Can job posts be any more innovative?
What we can learn from PostHog about radical transparency
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I’m Fionna, a product manager, member of Women Who Surf, and someone who got their mind blown last weekend 🤯.
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This post was inspired by my good friend, Zawad Chowdhury, who is the co-founder of Intuned (YC S22), a Y Combinator backed startup focused on helping engineering leaders understand what their team is working on, and how to improve their team’s performance. He and his cofounders just wrapped up demo day and is hiring a founding engineer! Check out Intuned and tell him you came from this post ;)
While catching up with Zawad, who spent the last whirlwind of 3 months in the Y Combinator program, I was very glad to hear that they have secured ample funding and will hire their first engineer! It’s only been 2 years since we last worked together, and he’s on his way disrupting the market! 🎊 #🥹WithP3Tears
We talked about how he’s wearing many hats including product, sales, and now recruiting. I’m thinking, how is he going to hire their first full time employee, and probably the only one this year? When asked about how he came up with the job description, he couldn’t stop raving about PostHog, another YC company offering a suite of data and product tools.
“I just love how transparent they are about their company and how they work. Their handbooks are amazing - imagine having an internal doc about your company, but completely public, and their careers page is a great example of that.”
and that’s when I got my mind b ~ l ~ o ~ w ~ n… and I had to share in this post.
This might look like a traditional job posting at first with the typical “about the job”, “requirements” and “benefits” sections, but it’s absolutely not, and I’m ALL FOR IT.
🪟 Transparency. Transparency. Transparency.
(1) Who the heck will I be working for/with?
Ta-dah! It’s all there, front and center. If you wish to know more about the person, tap on their picture and you’ll see their full bio. The team lead is also listed, which is super important as managers are one of the most important reasons people stay/leave, so of course I want to know who they are, read up on them (check for ✅ 🚩), and reach out if I have questions or tell them that this is my dream job! TikTokers are sharing hacks on how to find the recruiter of a role/team so you can reach out directly instead of submitting your resume to a black hole 🕳️, but here I don’t need to! I imagine this will save applicants a ton of time and effort to get a sense of the team and whether they’d be excited to join.
(2) How much will I get paid, and if/when I get promoted/relocated?
No more beating around the bush for this uncomfortable question during interviews. Boom - an interactive compensation calculator benchmarked against publicly reported salaries with varying factors such as location, level, and step (more info in the handbook). I can use this tool to compare offers at the interview stage, and when I’m on the job having conversations about relocation or promotions. This also gives visibility into the leveling system as it differs drastically across companies - what’s my next step and how far am I from the next level.
This is a game changer. Many companies and law makers are making pay more transparent, which is amazing for applicants, but this is the next level. Especially the fact that it’s based on market rates and they aim to update it every 6 months. *Chef’s kisses all around!*
(3) What the heck will I actually work on?
Job descriptions are known to be copy and pastes and vague. I could read the description 3 times and still don’t know what the job is about. Yes, descriptions can be more specific, but how about just *show* me what I would be doing on the job? That’s exactly what this section is - real Github tickets (some are active) waiting for the right candidate to solve. I can go in it and read through the feature/bug and see if my reaction is “🤩 that’s so interesting” or “🤮 I’m going to save my future self the headache and walk away”. Even though these are just sample tasks and don’t represent the full scope, it’s a great attempt at giving applicants a preview of what their days would look like.
(4) What kind of impact will I be making?
Similar to the transparency on team members to get a sense of who I’ll be working with, this section outlines the OKRs of the team (copied from the handbook, also public). “They're the big picture changes that the teams is owning.” and it’s critical that the new hire is aligned and excited to fulfill these objectives.
(Bonus) Why did PostHog build it the way they did?
Believe it or not, PostHog made the basalmiq wireframe available for anyone to see on their github! #SoMeta. You can even read through the comments to follow the development - who suggested what, who disagreed, who made the call. #SuchAccountability that I’d probably think 3 times before posting to make sure it’s well thought out and socially accepted (please don’t #cancel me). Though it could be a great thing for the team in eliminating the “he-said-she-said” situation down the road.
🫶 Inclusivity / Readability
(1) Location & Timezone(s)
Listing location, especially remote, is becoming more and more common, but it’s my first time seeing timezones, and it makes a ton of sense! I’d want to know where the team is, if my current timezone would pose an issue, or where I could potentially work from. Hopefully this data is automatically populated so it stays accurate when people relocate.
(2) Page navigation
Job descriptions can be notoriously long, and not everyone needs to read every word in order. If I know the company, I would skip the intro (lots of fluffy language) and screen ferociously for the role description and requirements to see if I’d be a good fit. Move on to the next role if it isn’t or scroll down to (hopefully) find the salary and benefits if they are available 🤞.
This table of contents with an option to quickly jump to a section saves me time and gives me a preview of what to expect. If this job isn’t screaming my name, I can look at other open roles! Complete no-brainer.
(3) Collapsable sections
Toggle lists are one of my favorite things in Notion, and PostHog incorporated the same concept for each section of the page. This enables me to minimize certain sections and focus on ones that are most important without scrolling back and forth (and getting lost). Combined with “jump to” any section, these patterns should be the golden standard for all pages that go over the fold.
⌛ Spare the recruiter
(1) Interview process
I bet recruiters at PostHog love this or might have even suggested it. Imagine spending half of the initial call walking the candidate though the interview process, and repeating that multiple times a day… they can probably rap it in a week 🎤. This list is short but has everything the candidate needs to know - clear expectations and serves as the single source of truth if information were to get lost in translation.
Side note: props to PostHog for paying candidates for doing actual work for the company during the interview. Some companies give candidates take home assignments that are internal problems waiting to be solved, and it could be a turn off for some candidates with limited free time.
(2) No frills application form
No more typing in my education and every single work experience after I’ve already uploaded my resume and imported my LinkedIn profile. Thank you for this simple and truly painless form to get myself applied. Seriously, just remove a few repetitive fields in your application form and you’ll get more applicants than 90% of companies.
🍍 Company culture
It’s really hard to demonstrate what the company culture is like via a job posting, perhaps through the tone (laid back or professional), use of emojis (😜 or 💼) or link to an office tour video. The fact that PostHog even considered adding a silly (?) prompt like this says a lot about the company’s culture. This particular prompt might not tell you a lot if you’re indifferent about pineapples on pizzas, but I’m Canadian (Hawaiian ftw!) so I’d feel the need to join this team and right this debate 🇨🇦❤️🍍🍕! Jokes aside, more than anything, this little colorful touch shows a human side to the company - I’ll be working with actual people, people who don’t take themselves too seriously to actually have an opinion on something that might not matter (but of course it does).
🍒 What more can be done?
If PostHog wants to double down on transparency, importing reviews from 3rd parties like Glassdoor could showcase another authentic side to the company, may it be good or bad… having it there is a gutsy move already (gotta love that confidence).
When I review job postings I’m comparing my experience/interests to it and asking myself, is this a good fit? What if I can interact with the post, check off qualifications that I have and mark the ones that I need more work? Even better, what if it tells me that after I upload my resume? There are a lot of nuances with this - we know that women tend to not apply to jobs unless they are 100% qualified (HBR article), and how do we ensure the matching is accurate and fair? LinkedIn tells you if your profile matches the job, and how you compare with the other applicants on the platform. Leveraging AI/ML to offer these additional insights could be very powerful, and could potentially eliminate internal bias and save everyone time to find their perfect job/hire.
🤔 Why aren’t more job postings like this
I doubt that I’m the only one who thinks PostHog’s job post makes perfect sense and all posts should be like this. However, to give others the benefit of doubt, is the kind of transparency displayed here feasible for everyone? For tented projects, you’d want to reconsider publicizing the team members and example tasks, since you wouldn’t want reporters scanning for hints on the next big thing (they already do), but still better than having it left in a hotel…
I understand that it might not be scalable for larger companies with a robust recruiting team, they may not want to burden the team members with hundreds of DMs/resumes, and instead let the recruiters handle the inquiries. Though, the team member info is still useful and those inquiries could be routed to the recruiter, filtered and sent back to the team as needed. At the end of the day, it’s the team who will work with the candidate, and we all want to find the right job/candidate as quickly as possible, right?
🏁 Final thoughts
PostHog took a static page of text that is a job post (that hasn’t changed in decades) and made it insightful, easy to read and actionable. Quoting James Hawkins, co-founder of PostHog,
"this is cracking. Just the little extra effort here will make us stand out by a mile!”
and I think they’ve achieved exactly that! 🎊
It’s funny to think back on how a catch-up call birthed this (long) post and a cult following for transparency. Guess I should do these more often! To leave you with a few more takeaways:
Keep in touch with the amazing people you’ve met
Something as mundane and standard as a job post can be innovated too
Transparency can’t solve all problems in hiring or in the workplace, but it sure can start and make a dent
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