Writing a job description that actually filters
Most job adverts are written to attract as many applicants as possible. For a small employer that is the opposite of what you need.
A large company with a recruitment team can afford a wide funnel. Four hundred applications is a sorting problem, and there is someone whose job is sorting.
A small employer has no such person. Four hundred applications is not an opportunity; it is a fortnight of evenings, and the practical outcome is that the first thirty get read properly and the rest get skimmed. A job description that maximises applications has therefore made the decision worse, not better.
Write to repel the wrong people
The useful mental shift is that the advert's job is to lose applicants — specifically, to lose the ones who would have been rejected anyway, before they spend their time and yours.
That means being concrete about the parts of the job people commonly dislike, rather than omitting them. The Saturday rota. The fact that you will be answering the phone as well as doing the design work. That the office is genuinely in an industrial estate with no bus. Every one of those details costs you applications from people who would have withdrawn at interview stage. For a related product-level perspective on workplace stereotyping, see this page.
After writing the advert, ask: could someone read this and correctly decide the job is not for them? If not, the advert has withheld something, and you will discover what it was at offer stage.
Separate what the job needs from what you would like
Requirement lists inflate. Each stakeholder adds a line, nothing is ever removed, and the result is a specification that no realistic candidate meets and that quietly deters good ones — the well-documented effect being that candidates who meet most but not all of a list often do not apply, while those who meet few apply anyway.
Split the list explicitly into two, and keep the first one short:
- Essential — the absence of this makes the person unable to do the job in the first three months, and it cannot be taught quickly. Aim for three to five items.
- Useful — genuine advantages that shorten the ramp, but which a good candidate could acquire.
Anything that does not survive the question 'would we actually reject a strong candidate for lacking this?' belongs in the second list or nowhere.
Describe the work, not the person
Adverts drift toward personality description — dynamic, passionate, self-starter — because it is easier to write than an account of the work. It is also unfalsifiable and tells the candidate nothing.
Replace it with what the person will actually do. A useful format is three to six statements of the form 'in a typical week you will…', written from the calendar rather than from the org chart. Candidates can judge themselves against that, which is the point.
Publish the salary
Omitting pay is a false economy in a small business. It filters nobody usefully, it invites applications from people whose expectations you cannot meet, and it costs both parties an interview to discover it. In a growing number of jurisdictions it is also becoming a legal requirement rather than a choice.
If there is genuine uncertainty, publish a range and state what moves a candidate within it. 'Thirty-two to thirty-eight, higher end for someone who can also run the supplier relationships' is more informative than a number and more honest than silence.
Say what happens next
The advert should state the process: how many stages, roughly what each involves, and by when applicants will hear. This costs three sentences.
It has an effect out of proportion to that. It reduces chasing emails, it makes you look like an organisation that has a process, and — because you have now published a timeline — it substantially increases the likelihood that you keep to it. Candidates in a competitive market drop out of slow processes, and small employers lose more candidates to silence than to rejection.
Then use it as the scoring sheet
The advert's final use is as the basis for shortlisting. If the essential list is three items, the shortlisting sheet has three columns, and every application is assessed against the same three.
This is the cheapest defence available against both inconsistency and the drift toward hiring whoever felt most familiar. It also means that when a rejected candidate asks why, there is an answer that refers to the role rather than to an impression. For broader independent guidance on this point, consult O*NET Online.