Guides · United Kingdom · recruiters, HR & hiring managers

Pre-publish job-ad wording checklist for UK employers

A practical pass over draft vacancy text before it goes live — so you catch unclear or exclusionary phrasing while you can still edit. This is a hygiene checklist, not legal advice and not Equality Act clearance.

1. Decide who reads the draft

Assign one hiring manager and one fresh pair of eyes (recruiter, HR, or a colleague outside the team). The second reader should not have written the brief. Note the job title, location, and publish channel on the draft so later flags map to the right ad.

2. Read for clarity first

Before any wording risk report, ask: would a strong candidate understand the role in one skim? Flag jargon, unexplained acronyms, and duties that contradict each other. Unclear ads waste both sides’ time and often hide the phrases that later look awkward in a wording risk report.

3. Separate requirements from preferences

Mark every “must”, “essential”, and “required”. Ask whether each is truly needed on day one. Move nice-to-haves into a preferences list. Hard cut-offs (especially years of experience) are common wording-risk flags — not because a tool decides legality, but because they deserve a human second look before publish.

4. Scan for pattern phrases worth a second look

Age or life-stage shorthand (“young team”, “digital native”, “recent graduate only”).
Gendered role titles or pronouns that assume who does the job.
“Culture fit” or “personality” lines with no job-related meaning.
Physical requirements stated without linking them to the actual tasks.

Treat each hit as a prompt to rewrite for clarity — not as a verdict.

5. Check benefits and process copy

Salary bands, hybrid rules, and application steps should match what you can actually offer. Over-promising in the ad creates a different kind of risk: candidate trust. Keep claims factual and dated.

6. Run a structured self-check (optional but faster)

Paste the final draft into VacancyCheck for a wording risk report. Free = limited on-screen flags (1 per verified email per rolling week). Full PDF = £9.99. Subscription = £79.99/mo up to 20 reports. The output is a report to review with your team — not clearance to publish.

7. Sign off and archive the draft

Keep the pre-publish version and who signed it. If you change the live ad later, re-run the checklist on the new text. A live URL check is retrospective only; paste draft text first.

What this checklist is not

Not legal advice.
Not Equality Act clearance or a solicitor substitute.
Not a promise that a vacancy is safe to publish.

Not legal advice. Not Equality Act clearance. Informational wording hygiene only.