How to Write a Job Description That Filters, Not Just Attracts

Most job descriptions are written to attract. That's half a strategy, and it's the less useful half.

A good description does two things at once: it makes the right person think this is unusually specific and it sounds like me, and it makes the wrong person close the tab. A hundred applications from the wrong people costs more to process than eight from the right ones — and in a small business, you're the one processing them.

Outcomes, not responsibilities

The single biggest change you can make.

| Responsibility | Outcome | |---|---| | Manage the month-end close process | Month-end close completed within three working days, without the founder touching it | | Handle customer enquiries | First response within two hours, and a resolution rate you own and report on | | Support marketing activities | Ship one publishable piece a week and own the calendar |

Responsibilities describe activity. Outcomes describe success — and a candidate reading the right-hand column can tell within seconds whether they've done this before and whether they want to.

Outcomes also make the interview easier, because you now have something concrete to ask about.

Aim for three to five outcomes. If you can't write them, you haven't defined the role yet, and the honest move is to go back to the decision about whether to hire at all.

Publish the range

Two reasons, and the second matters more than people expect.

It's increasingly required. Pay transparency rules apply in a growing number of jurisdictions, and they vary — check your local rules rather than assuming.

It filters hardest against the people you want. Candidates with options don't spend an hour applying to discover the number. The ones who apply blind are disproportionately the ones without alternatives. Withholding the range doesn't get you a better deal; it changes who applies.

If the range is genuinely wide, say what moves it:

£38,000–£46,000. The top of the range is for someone who has run a close process independently before.

List what actually disqualifies

Long requirement lists suppress applications from good candidates — particularly those inclined to read them literally and rule themselves out.

Write three to five genuine disqualifiers, and label everything else as a preference:

You'll need: two years running bookkeeping for a business with employees, and hands-on experience with a cloud accounting package.

Nice, not necessary: experience in professional services, payroll exposure, any familiarity with our stack.

That distinction costs one sentence and materially widens your applicant pool.

Describe the actual conditions

This is where small businesses win, and where most of them stay quiet out of embarrassment.

Say the true thing:

This is a five-person business. There is no HR department, no established process for this role, and no one to hand you a playbook — you will build it. If you want structure and a defined career ladder, this will frustrate you. If you have wanted to own something end to end, this is that.

That paragraph loses you candidates. The ones it loses were going to leave in four months. The ones who read it and lean in are the ones the role actually suits, and they're hard to reach any other way.

The structure

1. Job title — the searchable, conventional one. Not "Growth Ninja."
2. One-line summary — what the role exists to do.
3. Salary range and location arrangement — remote, hybrid, on-site, and the hours.
4. The outcomes — three to five.
5. What you'll need — the genuine disqualifiers.
6. Nice, not necessary — everything else.
7. What this is really like — the honest conditions.
8. How to apply — one clear instruction.

Company mission and values go near the bottom. Everyone puts them first; almost nobody reads past the outcomes to find them.

Make the application do work

One small addition improves signal enormously:

In your application, tell us about a process you inherited and improved. What was it like before, what did you change, and what happened?

Nearly free for a serious candidate, and it screens out mass applications instantly. Keep it to one question — anything longer and you're asking for unpaid work, which suppresses good applicants.

The mistakes

1. Listing responsibilities. Says nothing about what success looks like.
2. Hiding the range. Filters hardest against candidates with options.
3. Fifteen requirements. Good candidates rule themselves out; confident under-qualified ones don't.
4. Boilerplate first. Nobody reaches the outcomes.
5. Overselling the conditions. You'll fill the role and refill it in five months.
6. Inventing a title. Nobody searches for it.

What to do next

Write the three to five outcomes before anything else. If they don't come easily, that's the finding — go back and document the recurring tasks the role owns, because a description you can't write is a job you can't yet interview for.

Once you have applicants, the constraint moves to interviewing when you've never hired before.