Day 14: Write a Job Description That Attracts A-Players

The Concept

Most job descriptions are written by the person who needs the hire, which means they are written from entirely the wrong perspective. The hiring manager knows what they need and writes a list of requirements from that vantage point: five years of experience, proficiency in these tools, familiarity with this methodology, a degree in this field. The list is internally logical but externally useless, because the best candidate for the role is not reading job descriptions looking for a list of boxes to check. They are reading to decide whether this role is worth their attention — and a list of requirements tells them almost nothing about whether the work will be interesting, whether the company is worth joining, or whether they will be set up to succeed.

The job descriptions that attract strong candidates answer different questions: What will I actually be doing? What will I have achieved in 90 days that I will be proud of? What kind of team am I joining, and how does it operate? What is the company trying to do and why does it matter? These questions cannot be answered with a requirements list. They require a different kind of writing — outcome-oriented, honest about the stage and the challenges, and specific enough that the wrong candidate self-selects out before applying.

The Shift From Requirements to Outcomes

The most effective structural change in a job description is replacing "responsibilities" with "in your first 90 days, you will." The requirements format describes inputs — what the candidate brings to the role. The outcomes format describes outputs — what they will achieve in it. This shift does several things simultaneously. It forces you to be specific about what success looks like, which helps you evaluate candidates more clearly. It signals to strong candidates that the company has a clear view of the role, which itself is a quality signal. And it filters out candidates who are skilled at listing credentials but unclear on what they would actually do with them.

Compensation transparency is worth addressing directly. Including a salary range increases the quality of applications and reduces the time both sides spend in conversations that end at the offer stage. Research consistently shows that job postings with salary ranges receive higher-quality applicants — not because more money attracts better candidates, but because transparency signals that the company operates without unnecessary games, which is exactly what A-players are looking for in an employer.

Screening Questions That Do the Filtering For You

Application form screening questions are one of the most underused tools in early-stage hiring. A single well-designed question on the application form can tell you more about a candidate's thinking than the first 30 minutes of an interview. The best screening questions have three characteristics: they require a specific answer (not a yes/no), they reveal something about how the candidate thinks rather than what they know, and they are slightly uncomfortable to answer with a generic response. A question like "Describe a time you had to make a significant decision with incomplete information. What did you decide and what would you do differently?" is hard to answer well with a recycled cover letter paragraph.

The culture-fit question for a first interview follows the same logic. It should not ask about values directly — everyone answers that well regardless of whether it is true. It should reveal how the candidate actually behaves. Something like "Tell me about the last time you disagreed with a decision your team made and what you did about it" surfaces conflict resolution style, comfort with directness, and relationship to authority in a single question.

Why A-Players Read Job Descriptions Differently

A-players — the top ten percent of candidates in any function — are typically not actively job-hunting. They are employed, performing well, and evaluating opportunities selectively. When they do read a job description, they are asking one question before any other: is this role worth disrupting my current situation? A generic job description written in HR boilerplate answers that question with silence. A job description that describes a genuinely interesting challenge, sets clear outcomes, and communicates what makes the company worth joining answers it with a yes. The goal of the prompt today is to write the version of this job description that stops a passive candidate mid-scroll and makes them think this one might be worth applying for.