Content Benefit

Content Strategy | UX Writing | Content Design | Globalization | Communications

Job listings out of focus

Job listings out of focus

Inconsistent job listings: eight oddities flagged on LinkedIn

Inconsistent job listings have become almost a genre of their own. I noticed it again on LinkedIn, where Oleg Bozhenko, a Senior AI Engineer, described his first two months of job hunting. He was braced for silence and rejection, but not for the sheer number of contradictions he found in the postings. His list, which drew more than two hundred reactions and around sixty comments, is a small catalog:

  • the location in the header doesn’t match the one in the body;
  • “Remote” at the top and, a few lines down, “hybrid three days, must be local”;
  • a senior title for mid-level work, or three roles stitched into a single posting;
  • surreal salary ranges, from $90,000 to $210,000 a year or from $8 to $60 an hour;
  • positions open for months or reposted every few weeks, with no real intention to hire;
  • skill lists nobody actually has, or that contradict each other;
  • recruiters pitching roles miles away from the candidate’s profile, or already filled;
  • more years of experience in a technology than the technology has existed.

That last point has a famous precedent. In 2020 Sebastián Ramírez, creator of the FastAPI framework, shared on Twitter a posting that asked for four years of FastAPI experience, when he had released it only a year and a half earlier. Not even its inventor would have made the first cut.

What the comments add: hybrid roles and impossible seniority

The comments widen the picture well beyond software development. Kobe Michael, a frontend developer, points out that the lines between frontend, backend and full stack have blurred. Many “frontend” positions expect databases, DevOps and architecture decisions, while some full-stack roles turn out to be 80% interface work. In his view, those descriptions sketch an ideal developer who can cover the work of several people, so the company saves money. He has nothing against wearing many hats, as long as title, scope and pay line up.

Product management sings the same tune. Samantha Scuddy, a Director of Product, talks about VP-level work requested at director level and cites her favorite gem: a listing asking for 30 to 55 years of experience. Leeland Heins, a software engineer, touches on a contradiction I know well: companies look for skill combinations that take decades to build, and then turn away anyone past a certain age, the ageism at work I wrote about some time ago.

Ghost jobs: how many postings never lead to a hire

Qazi Mateen Ahmad, an AI engineer in Frankfurt, suspects that many postings serve employer branding more than recruiting, and mentions roles reposted for eight months. The numbers back him up. A 2024 ResumeBuilder survey of 649 hiring managers found that 40% of companies had posted at least one fake job in the previous year. The stated reasons are striking: appearing open to outside talent (67%), projecting growth (66%), making employees believe their workload will soon ease (63%) and, worse still, making them feel replaceable (62%).

In 2025 a ResumeUp.AI analysis of LinkedIn listings estimated that 27.4% of US postings were likely ghost jobs, compared with 24.9% in Canada and 14.2% in the UK. Greenhouse, the hiring platform, calculated that ghost jobs make up between 18% and 22% of positions on its own site. For candidates, that means hours of cover letters dropped into a drawer nobody will open, with all the disappointment that follows, and it ties into the compulsive side of job hunting I covered in Job hunting is addictive.

Salary ranges: what changes in Italy with pay transparency

On pay, at least in Europe, something is moving. Italy transposed the EU Pay Transparency Directive with Legislative Decree 96/2026, in force since June 7, 2026, making it one of the first member states to do so. Job ads must now state the starting salary or the expected range, and employers can no longer ask how much a candidate earns or used to earn, not even through external recruiters.

According to Indeed data reported by Euronews, in July 2026 61% of Italian job postings showed pay, compared with 26% a year earlier: for the first time, Italy overtook the UK. From early analyses, though, neither the directive nor the decree seems to set a maximum width for the range, so the “90 to 210” Bozhenko spotted remains technically possible. And a range that wide leaves readers right where they started.

Inconsistent job listings as a UX writing problem

As a UX writer, I also look at these inconsistencies with a professional eye. A job description is an interface: the title works as a label, the header as a summary, the body as the detail. When the three parts contradict each other, readers stop trusting the whole thing, much like facing a cancellation button that leads somewhere else entirely, the kind of trick I described in Dark patterns, now you pay. Often there is no bad faith behind it: copied templates, applicant tracking system fields filled in by one person and copy written by another, positions forgotten online. For the candidate, though, the effect is the same.

My experience: from freelancer by choice to Coverflex employee

I know this landscape well. In May 2024 I set up as a freelancer, and for two and a half years I worked independently, partly because I had no desire to compromise with listings like these: inflated roles, half-remote setups, requirements unrelated to what I would actually be doing. At some point reading job ads had become a decoding exercise, and I tackled it with the dedication of an archaeologist in front of the Rosetta Stone.

Then Coverflex came along and changed my mind. The job description centered entirely on people, the team and the way they work together, instead of piling up requirements like a shopping list. On top of that, the position is fully remote, an increasingly rare arrangement: in fact, in Bozhenko’s post I found exactly the bait-and-switch of “remote” turning into “three days in the office”. Today I am very satisfied and consider myself lucky, well aware that for many of the people commenting on that post this glimmer of light has yet to appear.

Red flags to check before applying

A few checks save time and energy:

  • compare the header and the body on location and work arrangement;
  • look at the posting date and check whether the same listing has appeared before;
  • in Italy, expect a salary range, which is now mandatory;
  • ask in the first interview what a typical week in the role looks like;
  • be wary of skill lists that look like several jobs rolled into one.

Good luck to everyone, and may the force be with you.

Related sources

Chiara Bonifazi