A job description is the formal specification of a role: what it involves, what qualifications are required, and what the company offers. A well-written job description is both an internal alignment tool (it forces clarity about what you actually need) and an external marketing document (it attracts the right candidates and discourages the wrong ones). Most job descriptions fail at both.
Yes, and increasingly it is legally required. Colorado, New York, California, and Washington (US) all require salary ranges in job postings, and the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970, Article 5) requires employers to give applicants the starting pay or its range before the interview, with national laws due by 7 June 2026. Beyond compliance, salary ranges reduce time wasted on late-stage salary mismatches. Check the rules in each market with an employment lawyer.
Short enough to read in 3 minutes: 300 to 600 words for the main body. Many candidates decide quickly whether to apply; if your requirements list is 25 bullets long, strong candidates may self-select out because they only meet 20. An often-cited Hewlett-Packard internal report found that women applied only when they met about 100% of stated requirements, while men applied at about 60%. Shorter, more focused job descriptions can widen your applicant pool.
Required qualifications are the minimum needed to do the job on day one. If a candidate without this qualification would need significant ramp-up time before they could be productive, it belongs in required. Preferred qualifications are skills that would accelerate contribution but can be learned on the job. The distinction matters because every item in your required list that is not genuinely required reduces your qualified applicant pool. Only list what is truly required.
Only if years of experience genuinely predicts job performance for this specific role, which is rarely the case. "5+ years of experience" is a proxy for a skill level, but a poor one: it excludes 2-year candidates who are highly capable and includes 8-year candidates who stopped growing after year 2. Describe the skill level you need ("can independently manage a complex multi-stakeholder project") rather than the proxy you're using to infer it.
Yes. Word choice signals who the employer expects to hire, and readers pick up on it. In a set of studies published in 2011, ads for male-dominated jobs contained more masculine-associated words such as competitive, dominant and leader. When an ad used more of these words, women found the job less appealing and expected to belong there less, while their view of their own ability to do the work stayed the same. Read your draft for words that describe a personality type, and replace them with the work itself: what the person will do, decide and deliver. Source: Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen and Aaron C. Kay, Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2011).