5 Essential Sections Every Job Description Must Clearly Articulate For Maximum Impact
Most job descriptions are a boring overview of what the day-in-the-life of an employee may look like.
They’re often written by what might as well be an attorney, with gobbledygook and snooze-inducing verbiage.
The goal of a job description is to help a future employee (or current one) know precisely what’s expected of them, not to create some exhaustive list of what they “might do” on some random day in the future.
These are the crucial sections of any job description so your team is clear on what they must do to succeed in the role you hired them for.
Section 1: The Position Mission
The position mission is a paragraph explaining the mission for a specific role and why it’s so important.
It’s not a place to recite the essential functions in sentence form. Instead, it’s a place to get an employee excited about their role and clearly explain why their areas of responsibility significantly impact customers, the team, and the company.
For example, “The most important function of the X is to develop a new generation of Account Executives that become successful Dedicated Account Managers who exceed $xxx,xxx in quarterly Gross Profit and have the sales capacity to develop and grow managed accounts.”
Section 2: The Non-Negotiable Expectations
Every role must have three to five non-negotiable expectations.
These expectations are what you hire an employee based on through your hiring process.
As the section suggests, these are non-negotiable for a role; they’re mandatory as they ensure success in the role.
Every job description must have this section, so it’s clear what’s most important.
A Sales Manager could have “Has built a successful small technical sales team who are Hunter-Gatherers, that embody good prospecting behaviors” as an expectation.
Section 3: The KPIs
Employees are hired to produce results.
It’s vital they know exactly what “results” means to the company. Every leader must clearly and concisely explain what’s expected from a role and how it will be measured.
Here are a couple of things to remember when it comes to KPIs:
KPIs should be updated in real-time via an automated dashboard.
KPIs should predominately be leading indicators that encourage positive behaviors.
Section 4: The Essential Functions
This is the most boring part.
Look at any Indeed job ad, and you’ll see job ads list everything they expect the candidate to do in a job. I’m guilty of this too.
Instead, create a few groups of what the candidate will be responsible for. For example: “Strategy,” “Leadership,” “Sales Process.”
Then, list three to five of the top functions that make that group successful under each group.
Section 5: The Compensation & Benefits
Don’t neglect to be extremely clear on how someone will be paid and the benefits of working for your company.
This is your time to sell yourself.
You may want to keep some of this information private and not on public job boards, but that’s your choice.
When you think of compensation and benefits, you typically default to salary and benefits like health insurance and PTO.
But benefits are more than monetary incentives.
Explain why you’re better than the other jobs they could pick, or who they may be considering if they currently work for you, like:
100% remote.
Unlimited PTO (we care about results only).
No standard working days and times (we care about results only).
A politic and bureaucratic free work environment.
Etc.
When you get clear on the perfect job description, it will not only help you hire the right people, but it will also empower your people to produce the right results.
