Why Most Job Descriptions Filter Out Strong Candidates

A job description is meant to communicate what a role involves and what kind of person would be good at it. In practice, many job descriptions do something different: they enumerate every possible requirement the role could conceivably have, list every qualification that previous holders of similar titles have had, and set a bar that even the hiring manager would struggle to clear.

This is requirements inflation, and it is one of the most consistent ways that organisations inadvertently reduce the quality of their candidate pool.

How requirements inflation happens

The process by which job descriptions accumulate requirements is usually not deliberate. It tends to happen like this:

• A hiring manager writes down everything they would ideally like in a candidate, treating the list as aspirational rather than mandatory
• The list is reviewed by HR or a talent partner who adds standard requirements from a template
• Requirements from the previous holder of the role are carried over, even if they are no longer relevant
• Stakeholders who will work with the hire add their own wish-list items
• A specific tool or technology is listed as required because the current team uses it, even though it could be learned quickly

By the time the job description is published, it reflects a composite of every stakeholder's ideal hire rather than a clear description of what the role actually requires.

The pool effect

Long, over-specified job descriptions do not just fail to attract good candidates. They actively filter them out. Research on application behaviour consistently shows that candidates self-select based on job requirements. When a list of requirements is long, people who cannot tick every box tend not to apply, even if they could do the job well.

The effect is not uniform across candidate groups. There is substantial evidence that certain demographics apply only when they meet a high proportion of listed requirements, while others apply at lower thresholds. An over-specified job description is therefore not just limiting the pool. It is shaping its composition in ways that the organisation may not intend.

The experience requirement trap

Among the most common forms of requirements inflation is experience inflation: requiring a specific number of years in a specific type of role, often without evidence that this number correlates with performance.

A requirement for five years of experience in a particular domain filters the pool to people who have worked in that domain for at least five years. It does not filter for people who are good at the underlying work. These are related but not the same thing. Someone with three years of intensive, well-mentored experience in the right environment may have more genuine capability than someone with six years of low-intensity exposure.

The experience requirement is a proxy: a rough shortcut to capability that is easy to screen for. Like most proxies, it works some of the time and fails in ways that are predictable once you look for them.

What a good job description actually contains

A job description designed to attract strong candidates rather than to list every conceivable requirement looks different from the standard template:

• It describes the work: what the person will actually be doing, what problems they will be solving, what success looks like in the first six months
• It distinguishes between what is required and what is preferred, rather than listing everything as a requirement
• It is honest about what is hard about the role. Difficulty is not a deterrent for strong candidates; it is often a reason they apply
• It avoids jargon and proprietary tool names where possible, since these filter for familiarity rather than capability

Short job descriptions also tend to outperform long ones for application rates across most role types. The requirement to include everything is a habit, not an evidence-based practice.

The skill transfer question

The underlying question a job description is trying to answer is: who can do this job well? That question is not the same as: who has done this job before?

An organisation that can only hire people who have done the exact job before is limiting itself to a subset of available talent (often the most expensive subset, since experienced candidates in high demand command premiums). An organisation that can identify people who can do the job, drawing on relevant experience that may not match the role title exactly, has access to a larger and often stronger pool.

This requires being clear about what the role actually demands, and honest about what can be learned on the job versus what needs to be there from day one. That clarity is harder to produce than a list of requirements. But it is the starting point for hiring well.