Reinventing the Job Description—The 5-Point Model

Recruiting and hiring top talent is crucial for a successful business, but we are not good at it. Data from the Harvard Business Review points out that as much as 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions.

With such consensus on the importance of competent recruiting and hiring, why is it so hard to get the right people in the right position? There is no shortage of tools, philosophies, and techniques for recruiting, screening, interviewing, and inducting candidates, but a solution for attracting the right people consistently still alludes most, if not all companies.

I believe we make the problem much more difficult than it should be because businesses have been focusing on symptoms and not the cause. We should focus on the first step in the recruiting process, the job description (in some form).

The job description is the first and primary touchpoint to attract candidates, but most don’t entice the strongest candidates for the position (fit). If you think about the job description as a print ad, a good one will both attract your target audience and pre-qualify window shoppers.

Most job descriptions in corporate America are a generic laundry list of desired skills, responsibilities, duties, and requirements that look like ten different people combined their candidate wish lists, which is probably the case. These types of job descriptions rarely reflect the real core job responsibilities and measurements of success and describe a fantasy candidate. I like to call these “messiah” job descriptions because no one human is going to satisfy every criterion on the list.

Strong candidates will often not even apply to these types of openings because they realize it would be impossible to fulfill all the criteria and it does not sound like a position where they succeed and thrive. Conversely, weak candidates will apply to any job posting where they meet just a few criteria, so hiring managers end up with a stack of resumes from unsatisfactory candidates.

Additionally, recent data from Google reveals that long job descriptions cause diversity issues because more women than men will withhold applying for positions when they do not meet some of the criteria, whereas men will apply when they only meet as few as three criteria of a job description.

At the other end of the spectrum are startups and small companies, where a job description is often just a job position and a sentence or two that is very generic or too narrow in focus to reflect the role. Recruiting and hiring is crucial for any growing business, but for startups, it can mean the difference between success and failure when a single hire can have so much impact.

Again, these overly brief and simplistic job descriptions deter strong candidates and attract and encourage weak ones to apply.

Think about it from a candidate perspective, if you have something valuable to offer an employer, how motivated will you be to apply for a job based on an overly generic or quixotic job description?

My solution was to develop a 5-Point Job Description template that provides a better tool for attracting and identifying the right candidates. The simple structure simplifies the job description creation process while providing a more holistic vantage of the job focused on the key facets of the job, which also prevents the laundry list problem. This model has worked well for me in both startups and corporate companies.

The structure for the 5-Point Job Description is simple—five sections with a decreasing number of bullet points for each section starting with five points. The template looks like this:

• Role/Title:
• 5 Tasks & responsibilities the candidate will carry out:
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3
  • Task 4
  • Task 5
• 4 Skills & experience the candidate must have:
  • Skill 1
  • Skill 2
  • Skill 3
  • Skill 4
• 3 Ways the candidate will be evaluated:
  • Performance metric 1
  • Performance metric 2
  • Performance metric 3
• 2 Forms of Compensation:
  • Base compensation & benefits
  • Incentive compensation
• 1 Passion:
  • Identify a culture feature that is important for the company and to the position

The 5-Point Job Description Model is a concise but comprehensive template that not only helps attract better candidates; it also works as a prequalification tool to reduce the number of unqualified candidates by preventing the “come one, come all” effect.

Job responsibilities do and should evolve, and the 5-Point Job Description enables this by outlining a simple template that provides a holistic view of a position while focusing on just the key aspect of the job, which can be updated easily.

Some examples of the 5-Point Job Description are posted below. Feel free to use and modify the template as you see fit. I just ask you send me examples of your use (Twitter: @zaava), so I can build a repository that we all can access in the future. Good luck and I wish you success with your next hire!

Example 1. Digital Marketing Manager Role (cat products startup)

• 5 Tasks & responsibilities the candidate will carry out:
  • Develop and manage digital advertising campaigns (Adwords, Facebook, )
  • Work with CEO/founder to develop marketing objectives and budgets.
  • Identify and exploit new digital marketing trends, channels, and opportunities.
  • Create customer feedback loop for product development team from marketing channels.
  • Coordinate digital marketing efforts with other employees working on marketing and customer development initiatives.
• 4 Skills & experience the candidate must have:
  • 3 years of experience running digital ad campaigns with improving results.
  • Ability to aggregate, analyze, and present marketing data across digital mediums.
  • Strong written communication skills.
  • Bachelor’s degree, preferably in marketing or related field.
• 3 Ways the candidate will be evaluated:
  • Cost per customer acquisition (direct sales)
  • Lead generation growth
  • Budget to conversion objectives
• 2 Forms of Compensation:
  • $45k base
  • 5k stock options
• 1 Passion:
  • Must love cats and engaging other cat owners online.

Example 2. Software Engineer (established financial services SaaS company)

• 5 Tasks & responsibilities the candidate will carry out:
  • Write well-designed, testable code .Net/C# code to develop and maintain functionality in
  • Work in team agile engineering environment with weekly sprints.
  • Write tests for existing and created code to ensure compatibility and stability.
  • Work with customer support to troubleshoot, debug, and upgrade existing systems.
  • Continuously increase knowledge and skills developing for .Net.
• 4 Skills & experience the candidate must have:
  • Full-stack Microsoft .Net framework programming on a scaled enterprise platform using C#.
  • 2 years working in agile team-oriented development environment with peer code reviews.
  • Strong familiarity with Microsoft SQL.
  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, math, or related field.
• 3 Ways the candidate will be evaluated:
  • App performance (UX measured using Apdex via New Relic)
  • Code quality using peer review and Code Climate
  • Volume & severity of bugs
• 2 Forms of Compensation:
  • $85k base plus insurance and PTO benefits
  • Up to 5% quarterly bonus
• 1 Passion:
  • Enjoy programming for complex data platforms with transactional workflows and zero tolerance for errors.