How to spot green flags and red flags in job postings
Employers tell us a lot about themselves with the way they write job descriptions. Save yourself time and energy in your job search by spotting red flags and green flags early.
Hey, it’s 📣 Coach Erika! Welcome to a ✨ special edition✨ of The Career Whispers. Each week I tackle reader questions about tech careers: how to get one, how to navigate them, and how to grow and thrive in your role.
If you’ve found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:
This week, I’ll teach you how to identify red flags and green flags for jobs and companies, just by reading the job description.
Job searching is hard enough without having to go through a full three rounds of interviews before realizing that the company isn’t a good fit, the manager is a jerk, or the culture is probably toxic.
But there’s hope! Companies accidentally leak subtle clues about what it’s really like to work there in the way they write job descriptions (JDs).
Knowing how to spot these JD red flags and green flags can save you a ton of time and emotional energy in your interview process.
Today, for my ✨ free subscribers, I’ll outline all of the ✅ green flags ✅ you should look for in job posts. If you find these green flags, you can gain confidence that this will be a good role and place to work.
For 🙏paid subscribers, I’ll go further and discuss all the ❌ red flags ❌ you can scope out by carefully reading the job posting and how to address them.
I’ll cover:
how to spot each flag (red and green)
which flags are most critical (“avoid entirely” or “apply right away!”)
which flags should prompt clarifying questions (and I’ll even tell you what to ask)
examples of JDs with each of these flags (to train your eyes 👀 what to look out for!)
Let’s dive in.
Green flags in job descriptions
Give and Take: Benefits and tools for success. Good employers communicate clearly what they want you to bring to the role, and what you’ll be responsible for. Great employers understand the give and take of employment, and they make it clear in their job descriptions what they offer you. These offerings come in the form of sharing the compensation and benefits for the role, of course, but also their vision for the company and even the role, and what they’ll do to help you be successful.
Disclosed, competitive salary information. A company willing to pay competitive salaries values its employees, full stop. Increasingly, US companies are required by law to disclose salary information. As of the time of publishing this post, 13 states require employers to provide salary information on job descriptions: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C.
The specifics of these laws vary from state to state. In some states, employers must provide the salary range for all open positions. In other states, employers are only required to provide the salary range for high-salary positions (like tech jobs).
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitment. Most companies will have some kind of statement of support for diversity and a statement about accommodations for those with disabilities. Employers actively committed to DEI will demonstrate a more tangible commitment by explaining how they actively promote DEI in the workplace.
Specific job requirements. A good job description will clearly outline a succinct set of responsibilities and expectations of the role (5-8 total), so that you know exactly what you are getting into. Succinctness demonstrates that the company and the team who wrote the JD understand how to prioritize and focus. It also shows that they respect your time as a job seeker since you’ll be reading lots of JDs every day.
Emphasis on company culture. A job description that emphasizes the company culture is a sign that the company is proud of its culture and that the company wants to attract employees who are a good fit. Culture statements also provide candidates with a great surface area for formulating questions to probe how day-to-day employees embody and live these values (and see if they are a fit for you).
Optimistic language. A job description that uses positive language, such as "we’re excited to help you learn and grow" or "we’re a collaborative and supportive environment" indicates that the company is a good place to work.
💡 If you’d like to analyze the sentiment of a particular JD, ask an LLM. They do a decent job of flagging charged words and phrases.
Prompt: “Please analyze the sentiment for this job description, letting me know a score based on positivity or negativity? <move to a new line, then paste the JD text>”
Above and beyond: Super Greens
Setting candidates’ compensation expectations. Forward-thinking employers not only disclose salary bands and offer competitive compensation, but they go one step further and state where in the band they might place a new hire (no surprise: it’s usually not at the top of the band). I deeply respect companies that set expectations upfront and transparently because it avoids conflict and heartburn down the road.
Total compensation components and philosophy. The salary transparency laws generally only require base salary disclosure, but those who work in Silicon Valley-based tech companies know that equity and bonuses can account for 30%+ of total compensation, depending on your role and company performance. It’s important to know all the components of compensation before you’re knee-deep in the interview process, so I respect employers who publicly disclose and explain their total compensation philosophy — that is, all of the compensation components, not just salary.
Zapier's Total Rewards page is one example of a total compensation disclosure (too large to screenshot, click the link if you are curious about what these look like).
DEI reports and metrics. It’s one thing to invest in active programs for DEI. It’s another thing to internally measure the impact of those programs and initiatives. It’s another level to publish your DEI metrics (targets and actuals), publicly. I deeply respect companies who do this because it’s really hard work, it’s impossible to get it right immediately, and it’s the kind of long-term corporate commitment that needs to be made to equilibrate representation in tech.
“You’re not expected to have 100% of these requirements” I’ve started to see this statement increasingly in JDs, and it shows up most often in job posts from the most stellar companies to work for. There is a large body of research that shows that women and people from underrepresented backgrounds are less likely to apply for roles when they don’t meet all of the requirements, whereas privileged white males apply when they meet as few as 50% of the requirements. Companies that understand this bias and truly desire diversity have started to nudge people to apply even when they don’t “have it all, yet.” If you see this in a JD, it’s a great sign of company culture and respect for diversity.
Transparency around the interview process. When I see this one, I swoon. I love it when companies make it clear to candidates upfront, in writing, what their interview process will look like. Bonus points to companies who make a commitment to candidates to get back to them within a reasonable timeframe after each interview.
Red flags in job descriptions
Below, I compile a list of the common red flags that I see as a coach and hiring manager, as well as some examples that demonstrate what these flags look like in real, posted job descriptions that you might encounter in your job search.
I’ve organized them by criticality (“Avoid at all costs” vs “Ask more questions”), as some of these flags are resolved by gaining more context.
