Job descriptions that attract instead of repel

Requirements inflation

Long requirement lists are usually a hedge against uncertainty. When a team is unsure what the role really needs, it lists everything that might conceivably help, and the advert becomes a wish rather than a description.

The cost is asymmetric. Strong adjacent candidates read a fifteen-item list and self-select out, while the candidates who apply anyway are not filtered by it in any meaningful way. You lose the people you wanted and keep the screening work.

Separate what the role genuinely cannot function without from what can be learned in the first quarter. Most lists shrink by half, and the half that remains is the basis of a usable scorecard.

Write the first ninety days

Candidates respond to clarity about what they will actually do. Three sentences describing the first three months convert better than three paragraphs describing the department's mission.

It also produces a better assessment. If the advert says the first quarter is about untangling a reporting pipeline that four teams depend on, the interview can test exactly that, and both sides learn something real.

Language, length and the parts people skip

Adverts are skimmed. The first hundred words carry most of the decision, so the role, the scope and the reason it exists belong at the top, not after the company boilerplate.

Be concrete about the things candidates are quietly assessing: location expectations, working pattern, team size, who they report to, and pay. Vagueness on any of these reads as bad news, and the strongest candidates have alternatives.

Watch for language that narrows the field without improving it. Terms such as 'rockstar', 'digital native' or arbitrary years-of-experience floors reliably shrink applications from people who would have done the job well.

Test it against your own pipeline

A rewritten advert should change the shape of your applications within two weeks: fewer entirely irrelevant submissions, more candidates who clearly read the outcome and addressed it.

If nothing changes, the problem is upstream. Either the role is not well understood internally, or the market you are advertising into does not contain the person you described — and both are better discovered now than after eight weeks of interviewing.