Job advertising·Updated September 2026
Job posting template and examples
A job posting has one job: turn someone who is scrolling into someone who has applied. Most templates optimize for a different thing — completeness, or legal cover, or looking like every other posting in the category.
This one is built from what moves the number. Across 891 frontline job campaigns we ran in 2026, the share of clickers who completed a form explained 70% of the difference in cost per applicant between campaigns — more than the ad creative and the ad auction combined. The posting is where most of that is won or lost.
Below: the template, the reasoning behind each section, where a pay range is now legally required, the words that cannot appear in a US help-wanted ad, and ten frontline openings you can copy.
The template
Nine blocks, in this order. The order matters: a phone screen of the posting happens in about four seconds, and everything that decides the tap is in the first two blocks.
1. Job title — 1 to 3 words
Plain title, no internal grade, no adjectives.
CNA · not "Certified Nursing Assistant II - Night Differential Eligible (Req 4471)"
2. Pay, on the first line
Required by law in fourteen jurisdictions and by candidate behavior everywhere else.
$21.50 – $26.00 an hour, plus $3.00 night differential
3. Location, as a person would say it
Lancaster, PA — 10 minutes off Route 30
4. Shift and schedule
The single most common reason a good applicant withdraws later.
Three 12-hour shifts, 7pm–7am, every other weekend
5. What the job actually is — three sentences
You will look after 8 to 10 residents on a memory-care unit: personal care, vitals, transfers, and charting on a phone rather than a desktop.
6. Must-haves — only what disqualifies
If the wrong answer would not stop you hiring them, it does not belong here.
Active PA CNA certification. 18 or over.
7. What you offer — specific, not categorical
Health cover from day 31. Paid CNA-to-LPN tuition after a year. Shoes and scrubs provided.
8. How to apply, and how fast you reply
Tap apply and answer four questions. We call back the same day, including evenings.
9. Equal opportunity line
If you hold federal contracts above the thresholds, two specific sentences are prescribed — see below.
[Employer] is an equal opportunity employer.
Target length for the assembled posting: 201 to 400 words. See the next section for why.
Why each block is where it is
Three published datasets bear directly on the shape of a posting, and they agree with one another.
Length has a peak, and it is shorter than most postings. Appcast's analysis of its own job-ad delivery data — more than 10.2 billion clicks and 1.7 billion applications from over 400 companies since 2014 — puts the apply rate for postings of 201 to 400 words at roughly 8 to 8.5%. Under 200 words it falls to about 4.5%; past 701 words it drops reliably below 5%. Short job titles do the same thing: titles of one to three words averaged 3.41 clicks against 2.75 for titles over thirteen words. This is vendor-published first-party data rather than peer-reviewed research, and the per-bucket samples are not disclosed — but it is measured delivery, not a survey, and the direction is consistent with what we see.
Application length matters more than posting length. In the same dataset, an application taking one to five minutes converted at about 12.5%; one taking over fifteen minutes converted at about 3.6%. Our own figures say the same thing from the cost side: campaigns whose applicants never leave the platform populate the top conversion bands, and campaigns routing to a careers site or ATS flow populate the bottom two, at $23.13 and $53.77 per applicant against $4.41 and $1.61.
Posting pay does not cost you applicants. This is the objection we hear most, and the best available evidence says it is unfounded. Arnold, Quach and Taska (November 2025), using Lightcast data on more than 14 million postings, Glassdoor salary reports and QCEW administrative records covering roughly 97% of the US workforce, found that pay transparency laws raised posted salaries by 3.6% in Colorado and administrative wages by 1.3% overall — with no measurable effect on job posting volume, no reduction in employment, and no change in the skill or education requirements employers listed. The cost of disclosure showed up in wages, not in hiring capacity.
Worth knowing how unusual disclosure still is: Indeed's Hiring Lab pay-transparency tracker put the share of US postings carrying explicit wage information at 49.0% in June 2026. And the New York Fed found that as of January 2025, in Colorado, California, Washington and New York City combined, about 76% of postings included salary information — meaning roughly a quarter of ads legally required to state pay did not.
Where a pay range is legally required
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia require a pay range inside the posting itself. Three further states — Connecticut, Nevada and Rhode Island — require disclosure only on request or at a defined point in the process; lumping those in with posting mandates is the most common error in competing guides, so they are listed separately here.
| Jurisdiction | In force | Applies to employers with |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado | 1 Jan 2021 | All |
| California | 1 Jan 2023 | 15+ |
| Washington | 1 Jan 2023 | 15+ |
| New York | 17 Sep 2023 | 4+ |
| Hawaii | 1 Jan 2024 | 50+ |
| District of Columbia | 30 Jun 2024 | 1+ |
| Maryland | 1 Oct 2024 | All |
| Illinois | 1 Jan 2025 | 15+ — range and benefits |
| Minnesota | 1 Jan 2025 | 30+ in Minnesota |
| New Jersey | 1 Jun 2025 | 10+ over 20 calendar weeks |
| Vermont | 1 Jul 2025 | 5+ |
| Massachusetts | 29 Oct 2025 | 25+ in Massachusetts |
| Virginia | 1 Jul 2026 | All |
| Maine | late Jul 2026 | 10+ |
| Delaware | 26 Sep 2027 (not yet in force) | 26+ |
Maine's LD 54 takes effect 90 days after legislative adjournment, which is why published sources differ by a day on the exact date. Delaware is listed for planning only.
City and county ordinances sit on top of the state map, and they are the layer most guides miss. New York City (1 Nov 2022), Ithaca (1 Sep 2022), Westchester County (6 Nov 2022) and Albany County (12 Feb 2023) in New York; Jersey City (13 Apr 2022) in New Jersey; and, most recently, two in Ohio — a state with no posting mandate of its own. Cleveland requires a salary range in any job notification for employers with 15 or more employees in the city, in force since 27 October 2025, with "salary" defined to include benefits. Columbus passed a comparable ordinance effective 3 December 2025 with enforcement delayed to 1 January 2027. If you hire hourly staff across an Ohio footprint, that is two new obligations in a state most compliance summaries still list as having none.
The practical answer for a multi-state employer is to post a range everywhere. Maintaining a per-jurisdiction posting policy for hourly roles costs more than disclosure does, and the research above says disclosure does not cost you volume.
The two sentences federal contractors must include
Most US employers have no federally mandated ad language at all. Federal contractors and subcontractors above the coverage thresholds still do, and after the 2025–26 rule changes exactly two prescribed sentences survive.
Executive Order 11246 was revoked in January 2025, and on 21 August 2026 OFCCP published final rules rescinding its regulations outright. What remains is Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, each of which still prescribes wording for solicitations and advertisements:
- 41 CFR 60-300.5(a)(12) — the contractor must state "that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their protected veteran status."
- 41 CFR 60-741.5(a)(7) — the contractor must state "that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability."
Two details worth carrying into a 2026 posting review. The VEVRAA contract coverage threshold rose from $150,000 to $200,000 under the same rules. And the familiar long EEO-AA paragraph that named race, color, religion, sex and national origin was grounded in EO 11246 — which no longer exists, so that block of boilerplate now has no regulatory basis even though it is still pasted into thousands of frontline postings. Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA and state law all still apply to how you hire; what changed is the prescribed ad wording. Our page on writing an EEO statement covers what to put there now.
Words that cannot appear in a US help-wanted ad
The ADEA's advertising rule, 29 CFR 1625.4, names specific terms that are unlawful in a help-wanted notice because they deter older applicants. These turn up constantly in restaurant, retail and gym postings.
The first six are named in the regulation; the last two are the same expression in current language and carry the same risk.
The regulation is asymmetric, and the asymmetry is useful: terms preferring older workers are expressly permitted.
For a frontline employer hiring for daytime coverage, part-time shifts or a second career, that is a legitimate and under-used targeting line. Asking applicants to state their age in the ad is not automatically unlawful, but the regulation says such requests "will be closely scrutinized to assure that the requests were made for a lawful purpose" — so the safe pattern is to ask only whether someone meets a genuine minimum-age requirement for the role.
Ten frontline job posting examples
The opening of a posting is the part that decides the tap, so that is what is shown here: the first lines as they would actually run, with the wage anchor from the BLS and, where we have it, what the role costs to advertise. Wage ranges in the examples are illustrative — use your own — but they are set around the national median so they read as realistic.
1. Certified nursing assistant
CNA — $21.00 to $25.50 an hour, plus $3.00 nights. Lancaster, PA. Three 12-hour shifts, 7pm to 7am, every other weekend. Eight to ten residents on a memory-care unit. Active PA certification, 18 or over. Health cover from day 31, paid CNA-to-LPN tuition after a year. Tap apply, answer four questions, we call back the same day.
2. Caregiver / home care aide
Caregiver — $17.50 to $20.00 an hour. Clients within 15 minutes of York. Pick your own days; four-hour minimum visits. No certification needed, we train and pay for it. Mileage paid at the federal rate. If you have looked after someone in your own family, you can do this job.
3. CDL-A truck driver
CDL-A driver — $0.62 a mile, average $1,450 a week, home every weekend. Dedicated lanes, PA to OH and back. 2 years verifiable OTR. No touch freight. Automatics, 2023 or newer. Four questions to apply — no DOT application until we have spoken.
4. Maintenance technician
Maintenance technician — $24.00 to $29.00 an hour. 120-unit apartment community, Harrisburg. Monday to Friday, 8 to 4:30, one on-call week in four, paid. HVAC certification helpful, not required — we will pay for it. Company van, tools provided.
5. Restaurant cook
Line cook — $18.00 to $21.00 an hour, plus a share of tips. Reading, PA. Four shifts a week, two of them daytime. Scratch kitchen, 90 covers on a Friday. No experience required for the garde manger station; we will train you on the line in eight weeks. Free meal every shift.
6. Warehouse associate
Warehouse associate — $19.00 an hour, $20.50 on nights. Mechanicsburg. Four tens, Monday to Thursday, 6am to 4:30pm. Picking and packing with a scanner; lifting up to 40 pounds. No experience needed. Paid weekly, every Friday.
7. Licensed practical nurse
LPN — $31.00 to $36.00 an hour. Skilled nursing, Lebanon. Twelve-hour days or nights, three a week, self-scheduled a month ahead. Twenty to twenty-five residents with an aide on every hall. Active PA LPN license. Shift differential $4.00 nights, $2.00 weekends.
8. Registered nurse
RN — $38.00 to $48.00 an hour depending on experience. Med-surg, 32-bed unit, Lancaster. Three 12s, self-scheduled. Ratios posted publicly every month. Active PA or compact license. $10,000 over two years if you commit to nights.
9. Customer service representative
Customer service rep — $19.00 an hour. Hybrid after training: two days in our Lancaster office, three at home. Monday to Friday, 9 to 5:30, no weekends, no evenings. Phone and email, about 40 conversations a day. No call-centre experience required.
10. Apprentice electrician
Apprentice electrician — $20.00 an hour to start, $1.50 rise every 1,000 hours. Commercial fit-out, sites within 45 minutes of Lancaster. No experience needed; we pay your schooling and your hours count toward your license. Valid driver's license. Tools after 90 days.
Cost-per-applicant and apply-rate figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark. Wage figures: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, read 11 September 2026 (LPN and RN medians read 9 September 2026). BLS publishes an hourly median only for restaurant cooks, so no annual figure is quoted for that role.
What the template deliberately leaves out
- A company history paragraph. Nobody applying from a phone on a break reads "founded in 1987 by a family with a passion for care." Put it on the careers page.
- A long requirements list. Every line that is a preference rather than a disqualifier costs you volume and screens out people you would have hired.
- "Other duties as assigned." It tells a candidate the list above it was not the real list.
- A resume requirement. For most frontline roles this selects for people who happen to have a PDF on their phone, which is not a job qualification.
- A salary "commensurate with experience." In fourteen jurisdictions this is now unlawful in a posting, and everywhere else it reads as a refusal to answer.
Build the posting
Fill this in and it assembles the template above in order, counts the words against the 201–400 band, and gives you the text to paste. Nothing is sent anywhere — it runs in your browser.
Job posting builder
One to three words.
Required in a posting in 13 states and DC, and in Cleveland, Columbus, NYC and four other localities.
If the wrong answer would not stop you hiring them, leave it out.
The federal-contractor option inserts the wording prescribed by 41 CFR 60-300.5(a)(12) and 41 CFR 60-741.5(a)(7). Use it only if your organization actually holds covered federal contracts or subcontracts above the thresholds; most frontline employers do not.
Where this sits beside our other pages
This page is the template and the examples. Two neighbours cover different ground and there is deliberately no overlap: what makes a good job ad is the principles behind the choices, and job ad copywriting is the how-to of writing the sentences. Once the posting exists, how to advertise a job opening covers where to put it and what each channel costs, and recruiting strategies ranks the whole set of levers by measured effect.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a job posting be?
Between 201 and 400 words. Appcast's analysis of its own delivery data — over 10.2 billion clicks and 1.7 billion applications since 2014 — puts the apply rate in that band at roughly 8 to 8.5%, against about 4.5% for postings under 200 words and reliably below 5% past 701 words. Job titles of one to three words also outperformed titles over thirteen words, averaging 3.41 clicks against 2.75.
Do I have to put a salary range in a job posting?
In thirteen states and the District of Columbia, yes — Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maine, plus DC, with thresholds ranging from one employee to fifty. Delaware becomes the fourteenth state in September 2027. Several cities add their own, including New York City, Jersey City, Cleveland and Columbus. Connecticut, Nevada and Rhode Island require disclosure only on request, which is a different obligation.
Will posting the pay range reduce how many people apply?
The best available evidence says no. Arnold, Quach and Taska (2025), using more than 14 million job postings, Glassdoor salary reports and administrative records covering roughly 97% of the US workforce, found pay transparency laws raised posted salaries by 3.6% in Colorado and wages by 1.3% overall, with no measurable effect on job posting volume, no reduction in employment, and no change in the requirements employers listed.
What words are illegal in a job advertisement?
Under the ADEA advertising rule, 29 CFR 1625.4, help-wanted notices may not use terms such as "age 25 to 35," "young," "college student," "recent college graduate," "boy" or "girl," or similar expressions that deter older applicants. The rule runs one way only: terms preferring older workers, such as "over age 60," "retirees" and "supplement your pension," are expressly permitted.
What EEO statement should a job posting include in 2026?
Most employers are not required to include any specific wording. Federal contractors above the coverage thresholds must still state that all qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to protected veteran status (41 CFR 60-300.5(a)(12)) and that they will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability (41 CFR 60-741.5(a)(7)). The longer EEO-AA paragraph derived from Executive Order 11246 no longer has a regulatory basis — the order was revoked in 2025 and OFCCP rescinded its regulations in August 2026.
Should a job posting ask for a resume?
For most frontline hourly roles, no. Requiring a resume selects for candidates who happen to have a file on their phone, which is not a job qualification, and it moves the application into the lowest-converting territory. In our 2026 campaign data, applications completed without leaving the platform populate the top conversion bands at $1.61 to $4.41 per applicant, while flows routing to an external site or ATS populate the bottom two at $23.13 and $53.77.
How many screening questions should a job application have?
As few as genuinely disqualify. Ask whether someone holds a license or certification the role legally requires, or meets a minimum age the job requires. Leave shift preference, years of experience and salary expectation to the phone screen. Each question is paid for in volume, and an application taking over fifteen minutes converted at about 3.6% against 12.5% for one taking one to five minutes.
What is the difference between a job posting and a job description?
A job description is an internal document defining the role, its duties and its requirements, used for compensation, performance and compliance. A job posting is the advertisement written from it, aimed at a candidate deciding in a few seconds whether to tap. Publishing the job description as the posting is the most common reason a frontline ad runs over 700 words and converts below 5%.
Sources
Boostpoint, 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — 891 Boostpoint-managed campaigns on Meta, 1,334 campaign-months, 2026.
Appcast, How to write a job ad that converts and job ad drop-off rates — the publisher's analysis of its own delivery data, 10.2bn clicks and 1.7bn applications from 400+ companies since 2014. Read 11 September 2026.
D. Arnold, S. Quach and B. Taska, The Impact of Pay Transparency in Job Postings on the Labor Market, November 2025.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Do Employers Comply with Pay Transparency Requirements in Job Postings?, October 2025.
Indeed Hiring Lab, pay transparency tracker — share of US postings with explicit wage information, June 2026. Read 11 September 2026.
eCFR, 41 CFR 60-300.5, 41 CFR 60-741.5 and 29 CFR 1625.4 — read 11 September 2026.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wage data — read 11 September 2026.
The posting decides 70% of what an applicant costs you.
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