Most LinkedIn posts about recruiting that are considered hot takes are, in fact, just bad takes. Or worse, illegal confessions of bad behavior. “I rejected the person with an open to work banner,” posts the person with no HR background. I know, I know. They do it because they want views. That’s why LinkedIn shows it to you. They’re trying to evoke a response and usually get it from outraged recruiters.

The not so hot take that people would tag me in for years is the one where recruiters try to say that qualified candidates aren't reading their job posts or applying to their open roles. In this market? Really? My first thought, admittedly said a bit sarcastically, is that's a you problem, buddy. What I try to say politely is, “you’re probably not writing anything worth reading, my dear recruiter friend.”

Funny enough, the AI bots are actually telling on these people. If their point is that people didn’t read the job post and that’s why unqualified people applied, then why are unqualified AI bots replying to your post? Bots only apply if they think they are qualified based on data. Your job post is that data so this isn’t a hot take, it’s a tell.

100% Qualified Applicants Is Unrealistic

If a job post included the correct data to qualify a candidate, AI would be able to match the job post and candidate pretty easily. Most of the software is just keyword matching. That’s how I know the recruiters posting about no qualified applicants didn't create a clear, concise, accurate job post without even seeing it. If they get no qualified candidates, that means even machines could not decipher what the hell they were saying. 

Only getting qualified applicants is an unrealistic goal, anyway. For many roles, you can expect 70-90% of applicants to be unqualified (depending on how strictly “qualified” is defined by the hiring team). We live in a society where applying to a job is the primary way to get a job. If a person wants to improve their odds of getting a job, they just have to keep applying. Note: no one said anything about always being qualified. Gotta try, right? So in a market where thousands lose their jobs every day, you can bet unqualified people will be applying more often no matter how you change your job posts. 

Even before AI entered the market broadly, the best job posts I’ve ever seen had a 50% qualified vs 50% unqualified rate applicant pool. This is why matching technology is so popular. Recruiters want something to help them go from a big pile to a small one. Still, you need a decent job post to do that. If you don’t define the criteria clearly? None of those matching systems can accurately tell you if someone is qualified or not.  

Qualified Candidate Workflow: A 3-Point Job Audit 

But if you’re not getting any qualified candidates at all, that’s a problem. When I hear this complaint from potential customers, I always walk them through this short job post audit. With these steps, I’m attempting to determine if this is an issue with discovery aka can they find it or content aka does this make sense. 

Here’s where I start. 

1. Job title. Use your favorite search engine and search the job title and location. For example, “Marketing Manager, Rockford, IL.” If your job doesn’t come up alongside job postings that feature similar skills and titles, you need a Search Engine Optimized (SEO) job title. Try my job title generator for help.
2. Count the requirements. If there are more than 7 requirements listed, even qualified people will start to opt out. Mandatory requirements only. Note: Be careful using ChatGPT for this. In my workshops, the majority of tests made content more generic, not more specific. More on how to write better mandatory requirements in this ebook. 
3. Be explicit about dealbreakers. At the end of each one, it should be a clear yes/no. None of that maybe stuff. For example, swap random years of experience for specific project examples. 5 years of experience isn’t the same as “you completed a project that lasted more than 3 months on a team of 5 or more where you completed the following deliverables.” 

Make your job posts more accurate and you’ll get more qualified candidates (even if you do get fewer views on LinkedIn). Just stop posting the hot takes that end up being a tell that AI can do your job, ok?

Interested in an extended template? Buy my job post audit template. After 7+ years where I trained thousands of people to write better job posts, I created this job post audit template to help each person consistently deliver high quality content. As recruiters, you can use this to facilitate feedback and distill what's most important from the current job post. Use this to upgrade your process, simplify the feedback loop, and become the talent consultant every hiring manager loves working with.