Top 5 Tips on Writing a Job Description

A well-crafted job description will expedite your hiring process. A job description entailing all the essential information about a position, the qualifications or eligibility criteria, job responsibilities, and your company’s work environment will attract the right candidates.

When writing a job description, you have to ensure that it communicates all the important aspects of what a role is about, the skill-set you are looking for, and what kind of culture and benefits your organisation offers to its employees.

So, what makes a job description effective enough to bring you desired results? How to go about drafting it in a manner that you don’t miss out on something significant? What does a winning job description look like?

Want to find answers to all these questions? Here are the top five tips that you can use for adding impact to your job descriptions!

Don’t undermine the importance of a good title

The title of your job description is like a call to action for the most suitable candidates so it needs to be appealing and inclusive of the significant details. The title should be easy to understand even if you want to keep it creative and catchy.

Avoid using gender and other implications in the title that can reflect a bad image of your company. The title can have keywords that you want the candidates to notice but don’t use difficult technical jargon. Superlative words and adjectives shouldn’t be included in the title.

The length of the title is yet another factor that you need to be careful about, having a too-long title is not a good idea, don’t keep it too short either. The easiest way to come up with a great title is to write 3-4 options and tweak them further, choose one that is most relevant to your job opening, communicates clearly, and is not very long.

How to write the qualifications and responsibilities

Prepare a job description draft with qualifications and responsibilities for a position. When listing the qualifications and duties for a role, think about the ideal candidate for the job, and what kind of profile will best suit your requirements.

However, you need not be too rigid with setting the criteria for a position, keep your expectations realistic. Mention the mandatory qualifications like degrees or certifications first if you are hiring for a role that requires educational qualifications. Use one or two lines for listing the educational requirements.

If there is a position for which experience counts more than a degree, mention the kind of experience needed along with the time duration. Specify which qualifications and experience are essential and which ones are desirable.

Responsibilities should be written in a concise manner, don’t use long and boring paragraphs writing the secondary duties associated with a job. Use bullet points and small lines to explain to the potential candidates what they are expected to do on a regular basis.

Writing the skills section-dos and don’ts

Writing effective job descriptions isn’t possible without honing the skills section. Combining the competencies and skills can be confusing for the candidates, so don’t mix them both. You can have separate skills and competencies sections to simplify the requirements.

Including only the critical skills will make your job description look more realistic, it will be able to yield better results if you don’t stuff it with too many skills. There are some skills that are by default added to every job description like communication skills, and time management skills, while these are the kind of skills that most of the candidates might have, you need to put only the ones that are relevant and are essentially required for a role.

Seek assistance from the department heads and employees working in similar roles when preparing the skill-set for a position, it will aid you with cutting out the unnecessary skills and including the ones that are most important.

The job description should depict your company’s image

The candidates will want to know what kind of culture and values your company has. When writing the job description, you have to represent a distinct image of your organisation. Tell the potential candidates about the work environment and also include the details about the diverse workforce you have and the benefits that are offered to the employees in the job description.

If your company welcomes innovative ideas and prefers candidates with a creative approach, mention it in the description.

The information that you share about your organisation needs to be credible and shouldn’t seem like an exaggeration or self-praise. Don’t use words and phrases that turn the job description into a braggy talent hunt ad

One of the valuable tips for writing job descriptions is to portray the right image of your company, explaining what’s in a position for a potential candidate in terms of job satisfaction and career progression. Include the training and development programmes and other opportunities in the description that are given to the employees who have the drive to excel in their roles.

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Specify the kind of job, location, and other details

Be specific about whether the position is permanent, part-time, onsite, online, or contract-based in the job description. The location must also be mentioned to get applications from candidates that live in the area as not all the job seekers are willing to relocate.

There are some jobs for which you don’t have a fixed salary amount, use the salary range for such positions, and for sales and similar roles where there is uncapped OTE state it in the description.

When listing the benefits, don’t overpromise, do mention the perks all the employees are entitled to like annual holidays, a pension scheme, and healthcare. If there are certain benefits offered for a particular position after the probation period, you can include them in the description but provide clear and concise details.

When writing a job description, use updated and accurate contact details so that the candidates don’t have a hard time reaching out for queries and submitting applications. You can include an email and a phone number if you can actively respond through both, otherwise giving out the email address is sufficient.

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