More often than not, the difference as to why one job post gets fifty applicants and another gets two is rarely the job itself, unless it’s an ultra-specific niche for Malta, like a Chinese and Portuguese-speaking content writer with 7+ years of experience in pharmaceutical sales. For the vast majority of jobs, two companies hiring for near-identical roles, at similar pay, in the same industry, can get wildly different response rates. Once you rule out the obvious factors, what’s left is usually the job post, i.e. how it’s written, what it asks of the reader before they’ve decided to care, and how much friction sits between reading it and applying. Let’s dive into job post mistakes to avoid and what do instead.
The job title is doing a lot of work
A title like “Dynamic Team Player Wanted” tells a candidate nothing, and people don’t apply to jobs they can’t picture themselves in. The titles that pull traffic are specific and searchable. Ones that mention the actual role, the actual level, sometimes the department. “Junior Accountant – Retail” beats “Numbers Ninja” every time, because one shows up when someone searches for it, and the other doesn’t. Malta’s job market is small enough that candidates often know roughly what they’re looking for before they start browsing. Vague titles lose them at the first step.
Salary information changes who applies
Leaving out salary doesn’t protect a company, it just filters out people who won’t apply without knowing. Side notes: it also seems sneaky. The candidates most likely to skip a listing with an undetermined salary range are often the ones with options, which is the opposite of what most employers want. A range doesn’t have to be exact, but its absence reads as either uncertainty or something to hide, and neither helps.
The requirements list is where good candidates talk themselves out
Long requirement lists don’t attract better candidates, they discourage capable ones from applying because they don’t tick every box. Candidates are highly likely to self-select out if they don’t meet every stated requirement, even when the role would genuinely suit them. A post with fifteen bullet points under “requirements” is filtering out people before they’ve even applied, often the wrong people. Three or four genuine must-haves, separated from nice-to-haves, gets a wider and often stronger pool.
Where the application actually goes matters
This is one of those job post mistakes that often goes unmentioned. A job post that asks candidates to email a CV, cover letter, and three references before anyone has spoken to them adds friction at exactly the point where people are most likely to give up. The posts that perform well tend to have a short, clear application step. For example, apply through the platform, one click, maybe a couple of screening questions, or room to attach a cover letter. Anything that makes the first step feel like effort loses candidates who would have been a good fit but didn’t want to jump through hoops for a role they hadn’t been convinced of yet.
Description length and structure
A post that’s three lines long doesn’t give candidates enough to decide. A post that’s a full page of dense paragraphs doesn’t get read. What works in between is structure. A short intro that says what the role actually involves day-to-day, then the requirements, then what the company offers. Candidates scan before they read, so headers and short paragraphs help far more than one long block of text.
What this comes down to
None of this is about writing a more exciting job description. Rather, it’s about removing the small points and avoiding job post mistakes where an interested candidate feels it’s not worth the effort. A specific title, an honest salary range, a shorter requirements list, and a simple way to apply will consistently outperform a longer, vaguer post, even for the same role at the same company.
If you’re not sure whether your job posts are working, the applicant count is the easiest signal. A post that consistently pulls in single digits usually has one of these five issues, and it’s worth checking before assuming the role itself is the problem.
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