---
name: job-description
description: Use when asked to write or revise a job description — title, summary, responsibilities, qualifications, reporting line, and compensation — as the durable internal definition of a role, distinct from a job posting (see below), which is the external, persuasive advertisement drawn from it.
---

# Job Description

A job description is a structured document that defines a role within
an organization: what the position is for, what it's accountable for,
who it reports to, and what qualifications it requires. It's an
internal reference used for hiring, onboarding, performance review, and
compensation — not primarily a recruiting advertisement.

## Job description vs. job posting

These are often conflated but serve different purposes:

- **Job description** — the internal source of truth for a role.
  Written to be accurate and durable; used in [[performance-review-meeting]]s,
  compensation banding, org design, and legal/compliance contexts (e.g.
  defining essential functions for accommodation purposes).
- **Job posting** — the external, persuasive version aimed at
  candidates. Drawn from the job description but trimmed, marketed, and
  tailored to attract applicants — it can omit internal detail (pay
  band mechanics, internal reporting lines) and add selling points
  (culture, growth path) that don't belong in the underlying role
  definition.

Writing the job description first, then adapting a posting from it,
keeps the two from drifting apart or contradicting each other.

## Key components

- **Title** — matches the organization's leveling/career-ladder
  convention, not an inflated or invented title.
- **Summary** — two or three sentences on why the role exists and how
  it contributes to the team's or organization's goals.
- **Reporting relationships** — who the role reports to, and who (if
  anyone) reports to it.
- **Responsibilities** — the ongoing duties and outcomes the role owns,
  stated as what the person does, not a restatement of the summary.
- **Qualifications** — split into *required* (the role cannot be
  performed without these) and *preferred* (nice to have) — collapsing
  the two into one long list is a common pitfall (see below).
- **Essential functions** — the core physical, cognitive, or
  situational demands of the role, named explicitly where relevant for
  legal/accommodation purposes (e.g. ADA in the US).
- **Compensation and level** — pay band, level, and employment
  classification (exempt/non-exempt, full-time/part-time), where the
  organization discloses these internally or by law.
- **Location and work arrangement** — on-site, hybrid, or remote, and
  any travel expectations.

## Common pitfalls

- **Requirements list as wish list** — piling every "nice to have" into
  *required* qualifications shrinks the applicant pool and
  disproportionately discourages qualified candidates (particularly
  women and underrepresented groups) who self-select out when they
  don't meet every line item.
- **Responsibilities copied from the previous hire** — a description
  reused unchanged from the last person in the role describes what they
  happened to do, not necessarily what the role needs going forward.
- **Gendered or coded language** — words like "rockstar," "ninja," or
  masculine-coded terms ("competitive," "dominant") measurably skew who
  applies; write for the broadest qualified pool the role can support.
- **No distinction between required and preferred** — forces every
  reader (candidate, recruiter, hiring manager) to guess which
  qualifications are actually load-bearing.
- **Written once, never revisited** — roles drift as teams and
  strategy change; a job description last updated at the original hire
  stops reflecting what the role now actually does, and undermines its
  use in performance review and compensation decisions.
- **Skipping essential functions** — vague duty statements make it
  harder to reason about reasonable accommodations later, and can
  create legal exposure.

## Learn more

- [[performance-review-meeting]] for how the description's
  responsibilities get used later to evaluate performance against the
  role.
- [[responsibility-assignment-matrix]] and [[raci-matrix]] for
  clarifying who owns what across a team, a complement to defining what
  one role owns.
- [[organizational-development]] and [[people-and-organizational-development]]
  for the broader practice of designing roles and structures a job
  description sits within.
- [[smart-criteria]] for writing measurable responsibilities rather than
  vague duty statements.