Guide
Writing a job description
By the Capstan team at PeopleCap · Last updated 17 August 2026 · About 6 min read
A job description has two jobs, and most only do one. It should attract the people who would be great at the role, and it should repel the people who would not, so neither of you wastes an interview finding out. The way you do both is the same: be specific and be honest. Vague, inflated posts pull in everyone and tell you nothing.
This guide covers the outcome the role owns, real must-haves versus nice-to-haves, how to write about pay and level without flinching, inclusive language that actually works, and what to leave out.
Lead with the outcome, not a list of duties
Open by stating what the role is accountable for. One sentence, plain words, the result rather than the activity. “Own our billing system so revenue stops being a spreadsheet the founder maintains” tells a candidate more than ten bullets of “responsible for” ever could.
The reason this matters is that good people choose roles by the outcome they get to own. A list of duties describes motion. An outcome describes a job worth taking. Write the outcome first, and the candidate who wants exactly that job will recognise it and self-select in, while the one who wanted something else will move on, which is the point.
Under the outcome, three or four sentences on what the person will actually do in the first months. Concrete, not aspirational. What lands on their desk in week one.
Real must-haves versus nice-to-haves
This is where most posts quietly sabotage the search. Every requirement you list narrows the pool, and half the requirements on a typical post are not requirements at all.
Split the list in two, and be honest about the split.
- Must-haves are the two or three things a person genuinely cannot do the job without. If someone brilliant lacked this, could they still succeed? If yes, it is not a must-have.
- Nice-to-haves are everything else. Label them as such, plainly. A candidate who has the must-haves and none of the nice-to-haves should feel invited to apply, not warned off.
Long requirement lists do measurable damage. Strong candidates, and especially strong candidates from underrepresented groups, read a wall of bullets and decide they are not qualified when they are. A short, genuine list widens your pool with exactly the people you want.
Cut the years-of-experience thresholds where you can. “Five years of X” is a proxy that screens out career-changers and fast learners while letting through anyone who idled for five years. Describe the capability, not the tenure.
Write about pay and level honestly
Put a real range in, or at least an unambiguous level. The arguments against are all weak and the arguments for are strong.
An honest range filters out mismatches before anyone spends an hour in an interview. It signals that you are a company that deals straight, which the right candidates notice. In a growing number of places it is becoming a legal requirement anyway, so you may as well be early. A post with no pay information reads, correctly, as a post hiding something.
You do not need to give a figure in the guide, but the description should. Be clear about the level too: is this a first hire who builds a function from nothing, or an experienced operator who runs one that exists. Getting the level wrong in the post wastes weeks, because you interview people calibrated to the wrong job.
For the mechanics of turning the agreed number into a clean offer, the offer letter guide covers the document itself.
Inclusive language, practically
Inclusive writing is mostly subtraction. You are removing the things that quietly tell good people not to apply.
- Cut coded demands like “rockstar”, “ninja”, and “work hard, play hard”. They signal a narrow culture and screen on personality, not ability.
- Cut jargon and internal acronyms. If a capable outsider cannot parse the post, you have filtered on familiarity with your bubble.
- Describe the outcome and the work, not an ideal personality type. “Thrives under pressure” is not a skill, it is a warning.
- Keep the requirements short and genuine, for the reason above.
- Say something true about how you work: remote or in person, hours, how decisions get made. Honesty here attracts fit and repels mismatch, which is the whole game.
None of this needs a tool or a checklist. It needs you to read the post as a stranger would and delete anything that reads as a filter you did not mean to set.
What to leave out
A job description is not the employee handbook. Leave out the exhaustive benefits list, the company history, and the paragraph of values that could belong to any company. A candidate skims. Give them the outcome, the real requirements, the pay and level, and one honest paragraph about the work, then stop.
Leave out the inflated scope too. Do not describe a role as bigger than it is to attract stronger people, because they will discover the truth in month one and leave. The post that repels the wrong candidate is doing you a favour.
Where the post actually goes
One structural point, because it decides how much of the above survives contact with a tool.
A job description should be attached to the role, not retyped into a job board and then forgotten. The pattern worth looking for is a requisition that carries the description, a publish step that snapshots it as it stood at that moment, and a public page where people apply directly. That last part matters more than it sounds: an application that arrives in your pipeline is a record with a stage and a history, while an application that arrives as an email attachment is a task somebody has to remember.
Capstan’s Recruitment module works this way. Published roles appear on a careers page at your own address, and a candidate applies and uploads a résumé without creating an account, because making someone sign up to apply is a filter you did not mean to set. The résumé is stored rather than parsed into fields, so nothing is silently rewritten by a machine reading it badly, and no AI ranks or screens anyone at any point.
Where to go next
The description comes out of the role you defined in the hiring plan, so write that first if you have not. Once the post is live and applications arrive, run a fair interview process that tests against the outcome you wrote, and the offer letter guide covers the document at the end of it.
Common questions
What is the most important part of a job description?
The outcome the role owns. Most descriptions lead with a list of responsibilities, which reads like every other post and tells a candidate nothing about what success looks like. Open with the result the person is accountable for, in one plain sentence, and the right people will recognise the job they want.
Should a job description include the salary?
Include a real range, or at least a clear level, unless local law already requires the full range. It filters out mismatches before anyone wastes an interview, signals that you deal honestly, and in a growing number of jurisdictions it is becoming mandatory anyway. A post with no pay information reads as a post with something to hide.
How many requirements should a job description list?
Keep the true must-haves to two or three, and mark everything else as nice to have. Long requirement lists are the main reason good candidates, and especially good candidates from underrepresented groups, self-select out. Every extra bullet shrinks your pool without improving the hire.
How do I make a job description more inclusive?
Cut jargon and coded language, describe the outcome rather than a personality type, keep the requirements short and genuine, and avoid demands like "rockstar" or years-of-experience thresholds that screen on proxies rather than ability. Inclusive writing is mostly the removal of things that quietly tell people not to apply.