The 7 Red Flags in Job Ads: What to Watch For

Every job ad describes a role. It also, without meaning to, offers a small window into the company behind it.

What makes it onto the page -and what quietly doesn’t- tells you how that business actually runs, long before your first day there.

So before you send your CV, watch for these 7 warning signs.

1. The Job Description Stays Vague

Count the lines. How many go to what the company wants from you, and how many to what you would actually be doing? When the requirements run half a page and the responsibilities get two lines, the company usually hasn’t worked out what it wants from the role either.

Ask for specifics from your very first exchange:

• Who does the role report to, and how big is the team?
• Is this a new position, or is it replacing someone who left?
• What does a typical week look like in this role?

2. No Mention of Pay or Working Terms

Phrases like “salary commensurate with experience” are often a trap, and either way they leave you negotiating blind. As of this year, though, you have legal ground to stand on: under Greek Law 5316/2026, which transposes EU Directive 2023/970, the employer must tell you the starting salary or the salary range before your interview, or before a contract is signed if no interview takes place. Employers are also no longer allowed to ask what you earned in your last job.

Putting the figure in the ad itself isn’t mandatory. So if it’s missing, ask for it. Beyond pay, a serious job ad should at minimum tell you:

• Contract type: permanent, fixed term, freelance
• Hours and commitment: full or part time, shifts, overtime
• Work setup: on site, hybrid or remote
• Location, if the role requires you to be there in person

3. The Requirements Don’t Match the Role

A familiar pattern, especially in Greece. Junior titles asking for years of experience, or one position that quietly bundles three separate jobs into a single pair of hands.

There isn’t always bad faith behind ads like these. Often it comes down to poor planning, or to HR and the hiring department not knowing enough about the work. The outcome for you is the same either way: you take on a workload that shows up in neither the job title nor the salary.

4. The Copy Is All Superlatives

The more crowded an ad gets with phrases like “dynamic environment”, “we’re a family here” and “unlimited growth opportunities”, the thinner it tends to be on actual information.

The problem isn’t that a company wants to make itself sound appealing. That’s normal. It becomes a problem when the whole ad rests on that tone and leaves no room for substance. Strip away the padding, and if nothing solid is left underneath, you probably have your answer already.

5. The Same Ad Keeps Reappearing

Follow the market for a few months and you’ll notice certain positions coming back around. Same company, same role, same wording. There are usually three explanations:

• Nobody stays in the job. The position gets filled, then empties again within months.
• The company never decides. It sees plenty of candidates and picks none of them, usually because the criteria are unclear or the expectations aren’t realistic.
• It’s a ghost job. The ad exists only to collect CVs, or to make the company look like it’s growing.

None of the three is particularly encouraging from where you’re standing.

6. The Company’s Details Are Missing

Some ads never say who is actually behind them. A vague line about “a company in the retail sector”, an email address, nothing else.

Sometimes there’s a legitimate reason, for instance when the position is being filled through a recruitment firm. In those cases the intermediary is named clearly and you can look them up.

When nobody is named, ask for the company name before you send your CV. Check whether there’s a corporate website, a LinkedIn page and employees who list it as their workplace. If all communication comes from a personal email address or through a messaging app, stay cautious.

7. You’re Being Pushed to Decide Now

This last one moves past merely poor practice and into bad faith. Before you sign any contract, for any role, you should not have to hand over any of the following:

• Money, for any reason: registration, “securing” the position, training or equipment.
• Bank details. Your payroll account gets registered after you’re hired.
• Tax and social security numbers. These belong on the official hiring declaration, not on an application.
• Copies of your ID or other personal documents, particularly over a messaging app.

The urgency, delivered as “the position closes today”, is there precisely so you don’t get time to check any of it.

Conclusion

One warning sign on its own should never be enough to stop you from getting in touch with a company. Too many of them, though, is rarely a coincidence.

Read the ad as an indication of how the company operates. If it’s holding information back at this stage, it’s unlikely to open up once you’ve signed.

And remember that the assessment runs both ways. You always have the right to say ‘no’.

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