Issue 28 · Thursday, 23 July 2026
A job ad is a negotiated document. Somebody wrote a draft, a manager cut it, a recruiter added the standard paragraphs, and legal added one sentence about accommodations. Every awkward phrase in it is awkward because two people disagreed and this was the compromise. Read it that way and it tells you a great deal about the team before you have spoken to anyone.
Here is what I look for, in roughly the order I look for it.
“Reporting to the Director of Operations” is a specific claim: the role exists inside a settled structure and somebody has capacity to manage it. “This role will partner closely with stakeholders across the business” is the absence of that claim. It usually means one of three things — the reporting line is genuinely undecided, it is about to change, or the person you would report to has not agreed to it yet. None of those is disqualifying. All of them are worth a question.
Count the distinct activities in the responsibilities list. Four to seven is a job. Twelve is two jobs that a team gave up trying to split, and you will be doing the unglamorous half. When you see twelve, ask which three matter in the first six months. A manager who can answer that instantly has a real plan. A manager who says “honestly, all of them” is telling you something true and you should believe it.
Ads rarely say. You can usually tell. A backfill inherits language from the last person who held the job — oddly specific tool names, a stray reference to a process nobody outside the team would know. A new role reads generically because there is nothing to inherit. New roles carry more freedom and more risk: no established scope, no proven budget, and a much higher chance of being cut in the first reorganisation.
Look at what the ad asks you to own versus what it asks you to support. Titles inflate; verbs do not. A “Senior” role that supports, contributes to and assists with everything and owns nothing is a mid-level job with a better business card. That is a fine trade if you are making it knowingly and a bad surprise if you are not.
Where a range must be posted, the posted range is wider than the real one, because a wide range is legal and a narrow one constrains the negotiation. The bottom is usually real; the top is usually reserved for an internal promotion into the same band. Assume you are being hired into the lower middle and plan the conversation from there.
Two phrases I have learned to treat as load-bearing. “Comfortable with ambiguity” nearly always means the strategy changes quarterly. “Wear many hats” means there is no budget for the second hire. Neither is a lie. Both are descriptions, written by people who could not put it more directly.
Written by Nadia Prewitt. Every issue goes to the list first and lands here a day or two afterwards. There is no tracking pixel in the email and there is none on this page; if you want me to know you read it, tell me.