When you are hiring for your business, writing a great job description will save you a lot of time and effort later on. A good job description means that you will attract those candidates with the right qualifications and experience, and you won’t have to look through quite so many resumes to find the ones you want to interview.

The job description should describe what skills you are looking for, where the position fits in your business hierarchy, and what is expected of the successful hire once they begin working. Here are some steps to take to ensure your job description is clear, concise, and accurate.

The Job Title

The very first thing that you need to consider when writing a job description that will bring the right candidates to your door is the job title. Although this may seem simple, there is a lot to think about because the job title needs to:

  • Reflect what the job is and what duties will be performed.
  • Have no age or gender requirements.
  • Be generic enough that those searching will find it.
  • Explain the role simply.

In essence, the job title needs to make an impact and be something that anyone searching for a new job is going to understand.

The Duties

A job description that doesn’t list out the duties that a successful candidate will need to perform in their role is not going to help anyone. Those who apply may not have the skills that they are going to need, for example, because they don’t know what is required of them.

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If you can list out what the job entails, you won’t be wasting anyone’s time – yours or the people applying. You can also then match up the information given in their resumes and Live Career cover letters to the duties you have listed to see who has the most experience and knowledge.

Skills

To make things even clearer, you should also list out the skills and qualifications that you are going to be looking for when someone applies. There is no excuse then for those without these skills to send in their details, but even if they do, you know that they are not the people you are looking for and you can concentrate on the ones who are.

You may not have applications from people who match up to all the skills that you would like them to have but don’t discard them immediately. Think again about your job description and determine when you are asking for too much realistically. It might be that those who are missing just one or two skills can be trained, so they might still be ideal for people to speak to.

The Salary

Not all recruiters like to put the salary down in their job descriptions, but it is important for all parties. Those who might be considering applying won’t want to wait until the interview stage to find out what the salary is going to be; they might have taken time off from work, paid to get to the interview, worried about the questions, only to find that the pay is not what they want or need. So you could easily have far fewer applications than you would if the pay is mentioned.

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If you are not confident that the pay you are offering is fair, take a look at other job descriptions. Does it match up? Is it much higher? Much lower? Although it will, of course, depend on your budget, paying someone fairly for the job you are asking them to do is important, and you will need to get this right before you can hire anyone.