How to write a job description that gets read

Most job descriptions are written backward. Someone opens last year’s posting, swaps the title, adds a few buzzwords and publishes. The result lists twelve requirements, describes no actual work and reads like every other posting on the board.

A better draft starts from the job itself. This guide walks through it in the order you would write it.

Start with the work, not the wish list

Before you write a line, get an answer to one question from the hiring manager: what will this person be doing on a normal Tuesday in their third month? Write the answer down in plain sentences. That is your raw material.

A short intake call helps. Bring these questions:

• What problem does this hire solve, and what happens if the seat stays empty?
• Which three outcomes would make you glad you hired them a year from now?
• Who will they work with every day, and who do they report to?
• What is genuinely hard about the role?
• What could a strong candidate learn on the job, and what must they arrive knowing?

The last question does most of the work. It splits the requirements list in two before you have written a word of it.

The parts of a posting

Most good postings have the same bones. You can reorder them, but try to keep all of them.

Title

Use the title candidates actually search for. Internal level names (“Associate III”) mean nothing outside your company. If the internal title must appear, add the common one next to it.

Summary

Two or three sentences: what the team does, what this person will own, and why it matters. Skip the company boilerplate here. Put a short company paragraph at the end instead.

Responsibilities

List five to eight things the person will do, most important first. Use verbs and objects (“Run the weekly pipeline review with sales”), not abstractions (“Drive synergy across teams”). If a task takes under five percent of the week, it probably does not belong.

Requirements and nice-to-haves

Keep two lists, labeled honestly.

Requirements are things the person needs on day one. Nice-to-haves are things that would help but can be learned. Be strict about the first list. Every item you add there shrinks the applicant pool, because some people will rule themselves out when they miss a single line.

Check each requirement against the people already doing the work. If your best current team member lacks it, it is a nice-to-have.

Here is how the split looks in practice for a coordinator role:

• Requirements: scheduling across time zones, clear written communication, comfort learning a new system within the first month.
• Nice-to-haves: experience with a specific applicant tracking system, a second language.

The first list describes what the person must do well right away. The second describes what a good hire could pick up. Notice that “three years in recruiting” is in neither list, because the skills it stands in for are already named.

Pay, location and working arrangement

State where the work happens: on site, hybrid with the expected days, or remote with any location limits. Include pay information where you can. Some jurisdictions require it, and candidates notice when it is missing. Your state labor department’s website is the first place to check local posting rules.

The process

Tell candidates what happens after they apply: how many conversations, roughly how long each takes, and when they can expect to hear back. This is also where you mention accommodations. A line inviting candidates to ask for adjustments to the process costs nothing and signals care.

Language that narrows the field

Words in a posting do some of the screening before anyone applies. Watch for these:

• Age-coded phrases such as “digital native” or “recent graduate” when the role does not call for them. Federal law restricts job advertisements that show a preference based on age and other protected characteristics. The EEOC lists what employers may not base employment decisions on.
• Inflated years of experience. “Seven years” for a tool that has existed for four is a signal that nobody checked.
• Jargon and in-house acronyms that a good candidate from another company would not know.
• Vague culture lines like “fast-paced environment” that say nothing. If the pace is real, describe it: “we ship every two weeks and the on-call rotation is one week in six.”

State and local law adds rules beyond the federal ones, and they vary. Counsel or your HR team should have the final word on anything that touches candidate rights.

Rewrite one weak line

Here is the kind of change that improves a posting.

Before: “Responsible for managing a variety of recruiting activities in a dynamic environment.”

After: “Run searches for engineering and product roles from intake to offer, working with three hiring managers and a coordinator.”

The second version tells a candidate what the day looks like, how many managers they will support and where the role starts and ends. It is also easier to interview against, because you know what to ask.

Test the draft before it goes live

Spend ten minutes on these checks:

1. Read it as a candidate. Can you tell what the job is, where it is and what happens next?
2. Ask someone outside the team to read it. If they cannot summarize the role in a sentence, the summary is not working.
3. Match it to the interview plan. Every requirement should map to a question or exercise. Anything with no way to assess it is decoration. The structured interview checklist shows how to build that link.
4. Check how it renders. Paste it into your applicant tracking system and see what survives. Bullets and headings sometimes collapse into one block.
5. Confirm the hiring manager agrees. Get a yes in writing before posting. It prevents the “that is not what I meant” conversation in week three.

When the description needs to change mid-search

If the first ten applicants miss in the same way, the description may be at fault. Look at what they have in common. Maybe the requirements list scared off the right people, or the title attracts the wrong level. Change the posting, note the date of the change, and tell the hiring manager why. Rewriting it quietly makes it hard to learn which version worked.

More on finding candidates once the posting is live is in the Sourcing section.