Hiring practice4 min read
How to write a job description people finish reading
Most job descriptions are a wish list with a company history on top. The ones that attract the right people are shorter, more specific, and print the salary.
Hiring practice4 min read
Most job descriptions are a wish list with a company history on top. The ones that attract the right people are shorter, more specific, and print the salary.
Put this into practice on your next role.
Free for your first role. No card.
Describe the hiring process, step by step, so people know what they are agreeing to.
A job description has one job: to make the right people apply and the wrong people choose not to. Most fail at both. They are long enough that good candidates stop reading, and vague enough that anyone can see themselves in them.
The usual shape is familiar. Three paragraphs about the company. A list of fourteen requirements, half of them adjectives. A line saying the salary is competitive. Nothing about what the person will actually do on a Tuesday.
The first thing a reader wants to know is what they would be doing. Put it first. The clearest way to write it is as the first ninety days: what this person will have done, owned or shipped by the end of their third month.
Before
After
The second version is not longer. It is concrete, and that does the selling. Someone who has done month-end close for two entities reads it and recognises themselves. Someone who has not reads it and knows.
Long requirement lists do real damage. They discourage capable people who meet most but not all of the items, and they tell the reader you have not decided what matters. Sort every requirement into one of two lists.
Try it
Rewrite this requirement so a candidate could show it and you could check it: “Detail-oriented self-starter with excellent Excel skills.”
Then remove the adjectives. “Proactive”, “passionate” and “detail-oriented” describe everyone who has ever applied for anything. If attention to detail matters, write the thing it protects: “our payroll goes out on the 25th without errors.”
Your must-haves list does a second job later. It is the list you will check each candidate against, so write each item as something you could actually test.
“Competitive salary” tells a candidate nothing, and they know it. It costs you the people who cannot afford to spend three interviews finding out the number is wrong, and it fills your pipeline with people who will turn the offer down.
Print a range, and print its unit. A range needs a currency and a period: ₦450,000 to ₦600,000 a month is a range. “450–600k” is a puzzle. If you pay in dollars for a role based in Lagos, say so explicitly. It is not unusual, and it is a selling point you are hiding.
Candidates are agreeing to spend their time on you. Tell them what that involves: how many stages, what each one is, roughly how long it takes, and when they will hear back. It is a small courtesy, and it filters well. People who would not sit a skills test drop out before the test rather than during it.
Application
CV and two short screening questions, about ten minutes.
Skills test
Forty minutes, online, taken whenever suits you within five days.
Interview
One hour with the finance lead and a teammate, the same questions for everyone.
Decision
Within a week of the interview, with a reason either way.
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Up next · Part 3
Screening hundreds of applications without reading every CV twice
When a role draws four hundred applicants, the reading is not the hard part. Staying consistent from the first CV to the four-hundredth is.
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Hiring practice3 min read
When a role draws four hundred applicants, the reading is not the hard part. Staying consistent from the first CV to the four-hundredth is.