details

The employment details section captures some important key elements of the job position on offer.

Pick between Employment or Contract and select the desired capacity (full-time or part-time). Note that a Contract role normally means that there is a fixed end date for the role (e.g. 6 month contract, or well defined project scope after which the contract ends - unless it gets extended).

You must also provide a rough range for the salary or contract rate on offer. This helps job seekers to work out if the job role meets their own requirements and it helps us to match your job listing to the best candidates on the market. If the pay hugely varies based on experience or skills then simply select a wider range than normal.

Remote Work

Select the most appropriate remote-work option for your open position. If you select Fully remote worldwide then you basically advertise your job role to software developers across the entire globe. However, if you only offer a 100% remote position which is limited to a specific region of the world (e.g. US/Canada only) then select Fully remote in specific region and specify the region limitations in the text field below.

You can also select Partially remote if you have a hybrid working environment where employees can work from home but are also required to visit the office on a regular basis. This normally implies that even though remote working is (to an extent) possible, a successful candidate will still have to be geographically located close to the company's office in order to comply with required office attendance.

At last you can select Remote working not possible if remote working is not an available option. Many such roles exist for a variety of reasons and we have also found that many job seekers prefer to work from an office as opposed to work from home. Selecting the right option will increase your success rate in finding the right people for the job!

Visa sponsorship

Unless you have selected Fully remote worldwide as the Remote-Work option then you can also highlight to potential job seekers if your company can offer Visa sponsorships for the right candidate. Many engineers are happy (or even desire) to relocate countries if that option is made possible by their future employer. You can tick that box to highlight this possibility and attract a wider range of candidates even if you have specific regional requirements in place.

Company Details

In the company details section you can provide more information about the wider company, your mission statement, future goals and anything else which you think a potential candidate might find interesting. If you provide a website URL we will link back to your company website on all your job ads.

Additional Information

In this section we try to capture some additional corner stones of the software development role on offer. Many software developers have a desire to gain experience in certain cloud environments, want to work for either small or big organisations or simply are legally prevented from using certain development tools because of their country's political status.

After speaking to almost three hundred software developers who were looking for a new job role over the last two years (2021-2022) we have discovered that most engineers were interested in these five categories:

  • Company size
    (some had a strong preference for the stability of a big corp, others really wanted to work for small scale-ups)
  • What laptop they may use
  • Source control system in place
  • Where do they deploy their work
  • How teams communicate (especially remote workers were keen on this bullet point)

Self-taught developers

Studies have shown that particularly under represented groups are less likely to apply for an open job position if they don't meet all listed requirements. Companies often advertise a long list of nice-to-haves but are really much more open to candidates who don't meet all those skills. In order to help a more inclusive hiring process and highlight to job seekers that not all listed skills are an all-or-nothing requirement you can select the Self-taught developers option to denote that your organisation welcomes software developers without a computer science degree as much as those who have one.

If you select this option then your job listing will receive the special Self-taught developers badge:

Self-taught developers badge

Entry level and graduates

Similar to the self-taught developers option the Entry level and graduates check signifies that the listed job posting can be a great fit to someone who is just at the beginning of their career. By enabling this option your job listing will be decorated with yet another badge which can help with conversion rates and actively make your job posting more welcoming and inclusive of junior engineers:

Entry level and graduate friendly badge

Job Listing Preview

After completing the job posting you'll be taken to the Preview Screen where you can see your job ad before continuing to the checkout. If you find any issues or areas which you'd like to modify then you'll have an option to edit your job ad before completing the transaction.

Checkout

The entire payment process is securely handled by Stripe. We do not collect or store any payment details ourselves. An automatic invoice will be sent to the billing email address which was provided during the checkout process.

Questions and Support

If you have any further questions or concerns do not hesitate to contact us at support@keyboardjobs.com.