I have to admit, the economic environment makes this scariest job posts blog feel a lot less funny this year. There’s just so much uncertainty and fear in the world. The fact that a lot of people allow bad job postings like these to get into the world is just rude. It’s like they don’t know what it’s like to be a job seeker. 

I remember. How could I forget? I lost my job a few days before I bought my first house. It drained my self-confidence and made me question myself. The longer I went searching for jobs and finding things that were just ridiculous - like posts that wanted 15 years of Facebook experience when Facebook did not exist for 15 years at that time - the less confidence I had. 

In recruiting, I think a lot about the cost of consideration in recruiting - it's a recurring theme on this blog. What do we get and what do we take when we are not fully considerate of the person on the other side? When it comes to job posts, I think the cost is a lot higher than most people realize. Trust is gained and lost early in the interaction between a job seeker and a company. It often starts right there in the job with the expectations that are set - both about the company’s values and the expectations of that person’s performance. 

What Makes A Job Post Bad? 

I want to believe - and I’m willing to believe - that most people write bad job posts because they don’t actually know what a good job post would even look like. There’s no ill intent, just a lack of education. I’ve watched the “best in class” courses on job post writing. They leave a *lot* to wonder about. That’s why I created a job post writing course of my own. (But I know most of you haven’t taken that. Ahem. Buy it here.)

What actually makes a job post bad? As a general baseline, there are a few things I see in every job post I could call bad. 

1. Generic buzzwords. Highly collaborative team players. Analytical. Smart. All of these say a lot without saying anything at all - mostly because the words do not have a universal meaning. No context for how things work on your team? Not a good job post. 
2. Scope and scale. There’s not one number on the job post to explain the company or the complexity of the role. These are, ironically, always the posts looking for folks that are highly analytical, too. 
3. Way too long. No one is reading your 3,000 word job post, friend. I don’t care how good you think it is. 

Now, the difference between bad and scary is that a scary job post does all of these things *and* adds in red flag biases or language. When I say “scary,” I mean: you might be scared to work here. 

Scariest Job Post of 2026

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before this year. No bad job posts. If you really want to see some, Scariest Job Posts of 2021, Scariest Job Posts of 2022, Scariest Job Posts of 2023, Scariest Job Posts of 2024, and Scariest Job Posts of 2025 are all here. Instead I want to talk about something way scarier: an AI world that’s generated from these scary posts in the first place. 

For years, our industry has overindexed on search and candidate information. I can’t tell you how many webinars I went to on “finding candidate details” around 2010. Now, that’s the easy part. Anyone who’s nosy and determined enough can find contact information. What we can’t do as an industry is write a prompt, aka a job post, that’s so clear both a machine and a person can use it to make a decision. 

The scariest part of that? MIT says 95% of AI projects fail and I’m 100% sure it’s because of those job posts. I’ve seen the technology. So my big a-ha this post? Start to look at your demos and technology through that lens. If step one is to upload a job post, are you confident that information is high quality enough to spit out the right candidates? Do you trust every person who uses this machine to add something high quality? No? 

Job Audits Make Job Posts Less Scary

This is not a call to go buy some technology solution. Remember, every job post writer I’ve seen was trained on all the bad job posts. Instead, you train the people. The easiest way? Clearly explain what good means. 

Now, you can buy my job audit here then customize it for your system or build your own, just make sure it includes these things. 

1. Data audit. How do you know it has all the important information you need for prompt outcomes? 
2. Clarity. This is both the format aka is it consistent, but also bias. Your audit should be clear about what’s bad. For example, “we do not use years of experience because the amount of time you did a job doesn’t matter.” 
3. Scoring and feedback. Have you ever been told your writing was “bad,” but that’s all they said? If you have a simple system of scoring - good, better, best - and a feedback loop to explain the exact change? That’s how we make progress. 

And please stop using AI for job posters. We’re trying to attract the living, not confuse them with the clientele.