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Sausage Dog research, datasets and commentary picked up by UK HR and careers publications.
4,678 job adverts tracked from the hour they went live
Original tracking of 4,678 UK job adverts across 18 occupations, each recorded from the hour it appeared and observed 40 times between 1 August and 9 September 2026, following the same 2,336 adverts from day one to day four rather than comparing different vacancies. In thirteen of the seventeen occupations reported on, the typical advert had received one application or none after 24 hours, so a dashboard read at that point cannot tell an advert that will end with fifty applications from one that will end with none. Wait four days and the separation does not follow the org chart: administrator leads on a median of 11 applications, ahead of warehouse operative at 9.5, payroll administrator at 8, customer service advisor at 7.5 and receptionist at 7, while project manager sits at 4, software developer at 1 and staff nurse at 0. At the busy end the gap widens, with the busiest tenth of receptionist adverts carrying 81 applications by day four against 19 for software developer. Three quarters of the nursing adverts had not received a single application after four days, and the piece puts the Reed-only caveat beside that figure rather than under it, noting that occupational therapy does not route through NHS Jobs and TRAC in the same way and sits at zero too. The argument for HR is that one escalation rule cannot serve both ends of that table: an administrator vacancy at zero on day four is genuinely unusual, while a staff nurse vacancy at zero on day four is the median outcome. Three changes follow, moving the first vacancy review to day four, setting escalation triggers per role family rather than per organisation, and splitting vacancies by whether a queue exists at all, because where it does not, no wording change produces applicants who were never going to apply. One figure is held loosely in print: software developer at one application behaved differently across the August and September intakes. Sixteenth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Your busiest vacancy and your emptiest one look identical on the dashboard
Original tracking of 2,482 UK job adverts across 16 occupations, each one enrolled within 24 hours of going live and re-read every day for a month, so advert age is measured rather than inferred. Across 233 staff nurse adverts not one reached ten Reed applications and the busiest tenth carried two, while over the same period the busiest tenth of receptionist adverts carried 53. Paralegal reached 52, payroll administrator 48 and administrator 37, against care assistant at five, occupational therapist at three and teaching assistant at two. The roles carrying the loudest shortage headlines are the ones drawing almost no applications, and the quiet office roles are where the queue forms. A second finding sits in the timings: the median advert collects one application in its first 24 hours and the first-day median across all sixteen occupations is zero, one or two, so the widely repeated advice to apply within the first hour is not supported anywhere in the data. The piece states its own limit rather than burying it, since the counts come from Reed and NHS nursing largely recruits through NHS Jobs and TRAC, and argues that care assistant and occupational therapist sitting near zero suggests the gap is mostly real without claiming that settles it. The argument for HR is a measurement one: a single time-to-fill target and a single escalation trigger cannot serve a contested vacancy and a dead one, and an advert at zero applications on day three is telling you something a rule that fires on day 28 will never catch. Fifteenth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
The perks section on your job advert probably is not doing what you think
Original analysis of 1,804 fresh UK job adverts across 21 occupations, each checked against a dictionary of 23 named employee benefits. The median advert names one of them and 38.5% name none at all, so the long perks list most employers picture is not what the market actually publishes. Even a pension, the closest thing to a norm, appears in only 36.2% of adverts, rising to 71.7% for nurses and falling close to zero across several trades. The finding that cuts against the assumption is what happens when adverts naming more benefits are compared against adverts naming fewer inside the same occupation: the median difference is 1.5 fewer applications, more in five occupations and fewer in thirteen of the twenty-one tested. Pension is the clearest single case and the only one whose confidence interval does not cross zero, at a median of 2.5 fewer applications holding across 18 occupations, while private healthcare runs the other way on nine occupations and is reported rather than dropped for not fitting. The argument for HR is that padding the benefits section is the cheapest edit available on a slow-filling vacancy and the one this data does not support, and that the gap between 36.2% of adverts and 43.0% of employers naming a pension is a template consistency problem rather than a benefits problem. Fourteenth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Seven in ten job adverts never reach ten applicants
Original analysis of 1,691 UK job adverts, each recorded once an hour from the moment it went live across 168 hourly snapshots and ten occupations, so the count is real growth rather than a stock number. Of the 1,691 adverts, only 524 ever reached ten applications. The other 1,167, seven in ten, never did, at any point in a fortnight. Where a queue did build, the tenth application arrived after a median of 28 hours, and the median advert had gained one application by the time it was a day old. The first day carried between 17 and 29 per cent of the eventual applicants in every occupation measured, so a quiet start predicts almost nothing. The spread by occupation dwarfs the average: receptionist adverts gained a median of 15 applications and 144 of 247 reached ten, while staff nurse adverts gained a median of nothing and three of 187 reached ten. The argument for HR is that three common habits, judging an advert on day one, reposting to chase a burst that never comes, and treating ten applicants as the point where hiring begins, all misread the majority of vacancies. Thirteenth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- Education News
When everyone advertises the same way, the good job disappears
Original analysis of 541 UK teaching assistant adverts, read from their structured pay, hours and contract fields rather than the job description. Of the adverts stating a pay figure, 77.5% quote a day rate of roughly £85 to £120 and about one in ten quote an annual salary. Of those stating a contract type, 39.4% are temporary and 25.0% contract against 35.6% permanent, so 64.4% of what is advertised is not a permanent job. The market is far narrower than it looks: all 541 adverts came from 43 advertisers, and a single supply agency posted 140 of them, more than a quarter of everything read. Removing that agency entirely still leaves 71.3% quoting a day rate. The argument for HR is that a permanent salaried role advertised into a channel like this has a presentation problem it did not create, because a candidate scanning the list sees £110 and £22,000 side by side with no cue as to which offers security. Second Education News piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- Education News
Teaching assistant adverts ask about safeguarding eight times more often than GCSEs
Original analysis of 541 UK teaching assistant adverts, testing the thing candidates say stops them applying against what the advert actually asks for. GCSEs appear in 8.9% of adverts. Safeguarding appears in 73.9% and a DBS check in 74.9%, making a teaching assistant advert roughly eight times more likely to raise child protection than school attainment. Where a qualification is named it is more often vocational than academic, with Level 2 in 23.1% and Level 3 in 13.1% against 4.4% for a degree. The figure underneath all of them is that 58.2% of the adverts name no specific qualification at all, which means a candidate ruling themselves out on academic grounds is usually leaving a competition that was never scored that way. Third Education News piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- Education News
Research reveals schools ask teaching assistants about safeguarding four times more often than teachers
Original analysis of 613 UK school job adverts, comparing how schools recruit teaching assistants against qualified teachers. Safeguarding is named in 79% of teaching assistant adverts and 18% of teacher adverts. The same gap runs through every related requirement: DBS checks appear in 72% of TA adverts against 5% for teachers, and SEND in 32% against 5%. The gap is not explained by advert length, since teacher adverts were the longer of the two at a median of around 6,000 characters against 4,000. The likely cause is professional assumption, with safeguarding embedded in initial teacher training and taken as read, while teaching assistants are often recruited from outside education so the advert has to carry the message. First piece for Education News by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Most of what we believe about job advert wording does not survive contact with the data
Original analysis of 1,846 fresh UK job adverts, testing 16 features widely assumed to drive how many people apply. Fourteen did nothing measurable once occupation was held constant. The starting hypothesis, that adverts saying "no experience needed" draw fewer applicants, held up at first (a median of 10 applications against 16) then evaporated inside occupations, with a median difference of -0.25 and a confidence interval crossing zero. Two features survived: adverts requiring a driving licence drew a median of 5.75 fewer applications, and customer-facing language 3 fewer. The practical takeaway for HR is that if a vacancy is not attracting applicants, the wording is rarely the constraint. Twelfth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- Deel
AI-augmented workers now earn 62% more for the same job
Deel, the global payroll and HR platform, cites our research on how rarely UK employers name AI in their job adverts. Across 4,377 UK adverts spanning 15 occupations we found only 1.8% mention AI at all, and just 0.39% treat it as a requirement, which Deel uses as evidence that employers have not learned to name the skill they are already paying a premium for.
- HR Press
The longer a job advert gets, the less of it is about the job
Original analysis of 1,243 live UK job adverts, split into the sections employers write themselves and counted word by word. The median UK advert runs 408 words, and between the shortest third and the longest third an advert grows about two and a half times. The growth is lopsided: benefits swells from 42 words to 217 while requirements, the part telling candidates what the employer wants, barely moves from 77 to 138. Read as a share of the page the picture inverts, with requirements falling from 29% to 19% and benefits rising from 17% to 32%, so in the longest adverts the perks section is the single biggest thing on the page. Eleventh HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
The UK's toughest jobs to get are often the easiest jobs to do
Original analysis of 1,657 live UK job adverts measuring the competition gap. The median receptionist advert draws 45 applications while the median nursing advert draws 2, a twenty-fold spread that turns the usual difficulty assumptions upside down. Entry-level office roles are the longest queues in the country, while nursing, teaching and care adverts sit nearly empty, and 16% of care adverts ask for no previous experience at all. Tenth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
The job advert cliches everyone complains about have almost disappeared
Original analysis of 5,975 UK job adverts across 29 occupations, counting the cliches candidates mock. The famous ones are nearly extinct: "rockstar", "ninja" and "guru" appeared zero times, "go-getter" once, "self-starter" in 0.2% of adverts. What replaced them is emotional language ("passionate" in 18% of adverts, over 50% for teaching assistants) clustered on people-facing roles, while trade and driving adverts stay nearly cliche-free. Ninth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Why 'fast-paced' might be putting your best applicants off
Original analysis of 5,982 UK job adverts across 29 occupations on one of recruitment's favourite phrases, "fast-paced". It turns up in 54% of retail adverts, 43% of recruitment adverts and 33% of customer service adverts, but just 4% of waitressing adverts and 1% of HGV driving adverts, the jobs that are genuinely relentless. The piece shows the phrase now reads to many candidates as a warning about understaffing, and gives HR teams three ways to describe demanding roles without filler. Eighth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
The ATS myth: only 2.6% of 5,012 UK job adverts named an applicant tracking system
Original analysis of 5,012 UK job adverts across 24 occupations. Only 2.6% named an actual applicant tracking system (ATS) such as Workday, TRAC or NHS Jobs, and among adverts that state how to apply, two thirds point to a person rather than a portal. Automated screening is real, but it concentrates in the NHS, the public sector and large corporate employers, so for most frontline and trade jobs a human reads your CV. Seventh HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Your job advert has a gender: we read 5,000 UK adverts and the language is still heavily coded
Original analysis of more than 5,000 UK job adverts across 24 occupations, measuring masculine and feminine-coded language. Recruitment adverts run 56% masculine (driven, competitive, ambitious); teaching assistant adverts run 85% feminine (supportive, caring, committed). The split maps almost exactly onto the jobs men and women already do, and the wording quietly shapes who applies. Sixth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Inside 5,000 UK job adverts: only 6% ask for a degree
Original analysis of 5,012 UK job adverts across 24 occupations. Only 6% mention a degree, and many of those say "or equivalent". What actually gates a UK job is a professional qualification or a background check, not a university degree. Fifth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
The shortlist gap: what your job advert asks for, and what actually gets people hired
Original analysis of more than 3,000 UK job adverts on the gap between what adverts list as "essential" and what actually gets candidates shortlisted. Recruiters lean on measurable achievements and comparable experience over long requirement lists, so the piece argues for shorter asks, evidence over adjectives, and clearer scope. Fourth HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper, founder of Sausage Dog.
- HR Press
Inside 102 UK office admin job adverts: why the Microsoft Office requirement quietly disappeared
Original analysis of 102 UK office admin adverts. Microsoft Office is named in just 1% of adverts, communication leads at 69%, and organisational skills (54%) outrank prior admin experience (38%). Third HR Press piece by Anthony Clasper.
- HR Press
Inside 119 NHS nurse job adverts: what NHS Trusts can teach HR teams about advertising for values, not skills
Original analysis of 119 UK NHS Staff Nurse adverts. MDT working (55%) outranked NMC registration (65%) as the most-prominent ask, leadership appeared in 37% of Band 5 entry-grade posts, and "compassion" tracked NHS Constitution language consistently. Second piece in HR Press by Anthony Clasper.
- Connectively
12 Skills Recruiters Need to Develop for Future Relevance in the Talent Landscape
Anthony Clasper quoted as founder of Sausage Dog in a Connectively expert roundup on recruiter skills, citing 776 UK job adverts read by hand to advocate for plain, precise advert language over vague phrasing.
- HR Press
Inside 200 UK recruitment job adverts: what pay transparency and performance language tell HR teams about applicant quality
Original analysis of 200 UK recruiter and talent acquisition adverts. 92% openly state OTE, 94% are permanent, 55% want "driven" candidates. Published in HR Press, a UK HR industry publication.
For journalists
Primary data on UK hiring, free to cite.
Sausage Dog runs original first-party research on UK job adverts across nursing, care, teaching, social work, recruitment, plumbing, HGV, electrician and office admin roles. 1,347 adverts analysed to date, each dataset tagged with schema.org/Dataset, CC-BY licensed, free to quote.
Custom keyword analysis for a specific UK role usually 24-hour turnaround.