A job posting has one job: get the right people to apply, and get the wrong ones to rule themselves out before they ever pick up the phone. Do that with three honest lines up top, pay stated as a real number, and language Manitoba law actually allows, and most of what makes a posting work follows on its own.

Manitoba employers reported 17,810 job vacancies in the first quarter of 2026, a 2.8% vacancy rate, with an average offered hourly wage of $26.55, according to Statistics Canada. Every one of those vacancies started as a posting. I write or review one almost every week, for roles from a shop floor to a front office, and most fail before the first sentence is finished, not because the owner did not care, but because nobody ever told them what a posting is for. Here is what I have learned running these searches, what Manitoba law actually says, and a full sample posting you can copy.

What does a job posting actually have to do?

A posting is a filter, not a brochure. Its first job is to get a qualified person to stop scrolling and apply. Its second job, just as important, is to get an unqualified person to read it and decide not to bother, before either of you wastes time on it. A posting that only does the first turns into a pile you have to screen out by hand. One that only does the second scares off people who would have been great. Both come from the same three things: an honest title, an honest number, and an honest description of the work.

What has to be in the first three lines?

The job, the pay, and the place, in that order, because that is as far as most applicants read before deciding whether to continue.

The job means the title a real person would search for, not the internal title your org chart uses. "Licensed Carpenter" gets found. "Level 3 Skilled Trades Associate" does not.

The pay means an actual number or range, not "competitive wage" or "based on experience." No law in Manitoba requires you to post it, and most employers here still don't: Indeed Hiring Lab put the share of Canadian postings with pay information outside B.C. and Ontario, the provinces with pay-transparency laws, at only 41% as of June 2026. That gap is an opportunity, not a reason to skip it. If you are unsure what a fair number looks like, Job Bank publishes a median wage by occupation and province. For a carpenter in Manitoba, that figure is a median of $27.00 an hour, most earning between $20.00 and $38.99, as of its November 19, 2025 update.

The place means where the work actually happens: on site, in the shop, or split between locations. Applicants filter on location before almost anything else, and a posting that is vague about it reads like it is hiding something.

What can't a Manitoba posting ask or say?

Owners get nervous here, usually from a rumour of a rule rather than the actual one. Manitoba's Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in employment based on a list of characteristics, and the Manitoba Human Rights Commission's guideline, Human rights considerations in hiring, spells out what that means at the recruitment stage: "The Code prohibits discrimination against individuals based on various characteristics including ancestry, age, sex (including pregnancy), family status, sexual orientation, gender identity and physical or mental disability, in employment," a prohibition that explicitly covers "recruitment (job postings, application forms, interviews)."

In the Commission's own words: "The job posting or advertisement should identify criteria that is directly related to the duties set out in the job description," and "The application form or process should not require an applicant to disclose their age, sex, ancestry, marital or family status, or other protected characteristic, unless that information is relevant to your assessment of them." Its own examples, unless genuinely relevant to the job: asking an applicant to identify as Mr., Mrs., Ms, or Mx; asking whether they belong to a particular faith community; and asking whether they have family members already working for you.

The practical version: if a requirement is not connected to the job's actual duties, it does not belong in the posting. A Class 1 licence can be a real requirement for a delivery role. A degree for a hostess position, in the Commission's own example, usually is not.

What does a posting that actually works look like?

Here is a full sample for a role I write often, a licensed carpenter for a small Manitoba construction company, written the way I would write it for a client. It is a sample, not a real posting.

Sample posting

Licensed Carpenter – Winnipeg area, on site

Riverbend Construction Ltd. is hiring a licensed carpenter for residential framing and finishing, full time, Monday to Friday with occasional Saturday work in peak season. Pay is $27 to $32 an hour depending on experience, based on Job Bank's Manitoba median for this trade, plus a vehicle allowance if you use your own truck on site.

You will frame, finish and problem-solve on residential builds alongside a four-person crew. You need a Red Seal or Manitoba journeyperson carpenter certificate, your own hand tools, and a valid driver's licence. A truck is not required.

Start date is flexible within three weeks. Send a resume and two references to [email] or call [phone]. We reply within three business days.

Notice what is doing the work: a real title and location, pay anchored to a published number, an honest list of what the job requires and does not, and a start date and reply-time promise. Broken down:

Section What goes here Why it matters
Title and location Real job title, city or site, on site or remote Tells the applicant in one line if this is even in scope
Pay A real number or range, not "competitive" Filters for fit before either of you spends an hour on it
What the job actually is Two or three sentences on the real day-to-day work Lets a good applicant picture doing it
Required vs preferred A short list, split into need and bonus Stops a great applicant self-rejecting over a wish-list item
Start date An actual date or window, not "ASAP" Lets the applicant judge if the timing works
How and when you'll respond How to apply, and a promise on response time Keeps good applicants from taking someone else's offer while they wait

This structure works for any role. Swap the trade and the certification and the shape stays the same.

What kills applications before they start?

In my experience, almost always one of four things: a wall of "must haves" that reads like a wish list copied from the last posting; pay listed as "competitive" or left off entirely; no start date, so the applicant cannot picture taking the job; and going quiet for a week after someone applies, the fastest way to lose them to whoever replies first. None of these show up in a published statistic, because they are about how you run the posting, not the labour market. But fixing those four has done more, in every search I have run, than any amount of extra posting budget.

Where should you post it, and how long should you leave it up?

In my experience, a real job description posted somewhere a real applicant looks, Job Bank, Indeed, a trade-specific Facebook group, or your own network, matters more than how many places you post it. Posting the same vague ad in ten places gets ten times the vague results. Two to three weeks is usually enough to know if a posting is working. If not, the posting itself is almost always the problem, not the timing, so rewrite it rather than leaving it up and hoping. If you want the whole process off your plate, that is what Quadrant, the DISC assessment and hiring tool I built, is for: it writes the job description from the role's actual needs.

The three ways I can help, cheapest first

Start at the cheapest one that solves your problem.

Do it yourself on Quadrant. Quadrant writes the job description from the role's needs, posts it, and screens applicants with a DISC assessment, for the cost of a subscription instead of a fee. It is simply the tool I use myself.

Hiring Services, by the job or by the month. I write the posting the way this article describes, publish it, screen every applicant on Quadrant, and hand you a ranked shortlist with an interview guide. One Hire is $2,999 per role. Always Hiring is $1,500 a month for up to three roles, or $2,999 a month for up to ten, three-month minimum, then month to month. Full details on the Hiring Services page.

Contract Recruiting, the full search. You give me the job description, I run the whole search end to end, and you stay as involved as you want. That is 15% of first-year salary, $5,000 minimum per role, charged once, no retainer and no subscription. Full details on the Contract Recruiting page.

If the role is a licensed trade, Construction Recruiting and Trades Recruiting go deeper on what changes when the requirement is a ticket, not a resume line. Before you pick one of the three, what a recruiter actually costs in Manitoba, what a bad hire costs a Manitoba business, and how long it actually takes to hire are worth reading, since a posting that does not work is usually the first domino in all three.

Questions owners ask first

What has to be in the first three lines of a Manitoba job posting?

The real job title, the real pay, and the real place. Skip internal titles nobody outside your shop would search for, state pay as an actual number or range instead of "competitive wage," and say where the work happens, on site, in the shop, or on the road. Job Bank's own median for a carpenter in Manitoba is $27.00 an hour, most falling between $20.00 and $38.99, which is the kind of real number I mean.

Do I have to list the pay in a Manitoba job posting?

No law in Manitoba requires it. A private member's bill called The Pay Transparency Act was introduced in the last legislature and never received royal assent, so nothing is in force. In my experience you should list it anyway: a vague posting is one of the fastest ways to lose a good applicant to someone else's clearer one.

What can't I ask on a Manitoba job application?

Under The Human Rights Code, you cannot require an applicant to disclose their age, sex, ancestry, marital or family status, or another protected characteristic unless that information is relevant to your assessment of them, and the Manitoba Human Rights Commission's own guideline gives examples: do not ask an applicant to identify as Mr., Mrs., Ms, or Mx, whether they belong to a particular faith community, or whether they have family members already working for you, unless one of those is genuinely relevant to the job.

What actually kills applications before they start?

In my experience, four things: a wall of "must haves" that reads like a wish list instead of the real job, pay listed as "competitive" instead of a number, no start date so the applicant cannot picture actually taking the job, and going quiet for a week after someone applies. Every one of those is fixable before you ever post.

How long should I leave a job posting up?

In my experience, two to three weeks is usually enough to see whether a posting as written is working. If you are not getting applicants worth interviewing by then, the posting itself is almost always the problem, not the timing, so rewrite it rather than just leaving it up longer.

If you want the done-with-you version, see what Hiring Services costs. If you want the whole search off your plate, see what Contract Recruiting costs.

Sources

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