A compelling job description will help you to attract the talent you need on board to reach your goals in 2025 and beyond. A badly written one will drive top talent to your competitor.

But what exactly is a “good” job description?

Based on what I have learned reading literally thousands of job descriptions in my job as an executive search consultant, here are my top three tips:

  1. Choose a catchy title: If you use the job description for a job advertisement (hopefully you will never ever put an ad out and rather contact us), make sure the title is good. “VP Sales” e.g. is not. There are tons of similar titles around. Why should anyone click on yours and not on the other 97, 123 or 251? It is all about things in common. The candidate is looking for something familiar, something s/he knows and understands. What can this be? Industries and languages are a great means to get attention. Thus, a “VP Sales” becomes a “Sales Leader, Real Estate, trilingual (English, French, Italian) m/ f/ nb”. How likely is it that you click on “your job title” versus “your key skills plus industries plus languages”? Same for candidates!
  2. Less is more: 10 tasks maximum and 5 m