Jev reads entry-level job ads as a rung more senior

Reading a LinkedIn job posting, does Jev place its seniority and type (full-time, contract, part-time) where the employer did?

result4,500 questions

Reading LinkedIn job ads, Jev agrees with the employer's own seniority label 56% of the time. When it disagrees, it goes up the ladder 59% of the time, usually by one rung: it reads 45% of entry-level ads as associate. It also reads 40% of contract jobs and 31% of part-time jobs as full-time.

	associate	director	entry level	executive	internship	mid senior
associate	45%	1%	12%	1%	1%	41%
director	3%	67%	0%	5%		25%
entry level	45%		31%		0%	23%
executive	5%	13%	2%	49%		30%
internship	3%	1%	16%		79%	1%
mid senior	18%	2%	5%	1%	0%	75%

rows: employer's level · columns: Jev's level · shade: share of the row

How to read this: Rows are the seniority the employer chose; columns are Jev's reading. The diagonal is agreement. Shading just right of the diagonal means Jev reads the job as one level more senior.

2,500 seniority and 2,000 work-type questions.

In short

Jev matches the employer's seniority label on 56% of LinkedIn job ads, and 74% of its misses are just one rung off.
Its misses lean senior and full-time: it reads 45% of entry-level ads as associate and 40% of contract jobs as full-time.
Where the employer's fields exist they should win; Jev's reading is a suggestion, and it tilts toward senior and full-time.

What the data shows

Hand on shoulder guy meme: The ad: entry-level role. Jev: associate, surely (45% of entry-level ads). — The ad: entry-level role. Jev: associate, surely (45% of entry-level ads).

Agrees about half the time. 56% of ads land on the employer's level.
Misses lean senior. 59% of misses go up the ladder, and most are just one rung off (74%). The big one: 45% of entry-level ads read as associate.
Everything looks full-time. 40% of contract jobs and 31% of part-time jobs come out as full-time.

What it means, and what it doesn't

If Jev fills in missing job fields, entry-level roles will drift upward and part-time and contract roles will look like full-time ones, the two directions that most hurt people looking for a first job or flexible work. Search and matching systems should prefer the employer's fields when they exist, and treat Jev's reading as a suggestion.

It doesn't mean Jev misreads ads badly: most misses are one rung, and the employer's labels are noisy themselves. Some of the "associate" readings are what a careful recruiter would say.

Caveats

Employers' labels are inconsistent. The seniority is whatever the employer picked in LinkedIn's form. One company's "associate" is another's "entry level", and many pick loosely. An ad for a part-time cardiac sonographer asking for 2 years of experience is labeled entry level; Jev said associate (98%), and a recruiter might agree.
Shortened postings. Long postings were cut to fit, so Jev sometimes didn't see the paragraph that states the schedule or the experience required.
One snapshot of US jobs. The postings are US LinkedIn ads from a 2023 snapshot, balanced across levels and job types, so rare levels (internships, executives) are overrepresented compared with real listings.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes73%
Does it describe you?: No60%
Would you have predicted it?: No60%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is reasonable
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: Employers' labels are inconsistent91%

Why ask this

Job search and matching run on structured fields: seniority (internship to executive) and work type (full-time, contract, part-time). A graduate filtering for "entry level, part-time" only sees the ads tagged that way. When those fields are missing or messy, a model is often asked to fill them in from the ad's text.

A systematic lean, reading every entry-level ad as a rung higher, would quietly send candidates to the wrong jobs and hide good first jobs from the people who need them.

How this was done

The people and the data

The ads are LinkedIn job postings, a public collection of 33,246 US ads from a 2023 snapshot. Each carries the seniority level and work type the employer chose when posting, on LinkedIn's own scales: internship, entry level, associate, mid-senior, director, executive; and full-time, part-time, contract, temporary, internship, volunteer. 2,500 ads were used for seniority and 2,000 others for work type, balanced across the options.

What Jev was asked

Each ad was a pick-one question over LinkedIn's own levels, each with a short description:

What experience level is this job posting hiring for?
Internship: a student or recent graduate internship · Entry level: a first job or one needing little prior experience · Associate: a role needing some experience, below senior level · Mid-senior: an experienced individual contributor or manager · Director · Executive
(the posting follows: title, employment type and description)

How it was measured

For seniority: the share where Jev picks the employer's level, and, among misses, whether it picked a more senior or less senior level and by how many rungs. For work type: the most common confusions.

Where these questions live

4,500 questions across 2 topics of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

People & Sales

Job Seniority2,500 Job Work Type2,000

Every question

All 4,500 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

Showing 0 of 4,500