Writing a job advert that actually gets applications
What makes hospitality candidates skip an advert, which details are worth the line they take up, and the wording that quietly loses you good people.
Covers · · 5 min read
Most hospitality adverts are written in a hurry by somebody who is already short-staffed, which is exactly the moment the advert matters most. A few things make a disproportionate difference, and none of them take long.
State the pay
This is not a preference and it is not a trend. A candidate scanning forty listings cannot rank yours without a number, so they apply to the ones they can rank and come back to yours only if those fail. Hiding the number does not stop the conversation happening — it moves it to after the interview, when the cost of it going badly is highest for both of you.
If there is a band, publish the band. A band is not a weakness; it is an honest description of a job whose pay depends on what the person brings.
Say the things people leave
Candidates do not leave jobs over the summary paragraph. They leave over the rota. Answer the questions they are actually holding:
- Split shifts, or straight? How many days a week?
- Roughly how many hours, honestly, not contractually?
- How late is the latest finish?
- Is there a staff meal?
- Is tronc or service charge shared, and does the kitchen share in it?
- Is a trial shift paid?
Every one of these gets asked eventually. Answering them in the advert costs six lines and removes the applicants who were going to say no in week two anyway.
Describe the job, not the person
“Looking for a young, energetic team player” describes nobody and excludes somebody. Age, health, nationality, religion and marital status are not things an advert or an application form may ask about, and wording that gestures at them is both a legal exposure and a filter that removes good people for no reason.
The version that works is almost always more specific, not less: not “energetic”, but “this is a 90-cover site doing two services, and Fridays are hard”.
Covers scans adverts for this wording as they are written, and screening questions that ask about protected characteristics are refused outright rather than flagged later. It is a guard rather than a judgement — most of what it catches is a habit rather than an intention.
Three questions, not ten
You can attach screening questions to a job here, and the limit is three. That is deliberate. A long form turns a two-minute application into an abandoned one, and the drop-off is steepest exactly among the people applying on a phone between services — which in this industry is most of them.
Spend the three on things that actually rule people in or out: a licence, a certificate, availability on a specific day. Not motivation. Nobody has ever been screened out by their answer to why they want to work here.
Reply
Covers publishes how often a venue responds to applications and how quickly. That is not a threat; it is the only thing that makes the other side of the market trust it. Silence is the industry's default and it is the reason good candidates stop applying — and a venue that answers, even to say no, is visibly different within a fortnight.
When you are ready: post a job