Writing a Job Description That Filters Before Anyone Applies

A job description is not an advertisement with a list attached. It is the first stage of your screening process, and it operates before you have any control over the outcome — by determining who decides not to apply.

That makes its failures expensive and invisible. You never see the candidate who read your posting and closed the tab.

Requirement inflation

The most common and most costly problem.

A hiring manager lists everything that would be nice, HR adds standard boilerplate, and the posting ends with fourteen requirements and eight "preferred" items. Nobody intends this as a strict specification. It reads as one.

The asymmetry is the problem: candidates who read requirements carefully are the ones you lose. Conscientious, well-calibrated people treat a list as a specification and self-deselect at seven out of fourteen. Overconfident people apply regardless. You have built a filter that selects for overconfidence.

The test for each line: would I reject an otherwise outstanding candidate for lacking this?

If no, it is not a requirement. Move it to "helpful" or delete it. Most lists lose half their entries and improve.

Degree requirements deserve their own pass. Many persist purely from habit — several large employers have removed them without any measurable drop in hire quality. Ask what the degree is standing in for, and whether you could ask for that thing directly.

Describe the job, not the ideal person

Compare:

We're looking for a passionate, results-driven marketing professional with a proven track record of driving growth in fast-paced environments.

You'll own our email programme end to end — about 40,000 subscribers, currently one campaign a week. The first six months are mostly fixing our segmentation, which is bad.

The second is worse advertising copy and a far better job description. It gives a candidate something to evaluate themselves against, and — crucially — the specificity attracts the people who find that particular problem interesting.

Include the unglamorous parts. Candidates who accept a role and discover the reality within a month leave, and that costs more than the vacancy did.

Include the salary

In a growing number of jurisdictions this is now a legal requirement rather than a choice — pay transparency laws cover several US states, and EU member states are implementing the Pay Transparency Directive.

Set that aside and it is still correct. Omitting the band means candidates outside it apply anyway, wasting their time and yours, while candidates who assume the worst do not apply at all. A range you are genuinely willing to pay filters more effectively than any requirement in the list.

If you must give a wide band, say what moves someone through it.

Structure that works

Title. The standard industry term, not the internal one. "Member of Technical Staff III" is unsearchable. If your internal title is unusual, post under the recognised equivalent.

One-paragraph summary. What the role does and why it exists.

What you'll do. Four to six concrete responsibilities with scale attached. "Manage the content calendar" is weak. "Own a calendar of roughly 8 pieces a month across the blog and newsletter" is specific.

What we need. Five to eight requirements, each one you would genuinely enforce.

Helpful but not required. Explicitly separated. This section does real work — it is where you put things that would be nice without deselecting good candidates.

Practicalities. Salary band, location and remote policy, reporting line, interview process and rough timeline.

That last item is underrated. Telling candidates the process — three stages, roughly two weeks — measurably reduces drop-off, and it costs one sentence.

Language that narrows the pool

Some of this is well-evidenced, some is softer, and it is worth knowing which is which.

Reasonably well-supported: heavily masculine-coded language ("dominate", "aggressive", "rockstar", "ninja") is associated with fewer applications from women. The effect sizes in the literature are modest, but the cost of avoiding those words is zero.

Definitely true and often overlooked: unexplained jargon and internal acronyms exclude anyone outside your company. "Experience with our KTLO process" means nothing externally.

Worth stating explicitly: if you are open to non-traditional backgrounds, career changers, or people returning after a break, say so. Candidates assume the conventional answer unless told otherwise, and a single sentence changes who applies.

Connect it to how you will screen

The posting and the scorecard should be the same document, written twice for two audiences.

If a requirement is going to be scored, it should be in the posting. If something is in the posting and will not be scored, remove it — you are deselecting candidates over something you do not actually care about.

The exercise reveals a lot. Teams that write the scorecard first almost always find their draft posting lists requirements nobody intends to enforce, and omits things that will heavily influence the decision.

The check before you publish

1. Would I reject an outstanding candidate for missing each listed requirement?
2. Would someone outside the company understand every term?
3. Does the salary band appear?
4. Does it describe actual work, with scale, including the dull parts?
5. Does every requirement appear on the scorecard, and vice versa?
6. Does it say what the interview process is?

Six questions, ten minutes, and it is the cheapest quality improvement available anywhere in hiring.