A job description is a written summary of the tasks, responsibilities and qualifications required for a specific position, and the qualities of the ideal candidate to fill this role.

You can always go online and use an existing job description from a random website, or you can perform an in-depth analysis to identify what your business needs precisely for a role.

The problem with the copy-paste approach is that not all job functions are the same for every company, as each have unique needs (e.g. your programmer role requires someone who uses JavaScript and PHP, while another firm may need a Python specialist). That’s where the need to develop your own job descriptions comes in.

At the same time, you need to do it right. A vague or poorly written job description will impede your efforts in finding the best talent. Or you might end up hiring the wrong person altogether.

This article is designed to help you craft your own job descriptions that actually make sense for your business.

Step #1: Gather the relevant people/information

The following people need to get together and identify what the company needs in a specific role they’re looking to fill:

• Employees performing similar tasks;
• Those who stand to directly benefit from the position (e.g. employees whose workload will be relieved by the new role);
• Employees who’ll be working directly with the person hired for the position;
• The position’s immediate superior.

Note: If it’s your first hire , you’ll have to do the analysis on your own. To get a better grasp of what you may need or want for the open position/s, you need to research similar jobs.

The best place to start would be employment-related websites (e.g. Glassdoor, Indeed) where you input your desired job title, see what comes up, and learn about the functions of similar or related roles.

Step #2: Identify the role’s objectives

Next, you need to brainstorm and establish the basics of each job you need filled by asking yourselves the following key questions for each role:

• What is the purpose of the role?
• What are the role’s deliverables?
• What are its key performance indicators (KPIs)?

Case in point: Here are some sample answers for a hypothetical “Digital Marketing Specialist”:

1. Purpose of the role: To lead the company’s digital marketing campaigns, broaden its online reach, develop its brand, and boost its conversion rates on all its online platforms.
   
   
2. Deliverables:
   • Increased leads and sales.
   • Improved conversion rates.
   • Reduced cost of acquiring new customers.
   • Increased organic traffic for the company website.
   • Reduced bounce rate for the company’s website.
   • Increased following and engagement in social media.
     
     
3. KPIs:
   • Brand awareness
     • Brand mentions
     • Media mentions
     • External links
     • Referral traffic
     • Branded searches
       
       
   • Website performance
     • Unique visitor traffic
     • Bounce rate
     • Direct traffic
     • Time on site
     • Organic traffic
     • Pages per session
     • Search rankings
       
       
   • Lead metrics
     • Conversion rate (by website source)
     • Click-through rate
     • Visit-to-lead/visit-to-signup rate
     • Return on investment

Remember: Make sure that the deliverables and KPIs are quantifiable, otherwise you won’t be able to determine whether the employee hired for the role is successful at their job.

Step #3: Specify the tasks

The next step is to enumerate the role’s individual tasks and duties so that the employee can achieve the objectives established in the previous step.

To create a list of tasks for any role, visualise a typical day on the job and list down the responsibilities that need to be carried out in short and clear bullet points.

An effective task statement can be broken down into three parts:

• It starts with an action verb. This helps make each bullet point more concise, specific and easy to scan.
  
  
• It comes with a description of the task to give applicants an idea what needs to be done.
  
  
• It ends with the task’s intended result or outcome, adding specificity to each responsibility.

Following the Step #2 example, here’s a sample task list for the “Digital Marketing Specialist”:

• Design and manage digital marketing campaigns that align with business goals to promote the company and its services, and increase its sales.
  
  
• Coordinate the creation of content (e.g. website, blog posts, marketing collateral, videos) used for digital marketing campaigns.
  
  
• Establish our web presence on various social media channels through shareable content to boost brand awareness.
  
  
• Engage with our audience on social media to grow our online following and enhance our reputation.
  
  
• Liaise with Marketing, Sales and Product Development teams to ensure brand consistency in digital media campaigns.
  
  
• Suggest and implement digital marketing methods to increase profitability.
  
  
• Monitor the company website’s performance and make the necessary adjustments on digital media campaigns.
  
  
• Monitor ROI and KPIs to determine the effectivity of individual projects.
  
  
• Communicate with the Director and stakeholders regularly to keep them up to speed of digital marketing efforts.

Tip: You can look for sample task lists online and use it as a starting point to create your own. But take note that you’ll still need to customise your list to fit your objectives for the role.

Step #4: Determine the tools and processes

Now that you have a list of the role’s tasks and responsibilities, you can name the applications, systems and processes required to complete them.

As per the “Digital Marketing Specialist” example from previous steps, here is a sample overview of a hypothetical role’s processes, applications and systems:

Processes

1. Lead generation and management
   • Capture qualified leads through content (e.g. blogging), inbound marketing (e.g. blogging, on-page SEO), and demand generation (e.g. paid search).
   • Gather lead intelligence through progressive profiling.
   • Monitor and nurture leads through the sales funnel through relevant content based on buyer persona (e.g. personalised email campaigns).
   • Move leads to the CRM via marketing automation, then assign them to sales representatives.
     Use analytics tools to optimise every step in the process and improve results.
     
     
2. Social media marketing
   • Create, curate and share engaging content to drive traffic to the company website and give value to followers.
   • Converse with followers (e.g. ask questions, solve problems) to enhance customer experience and create engagement.
   • Monitor and analyse social media analytics, then make adjustments based on the data to optimise marketing efforts.
     
     
3. Content marketing
   • Plan and develop a content strategy to guide marketing efforts.
   • Use tools to track industry news and trends.
   • Research what the target audience wants to recommend suitable article topics for content production.

Applications and tools used

1. Analytics
   • Google Analytics
   • Facebook Analytics
   • Twitter Analytics
     
     
2. SEO and blogging
   • Google Keyword Planner
   • Ubersuggest
     
     
3. Social media
   • Hootsuite
     
     
4. Email automation
   • MailChimp
     
     
5. Visual design
   • Canva

Systems used

• Windows 10 (operating system)
• WordPress (website CMS)

Step #5: Identify the skills and qualifications

Once you’ve listed a role’s objectives, KPIs, tasks, tools and processes, you should be able to identify what skills and qualifications are necessary to accomplish them.

As per the “Digital Marketing Specialist” example in the previous steps, here is a sample list of skills and credentials needed for a hypothetical role:

• Data analysis
• Copywriting and editing skills
• SEO and SEM
• Social media advertising
• Tech-savvy
• Problem solving
• Research skills
• Basic design skills (e.g. HTML, Photoshop)
• Basic WordPress skills (i.e. writing/publishing blog posts/pages)
• A degree or equivalent qualification in digital marketing
• A degree or equivalent qualification in email marketing

Just a couple of things to remember when listing skills and qualifications:

• Don’t require too many skills. Think about what are essential and what are preferred. Making a long list of required skills will make the role impossible to fill (more on this later). Consider this: your preferred skills can also be gained via training or learning on the job.
  
  
• The experience you require should be reasonable. For instance, asking for 3 years of experience in cutting-edge technology is pretty much impossible.

Important: You should manage your expectations

Have you ever seen a purple squirrel?

When business owners and hiring managers enumerate a highly detailed but disparate list of qualifications their ideal candidate should have, they might as well be looking for the mythical creature.

Because there’s no such thing as a purple squirrel. It’s really just a metaphor used by recruiters to refer to unrealistic expectations by a company.

For instance, if you’re looking for the same “Digital Marketing Specialist” mentioned earlier, requiring the qualifications listed above (refer to Step #5) is reasonable because they’re necessary for such roles.

If you want a “Digital Marketing Specialist” with administrative skills like basic email and calendar management (so that they can occasionally double as an admin assistant), sure. That can still probably work because:

• Having email and calendar management skills are hallmarks of an organised professional.
  
  
• Tech-savvy candidates should know their way around email clients and time management software.

But there’s a caveat.

For unusual hybrids like this “Digital Marketing Specialist/Admin Assistant” to work, you’ll have to identify which function the employee should prioritise. By themselves, either responsibility will keep the worker busy; but shouldering both simultaneously will eventually demand that one of them will take precedence, especially when conflicting deadlines occur.

However, if you want your “Digital Marketing Specialist/Admin Assistant” to also have bookkeeping skills (because maybe you view bookkeeping as still related to administrative functions), then you’re already in purple squirrel territory.

Have you ever seen a “Digital Marketing Specialist/Admin Assistant” who’s also a professional bookkeeper? Or an in-demand graphic designer who’s also a high-performing sales representative? Or a recruiter who’s also a copywriter and MMA fighter, and speaks German?

Admittedly, it’s not impossible for an individual to achieve more than one major specialisation. What’s impossible is that:

• You’ll find such candidates in a reasonable amount of time.
• They’ll also possess the other important qualifications you’re looking for.
• You somehow find one, and they’ll work for peanuts.

The lesson here is that you need to be realistic with your expectations. You shouldn’t require candidates to have everything so that you can hire fewer people overall and save money.

Instead, the candidates you source should possess qualifications that are normally expected in the role you’re hiring for.

You can probably deviate a little on minor items, but temper your expectations; it’s unlikely you’ll find a candidate with expertise in several professional fields. And if by some stroke of luck you manage to find one, they won’t be cheap.

Step #6: Complete the job description

To top off your efforts, remember the following when finishing the job description:

Make it readable

People don’t read online; they scan. For applicants to better understand your job description, see to it that you use scannable text such as:

• Bulleted lists, like this one.
• Meaningful subheadings (not clever ones) to separate sections.
• Concise descriptions.

Don’t use jargon

Avoid the use of specialised language when writing your job description. It’ll confuse applicants (e.g. what does “Digital Marketing Rockstar” even mean?) and make your job description less searchable online.

Besides, people don’t normally input “rockstar” or other slang words when searching for jobs over the internet.

Be specific

Using a clear-cut job title that accurately describes a role will always be more effective than a general one. If you must use acronyms, make sure it’s known in your industry.

For example:

• Use “Senior C# Developer” instead of just “Software Engineer”.
• Go for “Project Manager – PMO – Data Analytics and Revenue Management” instead of plain old “Project Manager”.

Sell the role and your company

It’s a given that job applicants are called such because they’re looking for a job. But even then, you should give them good reasons to work for you. You should sell them the role and your organisation.

Why? Because they have to either:

• Leave their current company, or;
• Choose your company over other potential employers.

One effective approach in writing job descriptions is by including the benefits you provide. If your perks are compelling enough, candidates will be enticed to take the leap.

Note: While including a brief summary about what your company does is informative, it’s not really that interesting for applicants. Rather, talk about parts of your organisation’s culture which may interest candidates (e.g. “We focus on giving our people work-life balance”).

Add the necessary details

You need to include the following key information for every job description you publish:

• Employment arrangement – Is the role full-time or part-time? Is it permanent or contractual employment? Applicants need to know beforehand.
  
  
• How to apply – Concise instructions on how applicants can apply for the role.
  
  
• Contact information – Include this even if the website hosting your job description provides the option to directly apply for the role. This lets applicants ask questions relevant to the position that may not have been covered in the job description.
  
  
• Salary – A competitive salary would make your opening more desirable and may generate more interest. But don’t provide a specific number; just a ballpark figure to allow for variations in the candidates’ experience and overall skill.
  
  
• Schedule – Including the work schedule for a role is necessary, especially for remote roles or jobs with unusual hours.
  
  
• Home office requirements – Applicants need to know what home setup you require, which would allow them to do the job properly.

Note: Posting your job description on an employment site will likely show when it was published. If the site doesn’t have this option, make sure you include the information so that applicants can tell if the opening was recent.

Keep it at a certain length

For best results, aim for to keep your job description in the neighbourhood of 300 to 600 words, but it’s fine to go just a little over. Various sources suggest this range as the ideal length.

If you go overboard, you may have to deal with a drop-off in the number of applicants.

Put it all together

Once you’ve written everything down, it’s time to put the whole job description together. Here’s a suggested sequence you can use:

1. Job title
2. Schedule
3. Salary
4. About the client
5. Responsibilities (see tasks on Step #3)
6. Requirements (see skills and qualifications on Step #5)
7. Software used (see applications and tools used on Step #4)
8. Home office requirements
9. How to apply
10. Contact information

If all the information we’ve listed sounds like a lot, it is. That’s because writing a job description that makes sense for your business (and not merely copying one online) takes work. But doing it right increases the likelihood that you’ll find the perfect person for the job.

There is, however, a far easier way to go about this: We can help you define what you need in whatever virtual role you’re trying to fill. Our team of recruitment specialists will then screen the best talent for your organisation, and all you have to do is choose.

Essentially, Remote Workmate will do all the heavy lifting for you.