Writing a job description people can answer

General information, not legal advice. Written October 10, 2026. The rules on job advertisements and job duties differ by country and state, so have your own counsel check anything you publish.

A job description does two jobs at once. It tells candidates what the work is, and it tells you, later, what you asked for. Most are written to do neither. They list a dozen tools, a vague mission and a set of adjectives, and a candidate cannot tell from them what a normal Tuesday looks like. If you are not an engineer, a designer or a salesperson yourself, the problem is sharper: you may not know which skills the work needs, so you copy a posting from another company and hope.

A better posting is a short document a candidate can answer. They should be able to read it and say, in a sentence, whether they could do that work and whether they want to. This article describes a structure for writing one, and it flags the points where the wording of a posting meets the law. It is a writing guide, not a legal review.

Write the outcome before the tasks

Start with a paragraph that says why the role exists. Not “we are looking for a rockstar”, but something a candidate can picture: “Customers ask us the same five questions every day, and no one owns the answers. This role owns them.” A reader who finishes that paragraph knows the problem, and a good candidate starts thinking about how they would solve it.

Then list what the person will do, in order of importance, in plain verbs. Five to seven items is plenty. Each should be something you could watch happen: “answer customer email and write the help-center article when a question repeats”, not “support customer success initiatives”. If you cannot say how you would tell whether an item had been done, it is not yet clear enough to hand to someone.

Use the words your reader uses

Federal guidance on plain language starts from the audience. Digital.gov, a US federal government site, says the Plain Writing Act of 2010 established the requirement that content for the public is written for its specific audience. The principle transfers well to a posting: write for the people who will read it, in the words they would use.

In practice, this means cutting internal vocabulary and stacked nouns, preferring a short sentence to a long one, and explaining any abbreviation the first time it appears. Read the draft aloud to someone outside the company. Where they stumble, rewrite.

Separate what the job requires from what you would like

A common failure is a requirements list that mixes what the person must be able to do on the first day with what would be pleasant to have. Candidates read the whole list as demands, and some who could do the work rule themselves out.

Use two short lists. The first holds the few abilities without which the work cannot be done. The second holds things that would help and that the person could learn. Keep the first list honest: ask of each item, “if a candidate lacked this but was strong at the rest, would I really turn them away?” If the answer is no, move it.

The same discipline protects you later. In the United States, regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act say that evidence of whether a particular function is essential includes, but is not limited to, a set of items that begins with the employer’s judgment as to which functions are essential. Another item on that list is written job descriptions prepared before advertising or interviewing applicants for the job. In other words, the document you write now can become part of the record of what the job required. EEOC guidance describes an essential function as a fundamental duty of the position. Whether any specific duty of yours is essential is a legal question for your counsel, but writing the description carefully, and before you advertise, is the part within your control.

Check the advertising wording

Wording is where a posting can create legal exposure without anyone intending it. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s page on prohibited employment practices says it is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages someone from applying for a job because of, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability, or genetic information. The page gives age as 40 or older and includes transgender status, sexual orientation and pregnancy within sex.

That sentence is a good reason to read a draft for phrases that describe a person rather than the work. “Recent graduate”, “young and energetic” and “digital native” describe people. “Comfortable learning new tools quickly” describes a skill. The test is the same one you applied to the requirements list: does this phrase say what the work needs, or who you imagine doing it?

Rules elsewhere differ. Many countries and some US states regulate what a posting must or may say, including how pay is described, and this article cannot tell you what applies where you hire. That is a question to put to your lawyer before you publish, along with the question of whether the posting is going to candidates in more than one place.

Say what happens next

Candidates deserve to know how hiring will work, and saying so is also a courtesy to yourself, because it forces you to design the process. Add a short section: how to apply, what the stages are, who will read applications and whether you will tell candidates who are not selected. Avoid promising a reply time or a date you cannot control. If you plan to give every candidate the same questions, as described in structured interviews for a small team, you can say so.

Add a line on how a candidate can ask for an adjustment to the process. It tells them you have thought about it, and it gives them a way to ask without having to guess.

From outcome to posting. A description that people can answer starts with the work and ends with the process, in this order.

1. 1

   Outcome

   Describe what will be different in a year if the hire goes well.

2. 2

   Requirements

   Separate what the job requires from what you would like.

3. 3

   Wording check

   Read the text for wording that excludes people for reasons unrelated to the work.

4. 4

   Next steps

   Tell applicants what happens after they apply and roughly when.

A template of headings, not of words

You do not need a template of sentences. A set of headings is enough to organize your thinking:

Fill each heading from the one-page record described in your first hire. If you cannot fill a heading, the decision behind it has not been made yet, and finishing the posting will not make it for you. The glossary may help with terms a candidate from outside the startup world has not met.

Where this fits in a long effort

A job description is the first document a new team member reads about the company, so it sets the tone for a relationship that, ideally, lasts years. The first hire article covers what to settle before writing, and the team handbook article covers what the hire will read next. The longevity paradox article explains why a team that stays together is worth the care taken in hiring it.

SBA resource partners, listed in the ecosystem directory, offer counseling on first hires, and founder communities are a good place to ask how others wrote theirs.

What this article cannot tell you

This article cannot tell you whether any wording in your posting is lawful where you hire, what counts as an essential function of your job, or how to describe pay. It draws on three US federal sources and a federal plain-language guide, read on October 10, 2026, and the US rules it describes are not the rules of other countries. It does not cover the laws on advertising in a particular state, the rules on pay disclosure, rules for roles that require licenses, or the use of software to screen applications. The Plain Writing Act is cited for its principle only, and the article does not say who it binds. For any posting that carries legal risk, ask counsel before you publish.

In the data

These figures describe U.S. businesses in general, not WE’s results. Each one names its source.

Show the data as a table

Median years with the current employer, by age, January 2026

Age group	Median tenure
Ages 20 to 24	1.5 years
Ages 25 to 34	3.0 years
Ages 35 to 44	4.7 years
Ages 45 to 54	7.0 years
Ages 55 to 64	9.6 years
Ages 65 and over	9.9 years
All workers 16 and over	4.1 years

Wage and salary workers only; tenure is time with the current employer, not in the current job.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Tenure, Table 1 , January 2026

Retrieved 2026-10-16. Values are the published medians for both sexes, copied as printed.

Sources

1. Prohibited employment policies and practices, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission . Accessed October 10, 2026.
2. 29 CFR 1630.2, Definitions (Americans with Disabilities Act regulations), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School . Accessed October 10, 2026.
3. Enforcement guidance on reasonable accommodation and undue hardship under the ADA, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission . Accessed October 10, 2026.
4. Plain language, Digital.gov, U.S. General Services Administration . Accessed October 10, 2026.

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