A job description isn't administrative paperwork. It's the first impression a candidate forms of your company, often before they've had a single conversation with anyone on your team — and most job descriptions fail that test before they ever generate an application.
The Laundry List Problem
If a job description has fifteen bullet points of required skills, it's not attracting talent. It's scaring qualified people away before they hit "apply."
Top-performing job descriptions focus on the essential skills the role actually needs, not an exhaustive wish list built from every nice-to-have anyone on the team has ever thought of. The test worth applying is simple: what will this person actually do in their first 90 days, and what do they need to know to do it well? Everything outside that scope belongs in a "nice to have" category, not the required list.
Write for a Human, Not a Compliance Document
Job descriptions should be written at roughly an 8th–10th grade reading level, and that's not a knock on the candidates reading them — it's a recognition that clarity attracts confidence, while complexity creates doubt about whether the role, or the company, is what it appears to be.
Smart writing isn't the same as corporate writing. Smart writing is easy to understand, direct, and inclusive by default. A useful test: read every requirement and ask "would I actually say this out loud in conversation?" If the answer is no, it needs to be simplified before it goes live.
Drop the Buzzwords
Job descriptions aren't marketing slogans, and treating them like one backfires. Leading with "rockstar," "ninja," or "wizard" doesn't signal culture — it signals that the role hasn't been thought through carefully enough to describe in plain terms.
Lead with purpose, impact, and real expectations instead. Clarity is what attracts commitment from serious candidates; cleverness mostly attracts people who didn't read past the headline.
Inclusive Language Isn't Optional
A few checks worth running on every posting: avoid gendered terms ("strong salesman" becomes "strong communicator"), use people-first labels throughout, replace internal jargon with everyday language, and drop phrases like "native English speaker" or "recent graduate" — both exclude qualified candidates for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to do the job.
Inclusive language isn't a trend or a compliance checkbox. It's a genuine hiring advantage, because it widens the pool of strong candidates who feel like the role was actually written for someone like them.
Required vs. Preferred — The Distinction That Matters Most
Good job descriptions clearly separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. When everything gets listed as "required," the practical effect is losing candidates who could do the job well but don't check every single box — and those candidates self-select out before ever applying, which means you never even see them.
A quick exercise worth running on your next posting: take three bullet points currently listed under "required" and honestly ask whether they're truly non-negotiable. Moving even a few of them to "preferred" measurably expands the pool of people willing to apply.
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*Job descriptions that attract the right candidates — instead of scaring off good ones or drowning in the wrong applicants — are one of the most common gaps we help companies fix. [See how MJL Recruiting & Consulting approaches job description development →]*