How to Write Job Descriptions That Attract the Right Candidates

The job description is the first filter in a hiring process. Before any application is submitted, the description has already determined which candidates will apply and which will not. Candidates who do not recognise themselves in the language of the description will not apply, regardless of whether they would have been suitable. Candidates who recognise themselves but are not suitable will apply regardless of how clear the requirements are.

Most job descriptions are written under time pressure from existing templates, with minimal review before posting. The result is a description that has been drafted by a hiring manager who knows the role, reviewed by nobody with writing expertise, and approved by nobody who has asked whether it accurately describes what the role requires or clearly communicates what kind of person would succeed in it.

The downstream effects are predictable. The application pool contains too many candidates who do not fit and too few who do. The recruiter spends time screening out obvious mismatches that better targeting would have prevented. Strong candidates in the right profile who found the description vague or uninspiring did not apply.

The four elements most job descriptions get wrong

Before looking at what good job descriptions do, it is worth being specific about where most fail.

Requirements vs responsibilities

Most job descriptions list responsibilities accurately but describe requirements imprecisely. Responsibilities tell candidates what they will do. Requirements describe what they need to bring to do it well. The two are different, and candidates use both to assess whether to apply.

A responsibilities section that lists fifteen bullet points suggests a role with no clear priority. A requirements section that lists twelve essential criteria followed by six desirable ones signals that the hiring team has not decided what they actually need. Both patterns increase mismatched applications.

Experience requirements that exclude good candidates

Minimum years of experience requirements are one of the most commonly misused elements in a job description. A requirement for five years of experience in a specific function will exclude candidates who have achieved equivalent depth in three years through intensive exposure, and will not exclude candidates who have spent five years doing limited or routine work in that function. The requirement filters on time rather than on substance.

Where a level of experience genuinely matters, describing what that experience looks like in practice is more effective than specifying a minimum duration.

Language that signals who the organisation wants

Job description language carries implicit signals about the kind of person the organisation is looking for. A description heavy on competitive language, individual achievement metrics, and high-pressure framing will attract candidates who respond to that framing and repel candidates who do not, regardless of whether the role actually requires that disposition. The same role described with different language will attract a different mix of applicants.

Neither framing is inherently better, but both should be intentional. Writing a job description without considering what the language signals to candidates who are deciding whether to apply is writing the first filter without thinking about what you want it to filter.

Missing context about how success is measured

Candidates assessing whether they want a role, and whether they are likely to succeed in it, need to know how performance is evaluated. A description that lists responsibilities without indicating what good performance on those responsibilities looks like, or what the organisation will use to assess whether the new hire is succeeding in their first year, makes it harder for candidates to assess their own fit. Unsuitable candidates are no better at filtering themselves out when the criteria are unclear.

What to check before posting

The JD Quality Scorer evaluates a job description against the criteria that determine whether it will attract the right applicants. It checks for clarity on requirements, specificity of experience criteria, internal consistency between responsibilities and requirements, and language patterns that may be unintentionally limiting the applicant pool.

The JD Audit tool provides a more detailed breakdown of specific elements, including whether the requirements section is proportionate to the role, whether any criteria may be indirectly discriminatory, and whether the description contains sufficient context for candidates to self-assess accurately.

Running a description through both checks before posting takes a few minutes. It typically identifies two or three specific changes that will meaningfully improve the quality of the application pool. The cost of a poorly written job description is paid throughout the entire recruitment cycle in the form of time spent screening unsuitable applications. Spending ten minutes improving the description before it goes live is among the highest-leverage activities in the hiring process.