Top candidates want to go somewhere they can make an impact. Startups, smaller companies, and recruiters on a budget should all pay particular attention to their job descriptions, which are an opportunity to one-up larger companies with name recognition. Investing the time early on to re-think your job descriptions will save time and money in the long run by helping your team define, attract, and hire better candidates. Before proceeding, refer to our help article on creating and managing job postings.
How traditional job descriptions get it wrong
1 - Most candidates think job descriptions are unclear
Don't be afraid to scrap your existing job descriptions if you find yourself inundated with under-qualified applicants - or worse, no applicants at all! This is especially true in industries with flexible or creative titles.
E.g. 'Customer Happiness Driver' could fill five different functions at five different companies
2 - Traditional descriptions hurt smaller companies and non-profits
Relying on lists of job responsibilities and requirements, without investing time to woo competitive candidates, puts smaller companies, companies in competitive job markets, and non-profits at a major disadvantage. No matter what role you're trying to fill, there's one question to keep top of mind when crafting job descriptions:
Why should a prospective candidate apply to your company if another company is hiring the same role for twice the salary?
3 - Generic descriptions could apply to any company
Nothing makes our hearts hurt more than generic job descriptions copy-pasted in their entirety from a random online database. That generic database doesn't know about your organization's incredible culture, the exciting projects you're working on, or the importance of your mission! Only you are able to make the unique value of your organization shine through.
4 - Generic descriptions focus on benefits to the company, not the candidate
It's easy to get caught up describing your expectations for a new role, but hiring is a two way street, and it's important to step back and consider what you can offer top talent. Assume those all-star candidates you're contacting on LinkedIn have heard from four recruiters already this week - why will your role grab their attention?
Creating impact descriptions
We recommend adopting performance-based descriptions which identify two important dimensions of the job:
- What is the candidate expected to own, teach, learn and improve once they're on the job?
- What should a candidate accomplish by when? How will the candidate's career progress throughout the year?
job description with a traditional list of generic skills compared to an impact description with action plan
Schedule a kickoff meeting with your Hiring Manager
Your hiring managers are busy, and it's normal for hiring managers to feel rushed to publish a job. But time invested upfront crafting a thoughtful impact description is time saved reviewing hundreds of poorly qualified candidates filling up your pipeline! Spending 15 minutes on a job description instead of 90 minutes on a quality impact description isn't a good strategy if you'll waste many hours interviewing candidates who aren't a good fit for the role. Set up a kickoff meeting with your hiring manager to build out the worksheet below.
Here are good questions to brainstorm:
- Who are the top performers on your team? Describe their qualities.
- What will this person be responsible for? What would they be the primary owner of?
- What kind of people wouldn't be successful on your team?
- How will the business/team goals be affected if we can't make this hire?
- Who will this person work closely with and how?
- How does this role at our company differ from the same role at another company?
- How will this role look different 6 months from now? 12 months from now?
- Let's say you hire someone, but they aren't ramping up quickly enough. How will you know they aren't working out? What would that look like?
- Are your dream candidates looking for growth? Fun? Stability? Salary? Make sure you're appealing to the most appropriate candidates, without attracting applications from candidates with misaligned motivations.
Draft your initial impact description
Here's an example of how you can frame an impact description:
This person is someone we can count on to... |
Own: |
Teach: |
Learn: |
Improve: |
Within... |
1 month this person will... |
3 months this person will... |
6 months this person will... |
Review your impact description with the leaders of your hiring team
Keep these best practices in mind while you review your impact descriptions:
- Be narrowly defined and differentiated (as opposed to universal).
- Give people a clear idea of what it would be like to work at your company, in that role.
- Highlight interesting projects & visible impact - inspire and get the right people excited!
- The more specific/concrete, the better! Paint a picture of what the role entails and what success will look like.
- Adopt a casual/friendly tone. Don't be afraid to sound like a human! Read your impact description out loud - would you say this to a friend?
- Remove arbitrary requirements: pedigree, years of experience, skills that can be learned on the job.
Remember, the purpose of a traditional job description is to weed the wrong candidates out. The purpose of an impact description is to get the right candidates excited!
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Unconscious bias can begin at the moment your organization crafts a job posting. Write better job descriptions by focusing on your must-have skills and qualifications, and using gender-neutral pronouns and descriptors to describe them. Keep in mind you can track how unconscious bias shapes your pipeline through configuring and using Diversity Surveys. |
Turn your impact description into a template
Once your impact description is complete, tun it into a job posting template to quickly draw from in the future. All the hard work you put in up front will save you time in the future. For more information refer to our help article on creating and using job posting templates.
Evaluating your impact descriptions
Monitor how many candidates are under-qualified - or better for another role
Receiving a large number of under-qualified candidates may be a sign that you haven't defined the role clearly enough. Similarly, if you're receiving lots of applications from otherwise terrific candidates who would be better suited for other positions, that may indicate that your expectations aren't clear.
Admins can learn how to use the Conversions chart on their Pipeline dashboard to monitor overall application trends.
Collect feedback from your candidates and hiring managers
Close the feedback loop between your candidates, your hiring managers and your recruiting team! Here at Lever, we make sure to flag feedback about our impact descriptions so our recruiters can see how candidates are reacting. Receiving "thank you!" emails from your candidates? Hiring managers going into interviews feeling extra-prepared? Getting shoutouts on Twitter and LinkedIn? Make sure your recruiting team knows they're on the right track!
If you'd like to use a candidate experience survey to collect more structured feedback, then refer to our help article on configuring and using the candidate experience survey.