Most job ads tell me what the company wants.
Three years of experience. Clean driving record. Good communication skills. Must be dependable.
Then they tell me what I get.
$22 to $26 an hour. Health insurance. PTO. A 401(k).
That’s what the seat pays. It says nothing about the work.
The work is what the day actually feels like. Do you stand for eight hours or sit at a bench? Do you talk to customers all day or never see one? Do you start at six and finish by noon? Does someone check on you every hour, or does nobody look up until Friday?
A person can be fully qualified for a job they hate. They take it because they need work. Then somewhere around month four they figure out what the job actually is, and they start looking.
Then the owner says people don’t stick around anymore.
Usually they stuck around fine. They just didn’t get the job they applied for.
I know a dry cleaner who changed his posting. Instead of listing skills, he described the work. One person at a station. The same routine every day. Nobody standing over you. Headphones on if you want them. Go home when the work is done.
The people who applied after that were different. Several of them wrote back to say that was exactly what they wanted. They didn’t want to climb anything. They wanted to show up, do the job well, and leave it at the door.
Some people want that job. Some would be miserable in it. The ad should tell them which one they’re looking at before they apply, so the people who would hate it never show up.
Pay matters. Experience matters. But if people keep accepting your job and deciding six months later it isn’t the life they signed up for, the problem isn’t your people.
Describe the work first. Then see who shows up.