How to Create a Job Description Template that Attracts the Perfect Candidates
There was a time when you thought if you borrowed a job description template from a competitor, moved a few words around, and slapped it on Indeed you’d attract a bushel of job ready applicants begging to work with you in 24 hours.
Sorry not sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Job description templates are really useful but if you don’t make sure the role and your company look their very best, you’re going to end up with unqualified, unmotivated people filling up your applicant tracking system. It’s not their fault though, you just didn’t tell your dream applicants that you were looking for them. Even if a potential client has been lowkey stalking your careers page waiting for a role they’re perfect to show up, the job posting is an opportunity for you to make a great impression. This is your place to set the expectation of what’s coming next, the kind of company you are, and the kind of employee who will be a great value add to the team.
You should never leave that massive responsibility up to a basic job description template. Instead, follow these guidelines below and create a job description template that highlights your company, attracts perfect candidates, and makes it easy for you to recreate this success in the future. Your goals when creating a job description are to:
Make the job responsibilities clear and appealing to the ideal candidate.
Share candidate requirements.
Indicate potential growth opportunities for the role (where applicable).
Make your company sound incredible.
Make the role sound appealing.
When your boss (or you if you’re your boss) let you know that there’s a new position to fill, making the job role sound appealing and close the perfect candidate are the highest likely marching orders you were given. It makes sense. These two tasks go hand in hand but an appealing role doesn’t just include a list of tasks. It includes all those in-between the lines characteristics the right candidate can identify.
Instead of having your job description template begin with a list of to-do’s an employee will need to accomplish, consider starting the job listing with a description of your company.
This is important whether you have name recognition like Forbes or you’re an innovative startup like Wellthy. The company intro in the job description is where you start the wooing process by sharing your company’s impact, philosophy, and the potential impact an employee can hope to have.
In the Forbes intro below, they don’t rely on name recognition to attract a potential employee but share the kind of reach that person can have. Knowing that a company has a user base of 140 million people is attractive for a candidate that values large scale operations and indicates the level of experience needed for the role.
The Covid-19 specific note at the end also indicates company values. Remote for now or remote forever is a question that many candidates have when applying for new roles and it’s refreshing to see that established so early on.
Snippet of Forbes job posting for CRM Data Manager, Marketing current as of 3/12/21.
In comparison, Wellthy shares the “why” behind why they exist and the kind of good an employee in this role can do. As a candidate you would know you’re applying for a mission-oriented company and not one primarily motivated by financial goals or flashy follower counts.
This description below also starts the process of sharing individual employee contributions. In this case, the employee knows they will be a significant part of the landscape a) by having a real role in “shap[ing] the future” of the primary customer communication tool and b) reporting directly to the CEO.
Snippet of Wellthy job posting for Product Manager current as of 3/12/21.
Sharing who an employee will report to doesn’t just indicate who to (politely) stalk on LinkedIn it indicates the level of responsibility and autonomy that an employee should expect. This may be a deciding factor to keep reading through the posting (or not) for senior-level employees.
Share candidate requirements.
In the best environments, job requirements indicate most of an employee’s day-to-day tasks. For experienced candidates they want to know if they’ll be responsible for ideating, implementing, or both so it’s important to be upfront about that.
If they’re going to be held responsible for ideating, they’re going to need to demonstrate strong skills tracking successful campaigns. If they’re implementing, they need to show the ability to build and maintain strong work relationships and procedures. If they are very much off the mark for either set of skills they’ll know this isn’t the right fit for them.
For example, marketing roles sometimes include the word “manager” to indicate managing content or strategies but it doesn’t always mean managing people. This Miro role does the job of sharing that their Demand Generation Campaigns Manager manages people as well as owns the campaign strategy.
Snippet of Miro job posting for Product Manager current as of 3/12/21.
The next vital part of your job description template is listing the experiences and expectations you’ll have for candidates. Unfortunately, this is where your posting can go really wrong if you rely too much on pie-in-the-sky goals hurriedly typed out by a department manager. For example, you don’t want to make the faux pas of requiring 5 years of TikTok content creation experience because even TikTok founders don’t have that level of experience.
In hiring for this TikTok Social Editor/Producer role, Verizon requires the skill of “video production experience with the ability to produce/develop compelling short/mid-form video across social platforms”. By having the candidate demonstrate parallel skills they broaden the opportunity for a candidate to demonstrate the ability to perform in this role.
Snippet of Verizon Media job posting for TikTok Social Editor/Producer current as of 3/12/21.
So my suggestion? Be realistic about the skills you expect a candidate (that you can afford) to have. If you find yourself getting too “pie-in-the-sky” move skills that are not vital to performing the role to a “nice to have” or “preferred skills” section.
Indicate potential growth opportunities for the role.
There’s this old school mentality about “doing the job you have” and worrying about the role that you want later. However millennials, the largest demographic in the workforce, aren’t old school. Millenials are job hoppers and have established a trend of doing so to bolster their careers. This means that when they are on their way in, they’re probably already thinking about their way out. They will still perform well at their jobs, that’s their main goal, but they won’t stick around for more than a year or two if their achievements aren’t being recognized.
Incorporating phrases like “growth-minded” or scalable, and/or sharing your process of result tracking in your job description template indicate a strong disposition towards individual achievements while working towards company goals.
A candidate will get the feel for growth opportunities largely by reading in-between the lines versus expecting a “potential growth opportunities” section on the job description. Before hitting publish on your job description, I suggest asking yourself these questions to give your candidates an indicator of those growth potentials:
Why are you hiring for this role? Will this be replacing a previous employee or is this a first-time hire where they have big potential to set the standards of growth?
If the role you’re hiring for is a part-time or contract role, is there potential for the role to grow to permanent or full-time?
If you’re hiring for a start-up and they are the first department hire, what will the new hierarchy look like?
Make your company sound incredible.
If you take nothing else from this article, know that this is the most section in your job description template to attract perfect candidates. Your job description template has to make your company look appealing. There are an endless number of CFO, CTO, Content Creator, Product Manager roles, etc. but why should a candidate specifically want to work for your company?
With an entry-level role, a candidate wants to know they’re going into a supportive environment with potential to learn from strong individuals. In a mid-level role, a candidate wants an environment where they’ll get to strut their stuff while working within defined processes, and in a senior-level role a candidate wants to know that their expertise and authority will be respected.
Something else that’s important, especially in the pandemic era is relinquishing the responsibility for the employee to always be “on”. This makes it important to share employee benefits, healthcare, describe the work environment (important if in-person or remote), and vacation policies.
These aren’t after thoughts but a fundamental feature of the job description template. Even if you go the route of a company like Zapier with a detailed career page you still want to reiterate benefits on the actual job description template.
This snippet below indicates a strong remote culture that seems to be a foundational component of the company versus an afterthought. It goes on to demonstrate a strong company culture through a mandatory vacation policy, extensive paid parental leave, in-person retreats, and profit-sharing. A candidate can see that their mental and emotional health will be considered alongside job requirements. They’ll get to spend some time being “off” without having to worry about things like if they’ll have to ration time off for doctor’s appointments or struggle through the day with a struggle bus laptop.
Snippet of Zapier job posting for Data Warehouse Engineer current as of 3/12/21.
Conclusions
Once you nail your job description template you’ll have a base that makes creating job postings easier and help you better attract the right candidates. It’s worth it to take the time to get this right once and iterate on the process moving forward so that you can spend more time interviewing and then making offers for amazing future employees (who always say yes!)