The 10-Second Mobile Test

Most job ads get written on a laptop, checked on a laptop and approved on a laptop. And then the people you actually want see them on a phone, with their thumb, somewhere between two other things. That's a completely different experience, and almost nobody checks it.

So here's a test that takes 10 seconds. Open your own job ad on your phone, set a timer, look at it, put the phone down. Then write down what you saw. Was the job title there? The salary? Did you get what the job actually is? It sounds almost too simple, but it's kind of brutal, because it shows you what a candidate sees before they decide to scroll on.

What you need

• Your phone.
• A timer. The one on your phone works, or ask someone to count.
• The link to your job ad, the one candidates actually get. Not the preview in your CMS or ATS.
• A piece of paper or a note for what you remember.
• Three people outside your company who are willing to give you two minutes.

Step 1: Open the ad the way a candidate would

Open the link on your phone in a normal browser. Not logged in to anything, not on your work wifi with everything cached, and not after you've already looked at it ten times today. If you can, use a private tab. If candidates usually come from an ad on Instagram or LinkedIn, open it from there, because that's the real first screen.

Whatever pops up, let it pop up. Cookie banner, chat bubble, "subscribe to job alerts", all of it. Your candidate gets that too.

Step 2: Set a timer for 10 seconds and just look

Start the timer the moment the page loads. Don't scroll, don't zoom in, just look at what's on the screen. When the 10 seconds are over, put the phone face down.

Why 10 seconds? Because that's honestly generous. Someone scrolling past your job isn't going to study it. They glance, they decide, they move on. If the important stuff isn't visible in that glance, it might as well not be there.

Step 3: Write down what you saw

Now, without looking again, answer these:

1. What's the job title?
2. What's the salary (or range)?
3. Where is it, and is it remote, hybrid or on-site?
4. What do you actually do in this job, in one sentence?
5. Why would someone want this job over their current one?
6. Where would you tap to apply?
7. What took up the most space on the screen?

Be honest with yourself. "I think the salary was there somewhere" counts as no. If you wrote down the company logo, a stock photo of people high-fiving and a cookie banner for question 7, that already says a lot.

Quick score: give yourself one point for each of questions 1 to 6 you could answer correctly. Six is great. Under three means most people who open your ad leave knowing almost nothing about the job.

Step 4: Run the same test with three people outside your company

You know the job way too well, so your own test is too easy. You'll "see" the salary because you know it's there. That's why you need people who've never seen the ad.

Pick three people outside your company. Ideally someone who does this type of work, but a friend or a neighbor works fine too. Send them something like this:

Hey, can you do me a quick favor? Takes 2 minutes.

I'm going to send you a link. Open it on your phone, look at it
for 10 seconds without scrolling, and then put your phone away.

After that I'll ask you a few questions about what you saw.
There are no wrong answers, I'm testing the page, not you.

Then do it with them on a call or next to you. Count the 10 seconds yourself, and ask the questions from the answer sheet. Write down their answers word for word, because how they describe the job is gold. If they say "something with planning, I think?" while your ad is for a Senior Transport Planner, that's your answer.

Don't explain anything before or during the test. The moment you say "it's a job for a planner at a transport company", you've ruined it.

Step 5: Compare it with the above-the-fold checklist

"Above the fold" is just the part of the page you see without scrolling. On a phone that's not a lot of space. This is what needs to be in it:

[ ] Job title people actually search for (no internal titles, no "Rockstar")
[ ] Salary or salary range, in numbers
[ ] Location, plus remote / hybrid / on-site
[ ] Hours: full-time, part-time, shifts
[ ] One sentence on what you actually do all day
[ ] One reason this job is better than what they have now
[ ] Apply button visible, or one short scroll away
[ ] Nothing blocking the text: cookie banner, popup, chat bubble
[ ] No giant header image or logo pushing everything down
[ ] Text big enough to read without zooming

Put your own answers and the answers of your three testers next to this list. Whatever nobody remembered is either missing, too low on the page, or buried in a block of text. Either way, it's not working.

Step 6: Fix the top of the ad and test again

Now fix the first screen. Usually this comes down to a few things:

• Move the salary up, ideally right under the title or in the first line.
• Replace the "about us" opening with one sentence about the job itself.
• Make the header image smaller, or drop it on mobile.
• Get the cookie banner and popups out of the way, or at least make them small.
• Cut the first paragraph down until the key facts fit on one screen.

Then do the test again, with new people if you can, since your first three now know the ad. You're done when outsiders can answer at least five of the six questions after 10 seconds.

What "done" looks like

• You did the test yourself and with three outsiders, and you wrote down their answers.
• You know which items from the checklist people missed.
• The top of your ad shows the title, salary, location and what the job is, without scrolling.
• A second round of testers can answer at least five of the six questions after 10 seconds.

Common mistakes

This test covers a few checks from the Job Ad Scorecard in one go, like the salary in the first line and the first 3 lines explaining the job. And if your ad mostly shows up in feeds, read Stop Writing Job Ads for Job Seekers, because someone scrolling gives you even less than 10 seconds. Once the top of the ad works, the next step is getting your application under 5 minutes.