How to Write a Job Description to Attract the Right Candidate

WE’RE HIRING!

Unfortunately, your company needs a little more than a social media post saying that to get top talent for open roles. Before your organization can take a deep dive into talent acquisition and recruitment, you’ll need to think critically about the type of candidates you’re looking to find and potentially work for your company.

A part of doing so is writing a job posting that includes a straightforward job description while highlighting your employer's brand and company culture. This can be challenging for hiring managers, recruiters, and human resources professionals who are looking to fill open job positions as part of the company’s recruitment marketing strategy.

Taking assistance from tools like job description management software can help enhance your recruitment process. These tools can not only automate the process of updating job descriptions but also provide features like text analyzers, keyword optimization, and regulation compliance for creating more compelling copies.

Elements of a job description

Writing job descriptions is a necessary task when a role opens at your company. As you go about the hiring process, you’ll need to be sure the description of the role includes all of the following elements in order to attract the best candidates.

Job title

The first element within the job description will be the job title.

Consider the job title as the headline for the entire job description. It’s displayed as the clickable link in job board search engines, so it’s important that it properly summarizes the position.

An ideal job title combines what qualified candidates will do (e.g. marketing, sales, finance) and their level within the company (e.g. director, marketing manager, coordinator). It’s important to consider if the job title properly aligns with both the years of experience you’re seeking and the responsibilities the hire will be asked to take on.

Effective job descriptions will also steer clear of cliche job titles that make the reader roll their eyes, like “Sales Rockstar” or “Content Marketing Ninja”.

Not only will these turn away serious professionals, these terms aren’t optimized for job board search engines and may not appear to people looking for titles they actually identify with, like “Sales Executive” or “Content Marketing Specialist.”

Job location

Next up, a job description will have the location of the role, not just your company’s headquarters, unless they’re the same. For instance, if your headquarters is Chicago, IL, but this role is offered in the San Francisco, CA, office, be sure to specify location requirements to avoid any confusion.

Or if the job is remote, you’ll want to make this very clear so you don’t miss out on top talent that could live anywhere in the world. If a candidate prefers working in a physical office, you want to be sure they know upfront that isn’t an option for this role.

Company description

Every job description should include a brief overview of what your company does and the types of customers it serves, as well as the products it sells. This is especially important if your brand isn’t well known to the general public or operates in an obscure industry.

This section also gives you the opportunity to mention your company’s values and culture so job seekers can have a better understanding of what their workdays might be like.

For the most part, this section can remain similar (if not identical) across all of your job descriptions.

Additionally, a good job description will include language that specifies that your organization is an equal opportunity employer that doesn’t discriminate. It should look similar to:

COMPANY NAME is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all open positions without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, age, citizenship status, national origin, marital status, military/veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, and physical or mental disability. Here at COMPANY NAME, we believe in creating a dynamic work environment that puts value in diversity and inclusion as we strive to recruit a diverse group of candidates to help us achieve that goal.

This is a great jumping-off point for you to use when crafting your own company description.

Overview of the role

Now that the basics are out of the way, it’s time to take a deeper dive into the role itself.

This part of the job description is where you’ll introduce the potential candidate to the open role, the team they’d be working on, to whom they would be reporting, and the position’s high-level responsibilities and objectives. It should also specify whether the role is full-time or part-time.

Job responsibilities

Within the job overview, you’ll want to use bullet points to concisely explain the actual responsibilities and job duties of the role. Consider both the day-to-day objectives of what the ideal candidate may do, as well as long-term responsibilities.

After reading this list, the potential new hire should have a better understanding of their own ability to succeed in the role and whether it would be a good fit.

If your company is hiring for a sales position, some responsibilities may include:

• Drive revenue by understanding and aligning our solutions to your client’s needs and objectives.
• Communicate with clients by email and phone from initial contact to closed deal, as often as deemed necessary.
• Prospect and drive new business in an assigned territory.
• Build and maintain a healthy pipeline to meet sales goals
• Research and become a knowledge expert in industry trends and information

If your company is hiring a Content Marketing Specialist, some responsibilities may include:

• Conduct thorough research and competitive analysis on a topic in order to understand how to produce high-quality, competitive content.
• Efficiently write and publish at least four articles a month, with each article averaging about 2,000-3,000 words in length.
• Independently manage your writing process from start to finish.
• Optimize content for search engines and lead generation purposes; stay up-to-date on SEO and on-page optimization best practices.
• Regularly promote your content on a variety of social media platforms.

Job requirement

Also within the job overview will be the requirements, or necessary qualifications, of the specific job.

This should also be concise and in a bulleted list and should include things like level of education, necessary experience, any relevant certifications, and applicable soft skills. Essentially, you should be accessing the responsibilities above and laying out what skills that will be needed to get it all accomplished.

Compensation and benefits

Ready to hype up your company and all it has to offer? Here’s where you’ll do it. Provide as much information as possible regarding the compensation and benefits your organization will be providing the person who lands this open job.

You may not be able to get too specific with compensation, but you could give an estimated range, or say “This role has a competitive base salary with potential for commission”.

You can also specify if your organization offers other additions to salary, like merit pay, employee bonuses, or profit sharing.

Job description examples

In addition to the above examples, it can be helpful to see real job descriptions posted by well-known enterprise companies that are familiar to most people.

Here’s a job description posted by Amazon for a Senior UX Designer:

Next up, check out this job description posted by YouTube.

Job description template

Now that you have a full understanding of all of the necessary components of a job description, it’s time to write your own.

Still feeling hesitant? We’ve got your back -- download our job description template to organize everything you want to include before you post it for the world, and hopefully the perfect candidate to see.

The right candidate is just an application away

The job description is often the first piece of content the right candidate sees regarding your company. It’s important to write job descriptions that will attract candidates to your organization while also being straightforward regarding responsibilities and requirements. Don’t forget to hype up what makes your company unique, too!

Once applicants become interested in open roles at your company, make sure to utilize recruitment marketing software to track and organize candidates, as well as referrals and social recruiting efforts!