Job Posting Requirements: What a Job Advert Must Contain
What a job advert must legally contain and must never say: pay and benefits disclosure, EEO wording, AI notices, and how long to keep postings.
Job Posting Requirements
A job advert answers to two separate bodies of law: a geographic list of things it must contain, and a federal list of things it must never say. What belongs in each, which states add benefits and deadlines, when the equal opportunity line is genuinely required, and how long you have to keep the posting
The first job advert I wrote for my own company had four problems in it, and I would have argued with anyone who said so. No pay range. No benefits line. A phrase about a young and fast-moving team. And a question on the application form asking what the candidate currently earned.
None of those were decisions. They were defaults, copied from adverts written by people copying other adverts. What I had not understood is that a job advert answers to two bodies of law at once, and they behave nothing alike.
One is a list of things the advert must contain, and it is geographic. The other is a list of things it must never say, and it follows you everywhere. This covers both, plus the internal notice rules, the screening notices, and how long to keep the posting. I build the hiring and people records tooling for businesses without an HR department at FirstHR. This is general information, not legal advice.
What a Job Posting Must Contain
There is no federal statute setting out what a job advert must say. Federal law is almost entirely a list of prohibitions. Every affirmative content requirement a small employer faces comes from state law, a city ordinance, or a federal contract clause.
| Requirement | Source of the obligation | Who it binds |
|---|---|---|
| Good faith pay range | State and city pay transparency statutes | Employers hiring into a covered state, from one employee up |
| General description of benefits | A subset of the same statutes | Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey |
| Other compensation | The same subset | Where bonuses, commission, or tips are meaningful |
| Application deadline | Colorado | Any employer with an employee in Colorado |
| Equal opportunity statement | Federal contractor equal opportunity clauses | Contractors and subcontractors, not employers generally |
| Automated screening notice | A small number of state and city AI rules | Illinois, New York City, Maryland, and a growing list |
| Internal notice of the opportunity | Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey | Promotions and transfers, not only external hiring |
Read the last row first. Employers fix the careers page, publish a clean external advert, then fill the role from a conversation nobody wrote down. In three states that sequence is its own violation, and it stays invisible until somebody complains.
The Pay Range Requirement, in Short
A good faith pay range is now required in more than a dozen states and a lengthening list of cities, with thresholds starting as low as one employee.
Two points about scope matter here. Coverage follows the work and the candidate rather than your address, so a remote posting with no geographic restriction arguably invites every covered state in. And good faith is a real standard: a band wide enough to be meaningless fails it, which California now says almost in those words.
The States That Want Benefits Too, Not Only Pay
In several states a pay range on its own is not a compliant posting. The advert must also carry a general description of the benefits and any other compensation the successful candidate would be eligible for. This is the single most common gap in an otherwise careful advert.
| Jurisdiction | Beyond the pay range | The detail that catches people |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado | Benefits, other compensation, and an application deadline | From one employee, and the deadline has no federal analogue |
| Illinois | Pay scale and benefits, at fifteen or more employees | A link to a page carrying the detail is accepted |
| Maryland | Benefits and any other compensation offered | Other compensation is read broadly: bonuses, commission, similar earnings |
| Minnesota | Salary range or fixed rate, plus benefits and other compensation | Thirty or more employees, and the range may not be open ended |
| New Jersey | Pay or range plus a description of benefits and other compensation | Ten or more employees, and it covers internal transfers |
| District of Columbia | Disclosure that healthcare benefits exist | Tied to the stage before the first interview, not the advert text |
General description is the operative phrase, and it is less demanding than it sounds. Health coverage, retirement, paid leave, and any bonus structure, in one short paragraph, satisfies it. Copy the Illinois approach even where you are not covered. Per the Illinois Department of Labor, an employer can comply by putting the pay scale and benefits in the posting or by linking to a page that carries them. Write that page once and every advert inherits it.
The EEO Statement: Required or Just Conventional
For most small employers the equal opportunity line at the bottom of an advert is convention rather than law. Federal statutes prohibit preference language in advertisements. They do not require a statement declaring that you do not discriminate.
Federal contractors are the exception, and the position there has moved. The clauses covering individuals with disabilities and protected veterans still require a statement in solicitations and advertisements that qualified applicants will be considered without regard to disability or protected veteran status. The older executive order clause covering race, religion, sex, and national origin was revoked in January 2025.
So keep the line if you have one, because candidates read it and it costs nothing. Do not treat it as compliance. And if you hold a federal contract, check the current wording with counsel rather than reusing a paragraph that has sat on your adverts since 2019.
Wording That Is Unlawful on Its Own Terms
It is unlawful to publish a job advertisement showing a preference for, or discouraging an application from, someone on the basis of a protected characteristic. The advert is the violation. Nobody has to be rejected and no decision has to be made.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gives two worked examples: an advert seeking females, and an advert seeking recent college graduates. The second is the instructive one, because almost nobody writing it thinks they are excluding anybody.
| Wording in the advert | What a reader hears | What to write instead |
|---|---|---|
| Young, energetic team | A preference for younger candidates | Describe the pace and the size of the team |
| Recent graduate, entry level | An age filter | State the level of responsibility and the experience floor |
| Digital native | An age filter with better marketing | Name the tools used on day one |
| Two to four years of experience | A cap that screens out longer careers | State a minimum and stop |
| Native English speaker | A national origin preference | Describe the communication standard the job needs |
| Must be able to lift fifty pounds | A disability screen, unless the job requires it | Keep only if it is an essential function |
| Salesman, handyman, waitress | A sex preference inside a job title | Use the neutral title candidates search for |
The lifting row has a legitimate version. If the job requires lifting, say so and be ready to explain why it is essential. If it is there because it has always been there, it is a screen looking for a justification, which is the setup for a disparate impact problem.
Age Language Is Restricted Directly
Age is the one protected characteristic where advertising is restricted by name in the statute rather than only through the general prohibition. An advert indicating a preference, limitation, or specification based on age is a problem in itself.
This catches employers who believe they are safe because they never wrote a number. The phrases that produce claims sound like culture rather than criteria: high energy, at the start of your career, fits our young team. Each has been quoted back to an employer, usually from an advert nobody remembered was still live.
The maximum experience cap is the quietly damaging version. Two to four years of experience is not a description of the role, it is a ceiling, and a ceiling on experience is close to a ceiling on age. State the floor you need.
Salary History Bans Reach the Advert and the Form
Where a salary history ban applies it reaches everything attached to the posting: the advert text, the application form, the screening questionnaire, and anything an agency asks on your behalf. Employers usually clean the interview script and forget the form.
These bans tend to travel alongside pay transparency laws rather than separately, though the two do not map perfectly. Virginia is the clearest recent illustration, introducing a posting range requirement and a history ban in one package effective July 1, 2026.
Three rules cover most of it. Do not ask, in any channel you control. Do not let your application form ask, the usual failure mode for a form built years ago. And tell any recruiter working for you not to ask, because a question asked on your behalf is your question. What stays permitted almost everywhere is asking what a candidate expects.
Where You Have to Tell Your Own Employees First
Three states require you to make an opportunity known to your existing workforce on a defined clock, and Colorado goes furthest by tying it to the selection decision rather than to the advert.
Colorado requires reasonable efforts to announce, post, or otherwise make known each job opportunity to all employees on the same calendar day and before a selection decision is made. It adds a post-selection notice: within thirty calendar days of the chosen candidate starting, employees must be told who was selected and, if that person was already employed there, their former job title.
Illinois requires promotion opportunities to be made known to all current employees no later than fourteen calendar days after an external posting goes up. New Jersey requires reasonable efforts to make them known in the affected department. All three assume the quiet internal fill is where pay gaps get created, which is why a documented internal recruitment process is worth having outside the covered states too.
When You Have to Say That Software Is Screening
A small number of jurisdictions now require you to tell candidates when an automated tool is assessing them, and the requirements are notice-based rather than approval-based. Nobody is asking permission to use the software. They are requiring you to say that you are.
Illinois has two rules. Its artificial intelligence video interview statute, in force since 2020, requires notice before the interview, an explanation of how the tool works, and the applicant’s consent, with no evaluation permitted where consent is withheld. Separately, an amendment to its human rights statute effective January 1, 2026 makes it a civil rights violation to use artificial intelligence in a way that discriminates, to use zip code as a proxy for a protected class, or to fail to notify applicants that it is being used in an employment decision.
New York City is the strictest on process. Per the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, an automated employment decision tool may not be used unless it has had a bias audit within the previous year, a summary of the results is published, and each resident candidate gets at least ten business days of notice with the ability to request an alternative selection process.
Maryland requires consent before facial recognition in an interview, and California extended its discrimination regulations to automated decision systems from October 2025. Write one standing paragraph into the advert rather than deciding per role.
How Long to Keep the Posting and the Applications
One year is the federal floor and it covers both the advert and the applications it produced. State law runs longer in places, and the element employers actually lose is the advert.
The federal rules are specific about advertisements. Under 29 CFR 1627.3, employers must keep applications and resumes submitted in response to an advertisement, together with any advertisements or notices to the public or to employees about job openings, promotions, training, or overtime, for one year from the personnel action.
Colorado adds a clock from another direction: each employee’s job description and compensation, including changes over time, for the duration of employment plus two years. That is why a written job description stops being optional once you have people there.
The Check to Run Before You Publish
Eight steps, most of them a minute each, and all cheaper before publication than after. Build them into the template rather than somebody’s memory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a salary range legally required in a job posting?
In a growing list of states and cities, yes, and the list changes every legislative session. Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and Virginia all require a pay figure or range in the advert, and other states do too. Thresholds vary enormously: Colorado starts at one employee, New Jersey at ten, Illinois at fifteen, Minnesota at thirty. The requirement usually follows the location of the work and of the candidate, so a remote posting can pull you into a state you have never operated in. Where no law applies a range is still worth publishing, because adverts without one attract applications from people whose expectations you cannot meet.
Does a job advert have to include an equal opportunity statement?
For most small employers, no. Federal discrimination law prohibits preference language in advertisements but does not require a tagline saying you are an equal opportunity employer. The exception is federal contractors, whose equal opportunity clauses under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and the veterans statute require a statement in solicitations and advertisements that qualified applicants will be considered without regard to disability or protected veteran status. The older executive order clause covering race, sex, religion, and national origin was revoked in January 2025 and its implementing regulations rescinded, so contractor wording has changed and is worth re-checking with counsel. For everyone else the statement is conventional, useful, and voluntary.
What wording makes a job advert unlawful?
Any wording showing a preference for, or discouraging an application from, someone on the basis of a protected characteristic. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gives two examples directly: an advert seeking females, and one seeking recent college graduates, the second because it discourages people over forty. The same logic reaches young and energetic, digital native, a lifting requirement the job does not need, native English speaker, and a maximum years of experience cap. What makes these different from other hiring mistakes is that the advert is the violation as published. No candidate has to be rejected and no hiring decision has to be made.
Do I have to post a job internally before advertising it externally?
In some states you have to make the opportunity known to your own employees on a defined clock, and Colorado goes furthest. Colorado requires reasonable efforts to announce, post, or otherwise make known each job opportunity to all employees on the same calendar day and before a selection decision is made, plus a notice naming the successful candidate within thirty calendar days of their start. Illinois requires promotion opportunities announced to all current employees no later than fourteen calendar days after an external posting goes up. New Jersey requires reasonable efforts to make promotion opportunities known in the affected department. Filling a role by a quiet internal conversation is how these get breached.
Do I have to tell candidates that AI is screening them?
In a small number of jurisdictions, yes, and the number is growing. Illinois has required notice, an explanation, and consent before an artificial intelligence tool analyses a video interview since 2020, and a 2026 amendment to its human rights statute requires notice whenever artificial intelligence is used in an employment decision. New York City requires a bias audit within the previous year, a published summary of the results, and at least ten business days of notice before an automated employment decision tool is used on a resident, with the ability to request an alternative process. Maryland requires consent before facial recognition in an interview.
How long do I have to keep job postings and applications?
One year is the federal floor and it applies to both. Federal rules require personnel and employment records, including application forms, to be kept for one year from the making of the record or the personnel action, whichever is later, and the age discrimination regulations separately name advertisements and notices about job openings, promotions, training, and overtime. Once a charge is filed, everything relevant must be preserved until final disposition. State rules run longer: Illinois requires five years for pay scale, benefits, and posting records including how the posting appeared, and California requires four years once an automated decision system is involved.
Am I responsible if a recruiter publishes a non-compliant advert for me?
Yes, in substance. Pay transparency statutes generally treat the obligation as the employer’s, and several impose parallel liability on the third party without releasing you. Illinois makes the third party liable for a posting that omits pay scale and benefits, unless it can show the employer never supplied them, which puts the burden squarely back on you. Outsourcing the publication does not outsource the compliance. The same applies to salary history: where the question is banned, a recruiter asking it for you is your violation. Send agencies the finished compliant text rather than a job title, and keep a copy of what they published.