How to Write a Job Description to Attract Top Talent: 6 Steps

Looking to hire new international talent in the near future? You’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’ll explain how to write an attractive and effective job description.

Why is writing a solid job description important, you might wonder? Here are the main reasons why you should put effort into this text that’s likely to shape a candidate’s first impression of your company:

Attracting the right candidates: A well-written job description will attract the right candidates who have the necessary skills and experience for the position. By clearly outlining the job requirements and responsibilities, you can increase your chances of attracting candidates who are a good fit for the role.

Setting expectations: A job description sets the expectations for what the role entails, what is expected of the candidate, and what the candidate can expect from the company. This can help to avoid any misunderstandings later on.

Screening candidates: A good job description can help you screen candidates more effectively. By outlining the key skills and qualifications required for the role, you can quickly eliminate any candidates who do not meet these requirements.

Not sure how to go about writing a job description? Let’s dive into this step-by-step guide together. Have a good read!

1. Introduce your company: its mission and values
2. Present the team and department
3. Outline the sought qualifications
4. Present the environment your company offers
5. List compensation and benefits
6. Describe the hiring journey

The first step to writing an attractive job description is to present your company. Nowadays, many job seekers like to apply to companies whose values and mission are aligned with their own.

This especially applies to younger talent looking for a meaningful job, where they can contribute their skills to improving people’s lives, the state of the environment, or the innovation landscape.

Even if your company has different goals, other job seekers are still looking for a specific kind of company culture, where for example, employee growth and development are part of the company’s core values.

Here is a list of elements you want to include in your company presentation:

Here is an example of a great company presentation from BlaBlaCar.

“BlaBlaCar is the world’s leading community-based travel network, connecting over 100 million members across 22 countries looking to carpool or travel by bus. By sharing rides and filling empty seats on the road, our community avoids 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions every year (as if Paris was free of road traffic for a year!)

We are a global and diverse team of 700+ people with 45+ nationalities, and headquartered in Paris. We’re constantly looking for new ways to leverage technology to create a more affordable, convenient, flexible and sustainable way to travel. And we are always on the lookout for people who care about making a positive impact."

After presenting your company, it is important to provide clear and concise descriptions of the team or department the applicants would be joining. Job seekers want to know who they will be collaborating with and towards which objectives.

The following questions should be answered:

Here is an example of a great department presentation from BlaBlaCar, for a digital marketing position.

“As a Digital Marketing intern in the Digital Marketing team, you will work on all high-impact channels (SEA, Facebook, Display, ASA, Youtube,…) for several countries. You will be joining a very skilled and motivated team whose goal is to accelerate BlaBlaCar’s growth via efficient marketing activities.

You will be onboarded into BlaBlaCar first-in-class marketing strategy and operations, and you will be able to play a key role in optimizing marketing performances to reach our activity and ROI-related objectives as well as increasing our brand awareness.”

After pitching your company to applicants, it’s time to outline the type of profile you are looking for. This is an important part of the job description: not painting a clear picture of the candidates you are seeking may lead you to receive undesirable applications or miss out on great talent.

We recommend that you write this section using short bullet points and a “you” language. This is a way to already start creating a connection with candidates.

Here is a checklist of elements you should include in the qualifications section. Pretend you are painting a picture of the perfect candidate by listing the desired:

Here is an example of a great way to list qualifications.

Your qualifications
- 8+ years of Product Management experience
- Self-starter with a bias toward action
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment
- Owned successful products from inception to launch
- Strong ability to motivate and inspire people to do their best work
- Relentlessly focused on customers’ needs
- Exceptional interpersonal communication, relationship management & organizational skills
- Deep technical, analytical, and problem-solving skills
- Strong alignment with our core values: We push the limits of possible, We go and see, and We challenge each other directly

After you’ve explained what the ideal candidate looks like, it’s time for you to make your case about why you’re the ideal employer. Why should candidates consider joining your company? Do you offer a comfortable working environment? Competitive salaries? Attractive benefits? 

In the job market, standards have definitely shifted: companies need to sell themselves more than they used to in order to attract the right talent. Put as much effort into this section as the previous ones and really try to convince candidates that your office is a great place to work and grow.

Try to answer the following questions:

“At Criteo, our culture is as unique as it is diverse. From our offices around the world or from home, our incredible team of 3,100 Criteos collaborates to develop an open and inclusive environment. We aim to create a place where people can grow and learn from each other while having a meaningful impact.

We work together to achieve our goals, push boundaries, and share successes. All of this supports us in our mission to power the world’s marketers with trusted and impactful advertising that encourages discovery, innovation and choice in an open internet.

We take pride in being a caring culture and are committed to providing our employees with valuable benefits that support their physical, emotional and financial well-being, their interests and important life events.”

After you present what your company offers to all its employees, time for you to outline the compensation and benefits package associated with this role. We advise you to be transparent in this section, especially regarding the salary range. 

Indeed, a recent survey of LinkedIn users showed that including a salary range in your job description clearly influences an applicant’s decision to apply.

This section is also a great place to showcase the benefits you offer your employees. Don’t underestimate these benefits, as they may weigh into candidates' decisions to apply. Include them!

Here is a checklist of elements to include in your compensation and benefits section:

Below is an example of a presentation of benefits by e-scooter sharing company Felyx. Even though the salary range is not specified, the perks and benefits associated with the role are clear and attractive!

Compensation & benefits
- 29 paid days off on a full-time base: 28 on the roll and a day off on your birthday!
- You will get 200 free lyx minutes
- We want to invest in your future: a good pension plan is therefore in place.
- We offer 6 weeks of partner leave with a 100 % salary
- We take your development seriously and encourage you to grow with the company and within your role
- Option to take part in our Stock Appreciation Right plan
- We offer a hybrid working environment with a daily lunch budget when in the office
- We offer 0,19 euros per kilometre or an NS business card for commuting
- €500,- Learning and Development budget
- We have a partnership with OpenUp to ensure access to mental health care

As you can imagine, job seekers are busy and like to know what to expect. Outlining your hiring journey is a great bonus section which most job seekers will appreciate. This will help them understand how much time they should expect to spend during the hiring process and who they will be talking to.

If you have a lengthy hiring process, this will also help you filter out individuals who don’t think it’s worth going through it! You can keep this section brief: list the interview milestones, how long each will last and who the candidates can expect to meet.

Here is how you could do it:

Interested in joining the ride? Here’s what your hiring journey will look like:
- A 15-minute phone call to get to know your motivation and which department you would prefer to join
- A 45-minute interview with one of our Hiring Managers, Elsa, Benji, Clara, or Valentina from the Engineering teams
- A 45-minute case study presentation (which you will be given 3 days to prepare for) to present to one of our Hiring Managers from the Engineering teams
- A 15-minute discussion with one other team member
- Usually, our hiring process lasts on average 20-25 days and offers usually come within 48 hours.

We hope this guide gave you a good idea of how to write an attractive job description. 

A key takeaway is: in this day and age, you may have to convince job applicants to work for you as much as they need to convince you to hire them. 

Writing a transparent and content-rich job description without relying on meaningless buzzwords is key to attracting top talent and filtering out profiles in which you’re not interested. Give your job descriptions the time they deserve!