Leveraging Leadership

Crafting Clear Job Descriptions for Attracting The Right Talent to Your Org

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 160

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Emily Sander discusses how Chiefs of Staff, particularly in smaller to mid-sized companies, can craft effective job descriptions. She shares a five-section structure: intro paragraph, what you'll be doing, what we're looking for, benefits and perks, and call to action. Emily provides examples, like including "what you'll be doing" bullet points and adding a unique attribute section for clarity.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction to Effective Job Descriptions
00:33 Chiefs of Staff and Hiring Responsibilities
00:53 Personal Experience in Hiring
01:13 Learning Through Trial and Error
01:54 Five Main Sections of a Job Description
02:14 Section 1: Intro Paragraph
05:00 Section 2: What You'll Be Doing
07:32 Section 3: What We're Looking For
10:09 Section 4: Benefits and Perks
10:39 Section 5: Call to Action
10:51 Tips and Tricks for Job Descriptions
12:01 Conclusion and Contact Information

emily-sander_1_02-18-2025_141754:

A clear, effective job description helps make the hiring process a lot smoother and helps make sure that you get the best candidates. A lot of chiefs of staff, especially if they're in smaller to mid sized companies, are on point for hiring. For various parts of the recruiting and hiring cycle, but sometimes specifically for creating that job description. so this episode is going to be focused on that portion for now. I get loads of questions on this and I, I'm like, I tell people, I feel you. I hear you. I've been there because when I was chief of staff, there was one point where I had 12 open recs. And I was on point for all of them. I was on point for standing up these interview loops for designing them for getting people coordinated internally for who had to be on the interview loop for drafting the job description for all these different various points in the in the process. And so through trial and error, I had to learn as quickly as I could What, what types of things worked well in a job description? What types of things, um, got people interested in applying for the job? Were we attracting the right types of candidates? Were people getting to the interview process and like clearly confused about this one line or this one section over and over and over again. Okay, let's change that part up. So the structure I'm going to share with you now is the result of dozens of those types of, uh, trial and error situations where it's like, let me try this. Oh, that didn't work. Let me try that. Oh, that worked better. Let's keep doing that type of thing. So there are five main sections that I found to be effective. The five sections really quick are number one, the intro paragraph. Okay. Number two, what you'll be doing. Number three, what we're looking for. Number four benefits and perks and number five, a CTA call to action or next steps. Okay. So let's break down those five. First one, intro paragraph or paragraphs, depending on how you want to set it up. This includes a high level overview of the company, not. Eight or nine pages on the company or eight or nine paragraphs. I've seen this where people give their entire company history and it takes up more than the first page. Do not do that. This is a short paragraph, perhaps one sentence. If you can summarize your company in one sentence or a short paragraph, that's what you want there. The second sentence or second paragraph is a high level overview of the job. What does this job at a high level do? And some things in there you might include are what success looks like for this role. So I would literally have some sentences start with success in this role looks like this or success in this role includes blah, blah, blah. So it's very clear like what we're talking about. Sometimes I would include the reporting structure of this role. So, director role or VP role reports to our CRO and does this, this, and this. Oh, one thing I would add at the end of the, of the role overview section would be if there's any unique attributes to this role or something that I want to call out, um, right up front ahead of time. let's say that, um, the person coming into this role would be the only person. Doing that or the only person on this team, I would call that out. And I would specifically say something like, this is a power team of one, or as a power team of one, you will be doing both high level strategy and tactical execution, something like that. And I would make sure to do that if the title was normally associated with a team. So if you were in a larger company context, someone with this title would typically have a team under them. I wanted to call out upfront, this, this does not have a team attached to it. You're a power team of one. Now there's good things about that. Of course you have creative design and a lot of influence and all these different things, but it's just you. So I wanted to call that out. Another. Example of this would be if, if an internal discussions, this was like, look, this is a key strategic hire. This is like a make or break hire for our company. I would put something to that effect in the job description in the external job description. So like, this is a key role for our company. Um, you have the opportunity to make a big difference and be recognized for it. Or you have a lot of visibility in this role internally or something to that effect. So that line might be something that ends the intro paragraph or paragraphs. So in that intro section, we've got high level company overview, high level role overview, and any unique attributes about the role. And then we move into the second section, which is what you'll be doing. So this is literally like what you'll be doing dot, dot, dot, or what you'll be doing, colon, and then a list of bullet point items. I use the phrase, what you'll be doing one, because Through like hundreds and hundreds and possibly thousands of interviews at this point, some form of the question, so what does it mean when I'm in this role? if I actually get into this role, like, what am I actually going to be doing? That question comes up, which is totally legitimate and valid. And so I try to just tee up, what you'll be doing and paint that picture for them. So in the next set of five to seven, maybe 10 to 15, Bullet points, paint that picture for them. What does their week to week, month to month, whatever interval makes sense look like for them? I would try to list the, the most common or the biggest parts of their role up front, and then go down to Hey, you're going to also do this, but maybe it's like 25 percent of the time and like, maybe you'll do this, but that's like in five to 10%, so I'm not going to start with it. But I would try to include here's the scope. Here's what it looks like. Here's what it feels like. Here's kind of what your day to day week to week would look like. Here's what you'll be doing. All right. Couple of quick notes for that section. Sometimes I include, um, uh, like a process in there, like test and learn, test and learn, test and learn was something I used for certain roles, depending on what it was where like, look, you're going to have to test stuff out and learn from it and then iterate and do it again, and then do that process again and again and again. And so part of it was. I'm not quite sure what exactly you'll be doing in this area or this direction, but I know that you're going to have to test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. And so I would literally put that in certain job descriptions. Oh, and one more thing, uh, tagging off that is sometimes there might be cases Where you want to make sure that if candidates feel like, Oh crap, I don't have all of those things, so I better not apply and we would still want them to apply that you put something explicitly in there that says we will teach you how to do X, Y, or Z, Sometimes there's roles where you just want to call that out. Cause a lot of candidates will disqualify themselves if they don't have every single thing on there. And if you're like, look. You know, no one, no one will know this. Like no one off the street will have any right to know this. We will teach this to you. Now we need you to have these types of things and we need you to have these type, this type of attitude. But if you get in here with all that, we will happily teach you this like very esoteric industry specific company, specific niche specific thing. So that's something else that I would call out in one of those bullet points. All right. Next section here. What we're looking for. This is just a nicer sounding title than like qualifications. So it's, it's the qualification section or requirement section. But I just said what we're looking for. And sometimes I've seen this listed as ideal candidate, something like that, which is just a little softer, a little less clinical than some of the other things I've seen. But you are, in essence, listing the bullet points of, here's the requirements we have, here's the preferred things, or nice to haves, and you list all of the things that you need. Hard skills, or different experience levels, different education levels, et cetera, et cetera. I will say that on some job postings, I had zero education requirements listed. Like I didn't care. I honestly didn't care. I wanted the traits of someone. Um, and I would list those and those were most important to me for a specific role. Other roles, I would have like, like you need a CPA and a CFA, or you need this certain degree, or you need this amount of experience. And I will put like required in bold and all caps So it just depends on what you're looking for, but be clear about that. And also do like a spot check on yourself or between you and the hiring manager of, you know, if we put this here, that's totally fine. Just know that we're going to lose some. Some candidates. And if we want to have as open a range as possible, then we might consider leaving this education requirement off. Do you really need someone with a bachelor's degree? Let's say in this role, if you had someone who had everything else and had the intangibles, would you be okay? If the answer is no, then put the BA requirement on there. If the answer is yes, then consider taking it off, and seeing what happens. I'm a big advocate of listing the intangibles on here, like can do attitude or proactive or team player or a go getter or whatever, because people can see themselves in that and they can also opt out, they can self opt out. If it's like, Ooh, they're looking for someone like that. I know that I'm not really like that. I'd work better on a different type of team and a different type of role. They can self select out. But if you're like, I need someone who just goes like, I need you to go further than you think is appropriate. Push the envelope, try something, fail, ask for forgiveness and then try again. if I need that, then I want to put that. In the job description to attract those types of people. And I almost want that to be, um, divisive where like people can clearly see what I'm after and they can self opt out to save them the time and save us the time of going through resumes and interviewing people, but the intangible skills I would, I would list at least a couple in every job description I had. All right. Fourth section here is benefits and perks. And this is a pretty standard section. So that's like benefits, 401k, unlimited PTO, flexible work schedule, things like that. and I remember some, some of the hiring managers I was working with were like Emily at this one location, Emily put that we have some really good restaurants and walking distance. And I was like, actually you do like in that office, like you are right near like a whole strip of restaurants that are really good. And people would often go out, pop out for lunch, grab something and pop back in. So like, that's a perk for that location. So she was like, make sure you put that in. All right, final and fifth section, this is the CTA call to action next steps. here is a tip and trick that has saved me countless, countless hours and has worked really well for me. I would include a sentence or a question or prompt at the very end, at the very bottom of the job description for them to do something specific such as. include this word in the subject line when you send in your resume to this email address, or tell me your favorite flavor of ice cream. So something at the very bottom. And so they had to read through the whole thing and they had to follow instructions and It was never a hard task. Question, right? It was never like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, what's the meaning of life or what's your philosophy on whatever it was like, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Or what's your favorite TV show? Or what something silly and easy and low risk like that. But just to see Who read to the bottom and who could follow instructions and use common sense. And, oh my goodness, I was always like blown away by how many people did not do that. They just didn't do that. It was the simplest thing. They didn't do that. And they would be weeded out. So that was one, that's, Like one hallmark, go to tip or trick that I will always share with people for specific roles I remember that one for customer service reps. I put that in every single job posting I had for that role. Okay. So hopefully this helps you. And, uh, I know chiefs of staff are scrapped for time, but they are chiefs of staff. And so finding good and amazing team members is part of your job. so hopefully some of these elements of creating an effective job description can help you out. And if you have any specific questions, like one you're working on now, that's very case by case and specific. I love this stuff and I love designing these things. So just reach out to me. I will help you however I can. You can email me at Emily at next level. coach and otherwise, I will catch you next week on leveraging leadership.