Writing a Job Description

Internally, a job description is a chance for everyone to align on how the role will fit into organizational goals and engagement. Externally, how you word or phrase what you’re seeking greatly impacts who is attracted to the opportunity and the people you end up bringing on to the team full-time.

Job Description Template

To help get you started, here’s a job description template we like to use at Pillar VC.

These are the key components of any job description: 

• Description of the opportunity
• Description of your company
• Description of traits of the ideal candidate
• Description of the responsibilities
• Link to the application

Job Description Best Practices

• Write in full sentences
• Start and end with your values
• If you can, highlight the humans the candidate will be working with. CareerPuck is a tool that allows hiring managers to leave audio clips of frequently asked questions and give candidates a preview of the work culture.
• Run the job description by Gender Decoder, a tool that helps identify subtle bias in job ads.

Application Question Best Practices

• Align internally on the fields you want to capture on the application such as links to previous work samples or educational background.
• Be thoughtful about the length of the application – optimize for enough information to attract potential candidates and what you’ll need to make a decision on whether to interview them. Remember, you’ll be (potentially) reviewing hundreds of applications.
• Keep the questions short and relevant to the role. Homerun has compiled a list of 50 application questions here.
• Avoid asking illegal interview questions – Betterteam has a list of questions to avoid here.