Job Description Template

What is a Job Description?

A job description sets out what a role exists to do, what the person will be accountable for, and what they must already be able to do. It is the document a recruiter writes an advert from, an interviewer builds questions from, and a manager points at when the work drifts. Write it badly and you interview against criteria invented on the day, then manage somebody against expectations they were never given.

Hiring managers write them, recruiters advertise from them and interviewers assess against them. The document keeps working after the hire: it feeds the objectives in a performance review, sits behind job evaluation and pay banding, and is the reference point when a restructure asks which roles overlap. Occupational health uses it to advise on adjustments, because nobody can say whether an adjustment is workable without knowing which duties are genuinely core. Employers sponsoring overseas workers are usually asked for one too, though the requirements there are set by the immigration authority and change often.

What you may require, and what you must publish, vary. Distinguishing essential from marginal functions carries specific legal weight in the US under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the UK the Equality Act limits requirements that disadvantage protected groups unless they can be justified, and any genuine occupational requirement has to be defensible. Pay transparency rules increasingly require a salary range in the posting — several US states and cities already do, and the EU Pay Transparency Directive is being implemented into national law across member states. Check the current requirement for the location the role is based in before publishing.

A job description is not a contract of employment, and should not try to be — notice, pay, hours and place of work belong in the contract or written statement of particulars, which many jurisdictions require separately. It is not an exhaustive list of tasks, and pretending otherwise invites the argument that anything unlisted is not the person's job. It also does not describe a person: attributes such as ‘energetic’ or ‘young team player’ describe who you imagine rather than what the role requires, and that is where discrimination complaints begin.

What to put in a Job Description

These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.

How to write a Job Description

1. Open with the purpose in two sentences

   State why the role exists and what would go wrong without it, before any list of duties. ‘Owns the monthly close for three entities and produces the management accounts by working day six’ is a purpose. ‘Supports the finance team with various accounting duties’ is filler that leaves every candidate guessing what the job is and every interviewer inventing their own version of it.

2. Write duties as accountabilities with outputs

   Six to eight lines, each naming an output rather than an activity. ‘Runs the weekly payroll for 180 staff and resolves queries within two working days’ beats ‘responsible for payroll’. Order them by the share of time they take, and say so where the split is uneven. A candidate should be able to read the list and picture their week, not just the department.

3. Split essential from desirable, honestly

   Essential means you would reject an otherwise excellent candidate for lacking it. Everything else is desirable. Long essential lists shrink the applicant pool, deter candidates who self-screen, and are hard to justify if challenged. Test each essential item against the duties above: if no duty requires it, it is not essential. ‘Degree required’ with no duty that needs one is the usual offender.

4. State reporting lines, location and pattern

   Say who the role reports to, who reports into it, which team it sits in, and where the work happens — office, hybrid with a stated number of days, or remote within a named country. Add the hours pattern, shift or on-call expectation if there is one. These are the questions candidates ask first, and the details that cause withdrawn acceptances when they only surface after an offer.

5. Review it with the person doing the job

   Before publishing, give the draft to the current or previous postholder and to the manager, and ask what is missing and what is no longer true. Job descriptions rot: duties migrate, systems change, a team of two becomes a team of nine. Date the document and note the review date on it, so the next person can see how old the description they are measured against actually is.

Common mistakes

• Listing every skill anybody on the team has as essential shrinks the applicant pool and leaves you unable to justify the requirement if a rejected candidate challenges it.
• Describing the person rather than the role — energetic, young, native speaker — is where a job advert turns into a discrimination complaint.
• Ending with ‘and any other duties as required’ and treating it as a licence to reassign the job entirely is the sentence most often quoted back in a grievance.
• Publishing without the salary range where local pay transparency rules require one exposes the employer to a penalty and wastes everybody's time in the first call.
• Never reviewing the description after the hire leaves the performance review measuring the person against a job that no longer exists.

Frequently asked questions

This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.

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