Most candidates read a job description like it's a contract. It isn't. It's marketing — written by a recruiter who has 30 minutes and a template, sometimes editorialised by a hiring manager who has 10 minutes and an opinion. The signal is in the parts the template doesn't predict.
Signal 1: How specific are the responsibilities?
Generic responsibilities ("design and ship features," "work cross-functionally," "mentor junior engineers") are a fingerprint of a copy-paste posting. The role exists; the team didn't write the post. That's not bad, but it tells you the interview will be generic too — and your tailored cover letter is wasted.
Specific responsibilities ("own the migration from in-process locks to a Redis-backed coordinator," "extend our event-sourced audit pipeline to 2x ingest") are a fingerprint of a hiring manager who actually wrote the post. That's where you spend an hour tailoring. The interview will probe the specifics.
Signal 2: How honest is the seniority band?
Look at the salary range and the years-of-experience number. If the YOE says "5+" and the comp band tops out at $180k base, you're looking at a senior IC role at a low-budget company. If the YOE says "5+" and the band tops out at $300k, you're looking at a staff-level role with a senior title.
The mismatch tells you what you'll actually be measured against in the interview. The title is the marketing; the comp band is the reality.
Signal 3: Stack vs domain
Some job posts lead with the stack ("you'll work in Go, gRPC, Postgres, and AWS"). Some lead with the domain ("you'll own our risk-scoring pipeline, which prevents $30M/yr in fraud"). The lead tells you what they actually care about.
Stack-led posts care about your tools. The interview will be 70% tool questions. Domain-led posts care about your judgement. The interview will be 70% trade-off questions. Mismatching your prep wastes prep.
What this means for prep
When you mark a job Applied on Cruto, we read the job post and weight the test toward whichever signal dominates. Domain-led? More open-ended trade-off questions. Stack-led? More technical specificity. The mock interview persona adjusts the same way. Cruto's matcher learns from your saves and dismisses; try the free tier.