Most small business job adverts in the UK are written in a hurry, late at night, by an owner who would rather be doing anything else. The result is usually a copy of the last advert, a list of demands, and the words "competitive salary". Claude can fix most of that in about fifteen minutes, if you give it the right material and check what it gives back.
This guide covers how to brief Claude, what to put in the prompt, where AI drafts go wrong, and the legal checks a UK employer still has to do personally.
Why is it worth getting the job advert right in 2026?
The Office for National Statistics estimated 702,000 UK vacancies in June to August 2026, down 8,000 on the previous quarter. Fewer openings sounds like it should make hiring easier, and for some roles it does. But the best applicants are rarely short of choices, and the adverts that get their attention are the ones that answer the obvious questions up front: what is the pay, what are the hours, what will I actually be doing.
What should you give Claude before it writes anything?
The biggest mistake is typing "write a job advert for a receptionist" and posting whatever comes back. That produces an advert that could belong to any business in the country. Instead, spend five minutes writing rough notes. Bad grammar is fine. Something like:
- Front of house at a two-chair dental practice in Leeds, 30 hours over four days
- Pay range, start date, whether it is permanent
- Answers the phone, books appointments in the practice software, takes payments, chases no-shows
- Reports to the practice manager, works alongside two nurses
- Why people stay: no weekends, free parking, the team has been together for years
If you have a written process for the role, paste that in too. A documented process gives Claude far better raw material than memory, and it is worth writing one anyway. There is a practical guide to using AI to document your business processes if you have not done that yet.
What prompt works best for a UK job advert?
Here is a prompt that works well as a starting template:
"You are writing a job advert for a UK small business. Use UK English. Use the notes below. Put the job title, location, pay and hours in the first three lines. Then write three to five bullet points describing what the person will do in a normal week. List essential requirements and nice-to-haves separately, with no more than four essentials. Add two honest sentences about what it is like to work here. End with how to apply and when we will reply. Keep it under 400 words. Avoid clichés such as 'fast-paced', 'rockstar', 'work hard play hard' and 'competitive salary'. Then list any phrases in your draft that could discourage applicants because of age, sex, disability, race, religion or any other protected characteristic."
That last instruction matters. It turns Claude from a copywriter into a first-pass reviewer of its own work.
Should the salary go in the advert?
The figures come from a Reed.co.uk study reported by Personnel Today in March 2022. The same research found 44% of hiring managers admitted they did not always include salary on job ads. It is one job board and the data is a few years old, so it is a signal, not a law of nature. It also makes practical sense: if pay is hidden, the mismatch usually surfaces at interview, after both sides have spent time on it.
If you genuinely cannot commit to a single figure, give a range you would actually pay. Ask Claude to phrase it plainly, for example "£24,000 to £27,000 depending on experience", rather than burying it.
What are the legal rules for job adverts in the UK?
That comes directly from GOV.UK guidance on preventing discrimination in recruitment. The same guidance points out that where you advertise matters too. Posting only in a publication read mostly by one sex could amount to indirect discrimination.
AI drafts create a specific risk here. Language models learn from huge volumes of existing text, including bad adverts, so they sometimes produce phrases such as "young and dynamic team", "digital native" or "must be physically fit" without being asked. None of those belong in an advert unless the job genuinely requires it and you can justify it.
Where do AI-written job adverts usually go wrong?
Filler. "We are a passionate, growing team" says nothing. Ask Claude to replace every general claim with a specific fact from your notes, or delete it.
Invented details. If you did not mention a pension scheme, training budget or hybrid working, check Claude has not added them. It sometimes fills gaps with what adverts usually say. Anything you cannot honour becomes a problem at interview or, worse, in the contract.
Requirement creep. AI drafts tend to pile up skills. Long lists put off capable candidates who meet most but not all of them. Cap essentials at four.
How do you keep candidate data safe when using Claude for hiring?
Writing the advert carries almost no data risk because it describes the job, not a person. The risk starts once applications arrive and it becomes tempting to paste CVs in and ask Claude to rank them. That is personal data processing under UK GDPR, and screening people with AI raises fairness questions as well. Work through an AI data protection checklist for UK businesses before you take that step, and keep a human making every shortlisting decision.
Can Claude help with the rest of the hiring process?
The useful pattern is to keep one document per role containing the brief, the advert and the interview questions, and reuse it next time you hire. A Claude Project works well for this, because it keeps the role notes, your house style and past adverts in one place, so every future draft starts from your own material rather than from scratch. Small admin jobs like this add up. The guide to how AI cuts admin hours in a small business covers where else the time tends to come from.
How do you check the final advert before posting it?
A short pre-posting checklist:
- Is the job title the one people actually type into Indeed or Reed, not an internal name?
- Are pay, hours, location and contract type in the first three lines?
- Does every duty describe a real, regular task?
- Are there four or fewer essential requirements, and is each one genuinely essential?
- Has every phrase that hints at age, sex or any other protected characteristic gone?
- Does it read naturally on a phone?
- Does the existing team recognise the job from the description?
That last check is the one most owners skip and the one that catches the most. If your current receptionist laughs at the description, so will the applicants.
Claude AI Job Adverts UK — FAQ
Can AI write a job advert for a UK small business?
Yes. Claude can turn rough notes about a role into a clear, well-structured advert in a few minutes. The quality depends on what you give it. Feed it the real hours, the real pay, the location, what a normal week looks like and who the person reports to. Without those facts it fills the gaps with generic phrases such as 'fast-paced environment' and 'team player' that applicants skim past. Treat the first draft as a starting point, then check every claim against the actual job, remove any wording that could put off a protected group, and read it aloud before you post it. You stay responsible for what the advert says, not the tool.
Should I put the salary in a job advert?
In most cases, yes. In research reported by Personnel Today in March 2022, Reed.co.uk found that four-fifths of jobseekers were less likely to apply for a job if they could not see a salary, and adverts on Reed showing salary details attracted 27% more applications than those without. That data is a few years old and comes from one job board, so treat it as a strong signal rather than a guarantee. If you cannot give an exact figure, a realistic range is still better than 'competitive salary', which many candidates read as 'below market'. Ask Claude to put the pay in the first three lines, not the last paragraph.
Is it legal to use ChatGPT or Claude to write job adverts in the UK?
Yes, there is no rule against using an AI tool to draft a job advert. What matters is the finished text. GOV.UK guidance says you must not state or imply in a job advert that you will discriminate against anyone, and phrases such as 'recent graduate' or 'highly experienced' should only appear when they are genuine requirements of the role. AI tools sometimes add wording like 'young, energetic team' or 'digital native' because it appears in lots of online adverts. Ask Claude to flag any age, sex, disability or other protected characteristic risk, then do your own read-through. Also avoid pasting candidates' personal data into a consumer chat account.
What should a good job advert include?
A clear job title people actually search for, the location or remote set-up, the pay or pay range, the hours and contract type, and three to five concrete things the person will do in a normal week. Then list the essential requirements separately from the nice-to-haves, so capable people do not rule themselves out. Add one or two honest lines about what working for you is like, how to apply, and when you will reply. Keep it short enough to read on a phone. Claude is good at reorganising messy notes into this structure, but only you know which requirements are genuinely essential.
How long should a job advert be?
Long enough to answer the questions a good applicant would ask, and no longer. For most small business roles that means roughly 250 to 450 words. Many candidates read adverts on a phone, so short paragraphs and bullet points beat long blocks of text. A useful prompt is to ask Claude to cut the draft by a third without losing any fact about pay, hours, location or duties. That forces the filler out. If a sentence would fit any company's advert in any industry, it can usually go.
