Ashby’s 2026 analysis of 11 million applications, 32,000 hires and more than 1,200 venture-backed startups found that a company with fewer than 25 employees absorbs 298 applications per hire and interviews roughly 15 people for each one. If you are a founder doing your own screening, that is your evening for the next fortnight. The posting is the only part of that funnel you control before the volume arrives — and most intern postings repel the exact candidates they were meant to attract.
Key takeaways
- At startups under 25 people, roughly 298 applications arrive per hire and about 15 candidates get interviewed.
- Boilerplate experience requirements are the most common self-inflicted wound in an intern posting.
- 61% of candidates say the pay range is the most important part of a job description; the rate is yours to set, but publish it.
- Ask for a link and a two-minute explanation, not a CV — it filters better than any requirement line.
Stop asking for experience the role cannot have
Intern postings are usually assembled from the last engineering posting the company wrote, and that inheritance is expensive. Indeed’s Hiring Lab found that among US tech postings stating an experience requirement, the share open to one year or less sat at 18 percent in the second quarter of 2025, while the five-plus-years share rose from 37 percent to 42 percent since 2022. That drift is now the default register of technical job copy, and it leaks into student-facing listings.
The effect is not a higher bar. It is an honesty filter pointed the wrong way: the careful second-year reads “2+ years professional experience required” and closes the tab, while the candidate willing to describe a semester project as professional experience applies anyway. You then pay for the verification later, in interviews — the most expensive place to discover it. If the role is an internship, the experience line should name the year of study, the stack, and nothing else.
Put the number in the post
LinkedIn’s analysis of job post performance data reports that 61 percent of candidates say the salary range is the most important part of the job description, against 28 percent for company culture. Withholding it does not preserve negotiating room with a student applicant; it just moves your posting to the bottom of their reading pile. And the norm has already shifted — Indeed’s Hiring Lab measured 57.8 percent of US job postings carrying some compensation information in September 2024, up from 52.2 percent a year earlier.
To be plain about our own position: the rate is entirely yours to decide, and no platform should be quoting one to you. The data says only that whatever number you land on works harder inside the posting than outside it. State it per hour, state the currency, and put the expected weekly hours beside it so a student can do the arithmetic without writing to ask.
Short posts get more applications
The same LinkedIn analysis found that posts of 1 to 300 words earn applications at 8.4 percent above the average rate per view, and posts under 150 words draw 17.8 percent more applications than posts of 450 to 600 words. It also found that overly casual tone makes candidates two to four times less likely to apply — brevity is not the same thing as breeziness. For an internship the short version is all that is needed anyway. A student is deciding four things: is this real work, can I do it alongside my semester, will I be paid, and what do I send. Every sentence that answers none of those competes with the four that do.
Say the hours and the overlap in numbers
Two variables decide whether a remote arrangement with an Indian student survives the semester, and both belong in the posting rather than in the third interview. The first is weekly hours: a term-time internship is part-time by national policy, so a realistic band stated up front prevents the slow disappointment of an intern who quietly cannot deliver 30 hours — we set out where that ceiling comes from in the case for the 20-hour term-time internship.
The second is overlap. Say how many hours a day you expect to be synchronous and in which timezone; our IST↔US playbook covers the shapes that work. And check your start date against the academic calendar — as the December problem shows, the same fortnight can be a vacation on one campus and final exams on another.
Ask for a link, not a CV
The application instruction is the highest-yield line in the whole post, because it is the only part that changes what arrives rather than how much. NACE reports that 70 percent of employers now use skills-based hiring, up from 65 percent the year before, most heavily at interview (87 percent) and screening (65 percent). Asking for the right artefact moves some of that work forward into the application itself.
Ask for one link to something the candidate built that you can open in a browser, plus three sentences on the hardest decision inside it. That request costs a genuine builder five minutes and costs everyone else the entire application. It also sets up the two-and-a-half-minute project walkthrough, because you already have the artefact you will be asking about.
The nine-line intern posting
- The problem — one sentence on what the intern will actually work on, named specifically enough to be checkable.
- The stack — three or four technologies, no wish list, no “or similar”.
- The rate — your number, per hour, with the currency stated.
- The hours — a weekly band, not a maximum, and whether it changes during exams.
- The overlap — synchronous hours per day and the timezone they are anchored to.
- The duration — start date, end date, and whether extension is on the table.
- Who you are — team size and who the intern reports to. At your stage this is a selling point, not a disclosure.
- The ask — one link plus three sentences on the hardest decision in it.
- The promise — when you will reply, and then reply. This is the cheapest reputation you will ever buy on a campus.
Where the posting stops working
A good posting fixes composition, not volume. You will still get several hundred applications for one intern seat, and the artefacts attached to them are now cheap to fabricate — the argument we made in why self-reported proof stopped carrying signal. A sharper post improves who applies; it does not tell you which claims in front of you are true.
That is the part Tierones is built for. Students from India’s IITs, NITs and IIITs verify their institute email before they appear, and what you see is the work itself rather than a self-description of it. Roles are remote and part-time by design, and the rate is set by you — we do not quote, cap or suggest one.
FAQ
How long should an internship job posting be?
Short. LinkedIn’s data puts posts of 1 to 300 words at 8.4 percent above the average apply rate per view, and posts under 150 words at 17.8 percent more applications than posts of 450 to 600 words. For an internship the load-bearing content is the problem, the hours, the rate, the overlap and the ask — five things that fit comfortably inside 300 words.
Should I put the pay rate in an intern posting?
Yes. 61 percent of candidates say the salary range is the most important part of a job description, against 28 percent for culture, and Indeed measured 57.8 percent of US postings carrying compensation information by September 2024. The number itself is yours to set — publishing it is simply what makes the rest of the post get read.
Why do my internship postings attract the wrong candidates?
Usually because the requirements contradict the role. Experience language copied from senior postings — where only 18 percent now accept a year or less — filters out honest students and rewards the ones who stretch. State the year of study you want, the stack, and what to send instead.
Hiring your first remote intern from an IIT, NIT or IIIT? Tell us what you need — or write to hire@tierones.io, and we’ll show you proof, not CVs.