Tips to get the best-suited candidates to apply to your job opening

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

tl;dr: Be respectful and honest.

Seriously, if you internalize that, it should be enough. But because respectful job posts and job ads are so hard to find, it feels like it's necessary to be a bit more detailed about what that means.

While this isn't an exhaustive list, it touches on the most common ways job posts fail to respect their prospects and applicants.

Don't lie. Don't exaggerate.

You should start by not lying and not exaggerating. A lot of companies want their job posts to function as market signals (for competitors, investors, and customers), so they'll go out of their way to state things that aren't true. You don't have to let out all your IP and internal metrics, but don't say things that are not true.

In a similar fashion, don't lie about what the expectations for the position are (more on that below).

Share the real salary (range).

You already know how much you're willing to pay for this position, but it's understandable you might want to use part of the budget for something else; if you don't want to share the top salary, at least share a salary range. A real one; not one for everyone to fall in the middle.

If you decide to share a range, explain it. There are few really legitimate reasons to have a range, like a variable budget or tax burden. Some companies talk about geography/location or experience being a variable, which is really just an excuse to pay less.

If they're expected to produce a given amount of value, it shouldn't matter where they are or what they've done before.

Don't try to underpay prospects and applicants.

Share (real) restrictions.

Sometimes there are valid reasons not to accept applicants from certain locations or timezones, e.g. for legal or security reasons. Share these. Explain what these are and why.

Take the opportunity to be mindful of why you have these. For remote companies, similar timezones are usually requested, but the reality is that if you have a good process and trust your team (you should!), they aren't, and you can use separate timezones as leverage.

Share the process.

It's important to be transparent about the hiring process. How many interviews, how long, in what form (async or sync, text or video), what's going to be evaluated, by whom, and by when they'll know the result.

This signals a lot about how your company works, what they value, and how they evaluate fit, which helps tremendously in making sure the applicants are aligned and understand what they're committing to.

Share the expectations.

Similar to the point above, you should share what you're expecting this role to be in charge of, and what success and failure might look like. Having this defined upfront helps you write the job opening and helps applicants understand the bar they'll be evaluated against.

Protect everyone's time.

Keep the first steps short. Before publishing the job post, you should have 2-4 questions that will help you shortlist candidates before knowing any personal information (FairATS does this natively, but it's a process you can mimic in other ATS), and they should not take much of the applicant's time.

Leave deeper or meatier questions for the subsequent interview(s).

Before publishing a job post, you should also make sure you've got someone assigned to be responsible for the opening's metrics (applicants, reviews, interviews, etc.), and someone that'll be reviewing them daily. Some companies do "batch applications" (accept until a date, start reviewing after it) and that'll exclude a lot of great talent who are looking for something "right now". There's nothing wrong with favoring people who apply earlier.

Finally, provide updates at least once a week (again, FairATS does this natively, but you can mimic the process in other systems).

Protect everyone's humanity.

There are arguably valid uses for generative AI and LLMs, but those are not for assessing people or their skills.

There are still simple ways to reduce and avoid bots/spamming by applications (FairATS does this), so that's not really a valid excuse.

If you feel you still have too many applications, you're probably not "hiring", but rather "managing a funnel". You don't need to pretend you're trying to be fair then.

Embrace diversity.

Make an effort to make your job opening reach a diverse crowd; consider biases, different backgrounds, different ages, and different perspectives.

Optimize for applications to shine before biases shape your first impression, and acknowledge you can't avoid them, so you work harder to reduce their impact.

Respect everyone.

When someone's applying, they're usually in a much more vulnerable position than you are. Remember that.

Prepare them for success, not for failure.

This article was not written with generative AI or LLMs.

Fairest - Hiring tips to attract and retain the best remote talent