How to Craft a Job Description that Attracts Top Talent

Something we often overlook when thinking about hiring is the job description. We tend to worry more on where to post about our opening rather than what to post. The job description is the first brand touchpoint for your future employees, and as such, should accurately reflect the company's culture and values.

The majority of candidates say that the quality of a job description influences their decision to apply for a job. LinkedIn has found that short descriptions that are less than 300 words get 8.4% more applications than longer ones. Combine these stats with the fact that we all want to hire top talent, and you end up with the job description being an essential pillar of the hiring process.

I've always thought of job descriptions as a sales pitch where the candidate is your customer. So how can your pitch be attractive to top talent?

The intro

The opening paragraph of the job description should feel like a conversation with your candidate where you tell him briefly about your company's DNA. What does your company do? What markets does it operate in? What notable achievement is worth mentioning? What is your mission?

Here's an example from one of Supportful's job descriptions:

Supportful is an all-remote software engineering consulting company. We work with tech companies in various industries in the US, Europe, and Singapore. Our aim is for Lebanese talents to secure full-time and long-term jobs remotely from Lebanon. We want them to gain the best possible exposure while acquiring a professional experience in world-class work environments.

The role

It's important for the candidate to know what they will be doing as part of your team. I usually include an overview of the role explaining the high-level function in addition to the day-to-day responsibilities. The expected tasks should be as detailed as possible. However, when the responsibilities are not specific to your company but are applicable to the role in any context, omitting them is better than making the description any longer.

For example, a full-stack engineer is expected to be proficient with both frontend and backend technologies. They should know how to implement designs and how to create APIs, and without these they wouldn't be a full-stack engineer. In that case, I skip the responsibilities section and go to the next one: the desired qualifications.

The qualifications

Candidates scrutinize this section to see if they could be a fit for the position. I list in it the experience and expertise requirements for the job, and - if needed - get into specific details about technical stacks. I use different wording to reflect how mandatory the possession of each qualification is:

• X+ years of experience with a specific tech stack: a threshold for the minimum number of years of experience, although I will consider profiles not meeting this minimum if they stand out in other areas.
• Experience with some technology: when the number of years of experience is omitted, it means "at least some" professional experience is needed. It's usually a secondary technology but necessary to perform the job well.
• Familiarity with some technology: being familiar means having been in direct or indirect contact with the technology. They shouldn't be proficient with it, but at least they should have been involved in projects where this technology was used.
• Bonus experience with some technology: this is a nice-to-have skill that could help the software engineer get up to speed more efficiently once hired.

I don't include soft skills in the job description as much as I don't like them in resumes. We all want team players and critical thinkers, and everyone claims to be one. So I do not waste time and bloat the description with such requirements.

What about education you might ask? I never include degree or educations requirements in a job description as I care more about what software engineers did during their career, not about what they have learned at college.

The why

Why should a top talent join your company? What do you offer that stands out from other companies? This is the place where you can elaborate on the benefits employees get, the perks you offer, how they are evaluated, what kind of communication they should expect, the growth opportunities you offer, and a glimpse about company life.

I tend to include emojis in his section as it's the "fun" one in a job description. Here's an example from Supportful's job descriptions:

We want everyone on our team to thrive. This is how we do it:

• It's life-work balance for us, not work-life balance ⚖️
• A great compensation package including top health coverage 👑
• Quarterly one-on-one meetings to stay in sync 🤝🏻
• A tailored training program with rewards for those who complete it 🏆
• A real career development plan 🛣️
• Fun and rich offsite events 🎉
• And more ➕

The culture

I think of this last section as the philosophical dimension of the job description. This is where I describe the raison d'être of the company: the ultimate reason of its existence. While it is optional, I like to include it because it's a reminder about both the culture and the mission of the company. For Supportful, it's clearly about human centricity:

The human is at the center of what we do. And they will always be. We want satisfied clients that are happy working with our team and we also want software engineers who are always on a growth path.

To sum it up, the best job description is one that is clutter-free and does not ask for the impossible. What's the best thing you've ever seen or written in a job description?

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