Six job ads in ten do not say what they offer.
41% of ads give a section to what they bring. Almost all mention a benefit somewhere, but rarely where the reader looks for it.
In brief
- Across 109 Swiss IT job ads read and counted one by one on 23 September 2026, the median ad lists 18 bullet items. The heaviest quarter lists 24 or more, and the longest in the corpus has 39.
- Only four ads in ten set aside a section for what they offer. Where that section exists, it comes after 16 items of demands and holds 4.
- 43% put a figure on the experience expected. Median: 4 years. A quarter ask for 7 or more.
What we counted, and how
On 23 September 2026 we collected the first 319 ads returned by jobs.ch across sixteen pages of results, then kept the 109 whose title denotes an IT role. Each was read in its public structured form, the one search engines consume, not in a summary. For each ad we counted the bullet items, the words, the presence of a section on requirements, a section on duties, a section on what the employer offers, and the experience figure where it is written.
The corpus mixes French, German and English, and covers the whole of Switzerland. It is not a random sample of the market: it is what this query returned on that day. Every ad remains readable at its public address, and the count can be redone.
Forty-one per cent say what they give
45 ads out of 109, or 41%, carry a section dedicated to what the employer brings. Within those 45, the median is 16 items placed before that section and 4 after. Across the 34 of them that actually place items after it, the median ratio between demands and counterparts is 3.5 to 1.
It is worth being precise about what this figure does and does not say. If instead of a section one looks for any mention of a benefit anywhere in the text, remote work, training, holidays, the share rises to 89%. The gap between 41% and 89% is the subject of this note: the counterpart is almost always present somewhere, it is rarely built as a part of the ad. It comes at the end, shorter, often in a single line.
Experience, written down one time in two
47 ads out of 109, or 43%, write a number of years of experience. The median is 4 years, the first quartile 3, the third 7. The other 62 put no figure on it: they say "proven experience", "solid experience", or say nothing at all. In a market where a candidate with three years and one with eight are not paid alike, that is information most ads leave the reader to guess.
Eighteen demands
The median length is 446 words. The number of items spreads far wider: from zero to 39, with a median of 18 and a central range of 13 to 24. Twelve ads out of 109 use no list at all and present the role in running text.
Sources: 109 Swiss IT ads, 23 Sep 2026
Implecio reading
A job ad is an asymmetric document. It is written as a specification, while it is read as a proposal. Eighteen requirements and four counterparts, in that order, is the structure of a tender, not of an offer.
That causes no problem when the market is in surplus. It causes one as soon as the person you want already has a job and asked for nothing. They do not read eighteen lines to check the boxes: in ten seconds they look for what this role would give them that their current one does not. In six ads out of ten, that information is structured nowhere.
What it means if you are hiring
- Count your own items. Beyond 20 you are no longer describing a role, you are describing three; and you discourage the honest candidates before the others.
- Give the counterpart a section, not a closing sentence. This is not about generosity but structure: half the reader’s decision is made there.
- Put a figure on the experience expected. "Proven experience" filters no one and wastes interviews on both sides.
Sources
Method. 319 ads collected across the first sixteen pages of jobs.ch results on 23 September 2026; 109 kept because their title denotes an IT role. Each ad was read in its public structured form. The count of items and words is exact. Section detection relies on the usual wordings ("your profile", "your duties", "what we offer" and their French and German equivalents): a section written otherwise is not detected, so the 41% share is a floor, which the comparison with the 89% of free mentions makes explicit. The experience retained is the first number of years quoted in the text. Two indicators were measured then dropped from this note because their value depended too much on the wording chosen to detect them: the mention of the reporting line and that of team size. The corpus is not a random sample of the Swiss market: it is the result of one query on one day, and contains neither unadvertised roles nor those entrusted to search firms. The "Implecio reading" is an interpretation.