Reading Between the Lines: 5 Culture Cues Hidden in Job Posts

Reading online job postings is tricky these days - employers want to attract the best candidates, so they may be intentionally vague with job descriptions, salary/benefits offered, and employment expectations. Additionally, the person creating the job posts may be completely out of the loop when it comes to the specifics of the roles they're trying to fill. They also omit any information that doesn't reflect positively on the company. The information is already skewed before it even gets to jobseekers. There aren't too many tried and true indicators of a bad job, or a toxic culture - sometimes you just have to interview, and maybe even accept the job, before you can know. Reading reviews helps, but be wary when you read them. When I read reviews, I think about why people take the time to write them in the first place- it's typically to rant, or to rave. I worked at a place that used to "pad" their reviews with fake five-star reviews to offset the negative, but real, one-star ones. Now, when I see a lot of five-star reviews with brief, vague accolades -Ex: "Great place to work! Management is super helpful!" - the lack of detail seems suspicious.

I've had 25 jobs in my life, to read more about my job history click here. My career trajectory has been anything but normal, but I have spent a lot of time reading online job postings, and working at bad jobs. These are a few correlations I noticed when I was actively looking for employment. Nothing I say is absolute, there are exceptions to all the things I mention, but these five hold true in most instances.

If you can think of any other hidden cues you've noticed in your job searches, I'd love to hear your experience!

Using a Temp Agency, or third-party recruiting service –

Require knowledge of specific software

-The SaaS (Software as a Service) industry is dynamic and teeming with options. Software needs vary from one business to the next. Requiring employees to have knowledge of a specific platform eliminates a ton of candidates right off the bat. A lot of people don't even need training-they just figure it out. Besides, not wanting to train someone to use the software comes across as lazy, unrealistic, and unresourceful.

Require that applicants have a degree or certificate

-There are some exceptions here too, but the majority of jobs, particularly office jobs, shouldn’t require a degree. People can gain experience in many ways. Quality candidates don't need degrees, they need to have transferrable skills, natural aptitude and a desire to succeed.

-Time off is key in preventing burn-out, exhaustion, stress, boredom, etc. In my experience, the places that offered the least PTO, expected the most from their employees. The give and take should be balanced in the employee's favor. Work/life balance is important to keep employee's healthy and productive.

Mentioning a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol-

-I feel like it’s implied that people aren’t supposed to drink or use drugs at work. When I see this, it makes me wonder why they would waste print space requesting something that's almost always a given. Have they had problems in the past? Or currently?

On the topic of drugs, businesses that test for, or have 'zero-tolerance' for, cannabis are out of touch with society. Cannabis is legal in a growing number of states- it helps a lot of people, it’s relaxing, and its widely acceptable these days- increasingly, it's becoming more popular than drinking alcohol. We should drop preconceived notions of how cannabis users present - everything has changed . Whether employees use cannabis responsibly on their own time, is outside of our scope as employers. If their usage isn't problematic then we shouldn't make it so. Making rules based on outlier behavior and expecting everyone to comply is often a sign of inexperienced, or intolerant, management.

-Not all places that use services are bad, there are exceptions, but by and large, businesses that outsource their hiring tend to have problems internally. Do your due diligence, research the company to find out what the problems are before submitting a resume. You can usually piece together somewhat of a picture by reading reviews, or looking at their social media.

Ex: They request that applicants be familiar with Workday, Hubspot, ADP, SalesForce, etc.

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