Job description template

What a job description is for (and what it is not)

A job description is the internal source of truth for a role. It sets pay grade, overtime status, performance expectations and the essential functions you would point to in an accommodation or termination discussion. A job ad is a marketing piece built from it. Most hiring teams blur the two and end up with a document that is too legalistic to attract anyone and too vague to defend anything.

Keep them separate. Use this template for the record, then turn it into a candidate-facing ad with our job posting template. If you want the formal definition and how it differs from a job specification, see the glossary entry on job descriptions.

The document usually comes after the job requisition form is approved. For new roles, though, write a draft first: approvers make better headcount decisions when they can see what the person will actually do.

How to write duties that hold up

Good duties describe output, volume and authority. Compare "Handles customer calls" with "Handles 50 to 70 inbound billing calls per shift, resolves disputes up to $500 and escalates fraud cases within 15 minutes." The second tells a candidate what the day looks like, tells the manager what to measure and tells a lawyer which tasks are essential.

The time percentages matter more than people think. If 40% of a role is data entry, say so. Candidates who hate data entry self-select out, which is cheaper than losing them in week three. In high-volume roles such as warehouse or contact center work, honest duty weighting is one of the simplest levers on early attrition.

A few rules we hold to:

• Start each duty with a verb in the present tense: prepares, reviews, schedules, inspects.
• One duty per line. If you write "and" twice, split it.
• Name the tools and systems, but by category if the stack changes often ("ticketing system", "warehouse management system").
• Keep "other duties as assigned" to one line and a small share of time.

Requirements: where most job descriptions go wrong

Inflated requirements quietly shrink your applicant pool. A bachelor's degree on a role that a strong high-school graduate could do after two weeks of training will cut qualified applicants and can create disparate impact problems under Title VII if the requirement is not job-related. Many large employers have dropped degree requirements for hourly and entry-level roles for exactly this reason.

Test each requirement with one question: would we reject an otherwise excellent candidate who lacks it? If the honest answer is no, it is preferred, not required. Keep required qualifications to what you will actually screen on, because whatever is listed as required tends to become a knockout question in the ATS.

For physical demands, use numbers. "Must be able to lift up to 50 lbs occasionally and 25 lbs frequently; stand for up to 10 hours per shift" is defensible. "Must be physically fit" is not. See a worked example in our forklift operator job description.

Legal and record-keeping notes

Job descriptions are not legally required by federal law in the US, but they carry legal weight. Under the ADA, a written job description prepared before advertising or interviewing is evidence of which functions are essential. The FLSA classification you record (exempt or non-exempt) has to match the actual duties and salary test; the title alone does not make a job exempt.

Pay transparency laws in states such as Colorado, California, Washington and New York, and in several cities, require a good-faith pay range in job postings, so keep an approved range on the description where your team can find it. Rules vary by state and country, and some jurisdictions also restrict salary history questions, so check local requirements before you publish.

Keep every version with its effective date. When a job is reclassified or a termination is challenged, "what did the job description say at the time" is a common question.

Adapting the template for high-volume and multi-site hiring

If you hire the same role at 20 sites, build one master description per job code and let sites change only a small set of fields: location, shift, pay range and site-specific equipment. Everything else stays locked. This keeps duty language, requirements and EEO text consistent, which matters both for compliance and for reporting on your hiring funnel by role.

Store the master in your ATS so new requisitions inherit it, and connect it to job ads so a change to pay or shift updates every live posting. Teams that publish to many sites usually manage this from one place; a central jobs hub avoids twenty slightly different versions of the same customer service role. For more on writing the candidate-facing version, read how to write job descriptions that attract strong applicants.

Common mistakes

• Copying the last incumbent's description without checking whether the job has changed.
• Listing personality traits ("rockstar", "self-starter") instead of duties and measurable skills.
• Writing 25 duties. If everything is essential, nothing is.
• Leaving out schedule, weekend work or physical demands, then losing new hires in the first week when they learn the truth.
• Requiring years of experience in a tool that has existed for fewer years.
• Gendered or age-coded language such as "digital native" or "young, energetic team".
• Never reviewing it. A job description that is three years old is usually describing a different job.