Work out what a job advert really means

Read this job advert and tell me what the job actually is.

The advert:
[PASTE THE WHOLE THING]

What I know about the company: [SIZE, STAGE, ANYTHING YOU HAVE HEARD, OR "NOTHING"]
What I want out of my next role: [BE SPECIFIC]

Produce five sections.

1. WHAT YOU WOULD ACTUALLY DO ALL DAY — the likely shape of the week, inferred from the responsibilities rather than the title. Say which parts you are confident about and which you are guessing.

2. WHAT THIS ROLE IS REALLY FOR — the problem they are hiring to solve. Adverts describe duties; someone wrote this because something is not working.

3. WORTH ASKING ABOUT — phrases that commonly indicate something. "Wear many hats", "fast-paced", "self-starter", "first hire in this function", a title one level above the responsibilities, a salary band that is unusually wide. For each: what it often means, and the question that would settle it. Do not treat these as verdicts — say what to ask.

4. WHAT IS MISSING FROM THIS ADVERT — no salary, no team size, no mention of who you report to, no product detail. Absences are information.

5. AGAINST WHAT I SAID I WANT — where this role matches and where it does not, using my answer above.

Be direct. Do not tell me it sounds like an exciting opportunity.

A job advert is a marketing document written by someone who is not doing the job, usually assembled from the last advert for a similar role. Read literally, most of them describe the same position. Read carefully, they leak a lot: what the team is missing, which responsibilities were bolted on late, whether anyone has thought about what this person will do in month two.

The third section is where the value is, and it is deliberately framed as questions rather than verdicts. "Fast-paced environment" genuinely does sometimes mean a fast-paced environment. What it reliably means is that there is a question worth asking on the call, and going into a first conversation with three specific questions drawn from the advert's own wording is both more informative and a much better impression than asking about company culture.

Section four is the other half. What an advert leaves out — the salary, the reporting line, the size of the team you would be joining — is chosen, and noticing the absence is easier when something points at it.

1. Say what you actually want from the role

   Without it section five cannot exist, and section five is the one that stops you interviewing well for a job you would dislike. 'More money' is a real answer; so is 'to stop being the only person who knows how this works'.

2. Take section three to the call, not to a decision

   These are prompts for questions. Ruling out a company because an advert said 'wear many hats' would eliminate most good early-stage jobs along with the bad ones.

3. Run it before you write anything

   Section two — what they are hiring to solve — is what the covering letter should answer. Writing the letter first and reading the advert properly afterwards is the usual order and the wrong one.

• Signal-reading is pattern matching, not evidenceSection three describes what phrases often accompany, not what this company is like. Treating a shortlist of clichés as a character assessment of an employer you have never met is how you talk yourself out of a good job.
• For adverts written by an agencyRecruiter-written adverts are frequently generic by design and sometimes describe a role that has already changed. Much of the inference has nothing to work from.
• Across different job markets and languagesConventions differ sharply — what reads as a warning sign in one country is standard phrasing in another. Weight the signal section accordingly.

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