All hiring processes, recruitment ads, and talent acquisition strategies start with a list of job requirements. That makes sense. Clearly defining what you’re looking for in a candidate is the best way to ensure that your applicants have the skills needed to be successful.
But a poor presentation of those job requirements—or ones that are too specific or rigid—can also have the opposite effect. Instead of encouraging great applicants to apply, these job requirements may actually deter good candidates from taking the jump.
To ensure that your job specifications are doing their job properly, it’s important to take a step back and understand the purpose that they serve, and how to craft them in a way that’s beneficial for both candidates and your company.
This article will take a look at what job requirements are, why they’re important, and how you can plan and write them to encourage the right talent to apply.
What are job requirements?
Job requirements are the most important skills and qualities that a candidate must or should have to perform the duties of the job for which they’re applying.
This differs slightly from a job qualification list, which typically expands further into special skills or attributes that a candidate may have, but doesn’t necessarily need.
The goal of a job requirements list is to inform the candidates what is required of them before they apply and to create criteria against which to screen applicants.
The importance of job requirements
Job requirements are one of the first and most powerful ways of pre-selecting and pre-screening potential candidates, making them indispensable early in the hiring process.
Think about it. If a job ad did not explicitly list what was required to be successful, then any job seeker could reasonably apply. As such, job requirements act as the first line of pre-screening by immediately weeding out applicants who clearly don’t make the cut, and attracting only the right type of candidates to apply.
Employers can also use requirements to communicate the expectations that the company will have from any applicants. This helps with priming any applicants for what is to come during the screening phase and beyond, thereby providing a better and clearer candidate experience.
As a result of these two benefits, the total number of applicants for a given job ad is reduced, saving the recruiting company time and money that would have been spent on screening unqualified candidates. In the end, clear role requirements help to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the entire recruitment process.
A third benefit of job requirements is the need for clear hiring criteria to evaluate candidates. A job requirements list is one piece of a larger set of criteria that hiring teams can use to objectively screen candidates and determine the ideal fit.
It should be noted, however, that being too ambitious, specific, or even vague, with your job requirements can have the opposite effect. In these cases, qualified job seekers may be dissuaded or reluctant to apply if the requirements are unclear, or they feel that they may be lacking some of the “must-haves”. It’s important, therefore, to strike a balance when writing your job requirements so that you are not scaring away qualified candidates.
Planning your job requirements list
When creating a job requirements list, it’s important to work with the hiring manager and team to determine the absolutely essential qualities a candidate will need to perform well on the job.
This should be done at the very start of the recruitment process before any job descriptions or ads are written. Clearly identifying a shortlist of skill requirements is the first step in planning the rest of your candidate communications.
One technique that companies can use to provide clarity around job specifications is to perform a job analysis.
What is a job analysis?
A job analysis is a collaborative process of gathering, documenting, and analyzing information about the responsibilities, tasks, and skills required for a specific job.
This process helps employers understand what is required to perform a job effectively, including necessary qualifications, skills, and attributes for an ideal candidate.
A job analysis is foundational when writing a requirements list. It provides detailed information about the job opening that helps to accurately and thoroughly define what the role entails. This ensures that a new list of job requirements for that role are specific, relevant, and aligned with the actual demands for the position.
With this in hand, recruiters can create an ideal candidate persona and job requirements list that can be used to inform the job description, recruitment ads, sourcing strategy, and screening criteria.
Steps to performing a job analysis
While not written in stone, the general steps to a job analysis might look something like this:
- Review existing documentation. Examine any existing job descriptions, performance reviews, and organizational charts related to the position.
- Observe and interview employees. Conduct interviews with current employees and their supervisors to gather insights about daily tasks, skills, and challenges associated with the job.
- Collect data on job duties. Gather information about the job’s key responsibilities, tasks, and required skills through direct observation, questionnaires, or work logs.
- Identify necessary skills and qualifications. Determine the hard and soft skills, education, experience, and certifications necessary to perform the job effectively.
- Analyze the work environment. Evaluate the physical, social, and cultural conditions that influence the job, such as work hours, team dynamics, and any special equipment or software used.
- Create a job profile. Compile the findings into a comprehensive job profile that outlines the job’s tasks, responsibilities, qualifications, and performance expectations.
- Validate with key stakeholders. Review the job profile with managers, HR, and other stakeholders to ensure accuracy and completeness before finalizing it.
Once you’ve gone through this process, you’ll be armed with all of the information you need to craft a job requirements list.
What goes into a job requirements list?
When writing your job or skills requirements lists, you should look to combine the content of the job description with the tone most appealing to your persona (while sticking to your employer brand). Essentially, you identify the most important requirements and write them in a way that speaks to your target candidate.
The four main considerations you should keep in mind when writing your job requirements list are:
- The content;
- The format;
- The length; and
- “Must have” vs “Nice to have.”
Let’s dive briefly into each.
The content
Some general guidelines for writing your job requirements list include:
- Focus on what the candidates want and speak directly to that. For example, if your job has a high potential for career progression with the company, you can write something like: “You’re someone who wants to come along for the ride, and grow with the company.”
- Be personable and friendly. State your values and what makes you tick wherever possible. This might be something like: “You’re somebody who wants to make a difference in the world by helping to drive growth in the green energy industry.”
- Use conversational language. Talk directly to the candidate, and relate to them on a personal level. A good way to do this is to write your job requirements in their basic form first and then rewrite them with a personal touch.
- Be realistic. Don’t try to cram too many “must-haves” into your list, or make them too specific and lofty. This serves to automatically disqualify candidates who don’t meet these ambitious expectations. It’s better to set realistic expectations so that the right candidates aren’t scared away.
- Be clear. Use very specific language, and make a clear distinction between mandatory requirements, and “nice-to-haves”.
Examples of job requirement categories that you could include here are:
- Work experience
- Hard / soft skills
- Specific knowledge areas
- Education
- Licenses, certifications, and accreditations
- Languages
- Physical abilities
- Availability
Be sure you are only choosing the most important requirements to write about. If it’s not a “must-have” or an important “nice-to-have,” then it doesn’t go in the job requirements section.
The format
At all times, avoid long and overly complicated sentences or blocks of text. This type of writing can cause the job seeker to either skip over this section, or, worse, scare them away from applying entirely.
You should format your job requirements as a short, bullet-point list with clear and concise sentences.
The length
There is no specific word count that you should adhere to for job requirements lists, but the general rule of thumb is to keep them as short as possible. Refrain from adding your entire wishlist of skills and attributes, and focus only on what is most important.
As mentioned, the best practice is to include no more than eight bullets. If you need more than eight, however, you can break them into different sections to keep the formatting easy-to-read and accessible.
“Must-haves” vs “Nice-to-haves”
You should be very explicit about which of your job requirements are mandatory, and which have some leeway to them.
To do this, simply read through your lists of job requirements, and sort them internally into each bucket. Then, when you go to write your job ad, include sub-headers with phrases like “You must have” or “Essential qualities” for your must-haves, and “It would be awesome if you had” or “desirable qualities” for your nice-to-haves.
Here’s an example from Course Hero of how to outline must-haves and nice-to-haves in your job requirements and postings.
Job requirements list example
To help get you started, here’s a sample job requirements list for the role of “Recruiter”. First, I’ll show you a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves in their raw form, and then I’ll show how you can write with a more personal tone.
Here’s a list of raw job requirements:
Must-haves
- Strong communication
- Networking abilities
- Adept at social media
- 1-3 years of HR experience
- Bachelor’s degree in HR or a related field
Nice-to-haves
- Marketing and sales experience
- Data-driven mentality
- Big picture thinking
These can be turned into something like this:
Essential qualities for this role:
- You’re a strong communicator who thrives at meeting new people and making strong connections.
- You’re a natural-born networker who loves a good trade show or LinkedIn conversation.
- Your friends find it easier to connect with you on social media than in real life. You’re a little bit too good at finding new people and groups to connect with online.
- You’ve worked in recruitment or human resources for a few years now, and are looking to take the next step.
- You have a university degree in human resources or something similar.
It would be awesome if you:
- Have some experience in marketing or sales, or are willing to dive head first into those worlds to help make our recruitment even better.
- Dream about data and numbers, and how it can improve recruitment. Your decisions are well-calculated and you’re a stickler for measuring results.
- Love to make a difference at your place of work, and want to help move the company toward our goals.
The examples above go quite heavy on the “personal” side of things, which may not necessarily be suitable for your company. The important thing is to always take the time to understand exactly what your requirements are, and write them in a way that speaks to your target candidates.
How to collaborate with hiring managers on job requirements
While writing a job requirements list is fairly straightforward, coming to a consensus with all stakeholders about what to include in that list is easier said than done.
During this process, it’s not uncommon for the recruiter to feel that they’re at odds with the hiring manager. Each party, after all, has their own areas of expertise and knowledge of the job opening at hand. Hiring managers may be too ambitious or specific with their requirements, while recruiters may not have the depth of context needed to craft a complete and accurate list.
Regardless of this struggle, it’s in the best interest of both parties to collaborate on creating a thorough and accessible requirements list that will ensure a dynamic pool of applicants.
Here are 10 tips for writing an effective job requirements list that strikes this balance.
1. Accept that hiring managers have unrealistic expectations
Most hiring managers want to give you their requirements on the trot because they’re busy, and they want you to fill the vacancy yesterday. It’s unrealistic, but that’s because they don’t always appreciate the finer details that go into finding the right talent.
One of the reasons hiring managers give vague job requirements is because they assume that as a recruiter, you’re an expert at job descriptions. Another reason is that the workplace is made up of different personalities. Not everyone has stellar communication skills.
Specialists in finance, IT, engineering, science, and many other areas don’t need to be great orators. Even excellent communicators from sales, marketing, and PR could want to give you rushed job details because they assume you know what they need. You’re a recruiter after all, aren’t you?
2. Taking a job requirement down correctly is a recruiter’s responsibility
If you get the details wrong, you’re not going to be able to do your job properly. If a position remains open for an extended time, you’ll get the blame as applicant after applicant is rejected as unsuitable.
The reality is that it’s not unfair to have to shoulder the blame if you haven’t done the necessary groundwork before the interview process starts. If you start working on a vague job specification and can’t find good candidates, your processes are wrong. The trick to getting enough details from hiring managers is to partner with them by building a good rapport.
3. Pin the hiring manager down
When you get the first wind of a new vacancy, ask the hiring manager how soon they can meet with you face to face or by video chat to write the details of your job requirement. Some hiring managers will tell you they’re too busy. Tell them that face time is essential to filling the job as quickly as possible with the best talent. That will most likely get their buy-in, and they’ll agree to a meeting.
4. Be prepared for that meeting
So you’ve pinned the hiring manager down, but you won’t get what you need if you’re not prepared. As a recruiter, you have to take the lead in the conversation, posing the right questions and getting all the details you need.
Take time before the intake meeting to compile a list of pertinent questions that will help you identify the best candidates. Don’t rely on similar job descriptions from the past, but rather use them to confirm the job requirements. Keep in mind though that departments change and systems evolve. Highlight similarities and bring the previous job description to the meeting.
5. Make the most of your face time
Don’t allow yourself to feel intimidated when chatting to the hiring manager, even if you’re speaking to one of the top executives. You’ve been tasked to fill a position and your thoroughness will probably be commended.
Go through your template meticulously and make sure that you understand the requirements. Our best recruiting tip? If something is unfamiliar or unclear, ask! This is your opportunity to understand the job requirements.
If you’ve brought a similar job description along, use it. Ask questions like “last time we placed a developer in your department the key skills were… is this job the same?” (This is also where facetime is important. You can either pass the previous job description across the desk or share it immediately online.)
6. Write the job requirements list
After the meeting, write your job requirements and compare it to the best practices outlined in this article. Does it look right? If there are gaps, get back to the hiring manager. The value of upfront preparation in the recruitment process cannot be overemphasized. What might seem like time-wasting is actually preparing the foundation for seamless screening and interviewing.
Because a job description is a detailed depiction of the job responsibilities, requirements and qualifications as well personality traits, you’ll quickly see missing details in the job requirement.
7. Build partnerships with the hiring team
Building rapport with hiring managers is essential to successful recruitment. Keep them updated via your ATS, and also engage with them if you or a candidate has questions that could influence the outcome.
Picking up on, and addressing issues during the screening and interview process that could be important means you’re making it easier for the hiring manager. Stay focused and engaged, and keep the hiring manager in the loop all the time.
Learning to work with hiring managers rather than carrying out instructions and just following a process is what sets a good recruiter apart from the rest.
Learn how to engage your hiring managers in the collaborative hiring process with our guide.
Start the hiring process off right with thorough job requirements
A successful hiring process starts with the job requirements. This is the first step, immediately after opening a new job requisition, that sets the tone for everything from how you market the job to how you screen candidates.
Crafting a quality job requirements list requires recruiters to put on their research hats and collaborate closely with the hiring manager and key stakeholders. They need to understand what types of requirements are typical of that specific title, and what is expected from the future employee’s direct supervisor and teammates.
By following a thorough process for creating a job requirements list like the one outlined in this article, recruiters can ensure that they start the process out right, helping them land top talent for their open roles.
