How to Write a Job Description That Gets the Right Applicants

You push a three-year-old posting to a job board and get 140 applicants, none of whom can do the work. Knowing how to write a job description fixes most of that: 5–10 essential functions, requirements that each point back to one, the pay range and overtime status, and lawful wording.

What should a job description include?

Short answer: A job description should include a clear title, a short summary, the essential functions, must-have and preferred requirements, working conditions, schedule and location, the pay range and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) status, the reporting line, and how to apply.

A job description template you can copy

Fill in the brackets, delete what doesn’t apply, and keep this full version on file. Download the template as a text file, or copy the list below.

• Job title: [Common title and level, such as “Service Dispatcher II”]
• Department and reports to: [Team name; manager’s title]
• Location and arrangement: [City, state; on-site, hybrid (which days) or remote (which states you can hire in)]
• Schedule: [Full-time or part-time; days, hours, shifts, weekends, on-call]
• Pay: [$__ to $__ per hour or per year; bonus or commission, if any]
• FLSA status: [Non-exempt (paid overtime) or exempt]
• Summary: [Why the role exists and what a good first year looks like, in 2–4 sentences]
• Essential functions: [Duty written as verb + object + standard, about __% of time; repeat for 5–10 duties]
• Other duties: [Occasional tasks others could cover]
• Required qualifications: [Licenses, certifications, skills and experience the essential functions need]
• Preferred qualifications: [Helpful but not required]
• Physical demands and environment: [Such as “moves cartons up to 50 lb from pallet to shelf, about 20 times a shift”]
• Benefits: [Health, retirement, paid time off, other]
• How to apply and what happens next: [Steps, any skills test, expected timeline]
• Equal opportunity statement: [Your EEO statement]
• Approved by and date: [Name, date]

Sample: the template filled in (hypothetical)

A made-up example: an office coordinator at a small HVAC company with three technicians. Only the pay range comes from real data.

• Job title: Office Coordinator
• Department and reports to: Office; reports to the owner
• Location and arrangement: On-site at the company office; no remote work
• Schedule: Full-time, Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Pay: $18 to $28 per hour, based on experience
• FLSA status: Non-exempt (paid overtime)
• Summary: You’re the first voice our customers hear. You book service calls, keep three technicians’ days full and get invoices out the day the work is done.
• Essential functions: Answers calls and web requests and books service visits (about 40% of time); builds and updates the daily technician schedule in the dispatch software (25%); sends invoices and records payments (20%); orders parts and tracks supplier deliveries (15%)
• Other duties: Orders office supplies; files warranty paperwork
• Required qualifications: One year in a customer-facing office role; uses scheduling and invoicing software
• Preferred qualifications: Office experience in a trades business
• Physical demands and environment: Office setting; phone and computer most of the day; now and then carries parts boxes up to 25 lb from the front desk to the stockroom
• Benefits: Health insurance, paid time off, retirement plan
• How to apply and what happens next: Send a resume; a 20-minute phone call, a short scheduling exercise, then an interview; an answer within a week
• Equal opportunity statement: We’re an equal opportunity employer.
• Approved by and date: Owner, October 13, 2026

The pay line follows BLS’s May 2025 wage estimates: nationally, general office clerks at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors earned $18.08 an hour at the 25th percentile and $27.99 at the 75th. Set your own range from your metro’s figures. Once a description like this is approved, our permanent staffing recruiters can source and screen against it, and you make the hire.

How to write a job description, step by step

It costs nothing but time. For a new role, set aside an hour or two, plus a conversation with whoever knows the work best.

Step 1: Talk to whoever does the job now

Ask the current employee, or the manager if the seat is new, to list everything they did last week and roughly how long each task took. You’ll learn more from a week of real tasks than from a brainstorm about the ideal hire.

Step 2: Check the standard task list on O*NET

The Department of Labor’s O*NET OnLine holds more than 19,000 occupation-specific task statements. Search the closest occupation, copy the tasks that match your job, and rewrite them in your own terms. It also flags duties you’d forgotten.

Step 3: Sort duties into essential and marginal

Mark the duties the job exists to do, the ones nobody else could cover and the ones that need specialist skill: those are your essential functions. Everything else goes under “other duties.”

Step 4: Write requirements that follow from the duties

Every requirement should point back to an essential function. “Valid driver’s license” belongs only if the person drives for the job. “Five years of experience” belongs only if you can say what someone with three years couldn’t do.

Step 5: Set the pay range and the FLSA status

Check what the market pays with the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data, which gives wage estimates for about 830 occupations by state and metro area (latest data: May 2025). Then decide exempt or non-exempt using the tests further down, and check whether your state requires the range in the posting.

Step 6: Run a wording check

Read the draft against the “instead of / write” table below. Look hardest at the summary and the requirements, where age- and gender-coded phrases tend to slip in. An AI-drafted job description needs the same check, and every duty or requirement it adds must match the real job. If software will also screen the applicants, see our guide to AI in hiring laws.

Step 7: Date it, approve it, then write the posting

Put an approval date on the job description and save it before the ad goes live. The EEOC’s ADA technical assistance manual counts a description written before you advertise as evidence of the essential functions, though not above what people in the job actually do. Then cut the posting from it: title, summary, essential functions, must-haves, pay, location and how to apply.

What’s the difference between essential functions and requirements?

Short answer: Essential functions are the fundamental duties of the job, what the person must do. Requirements are what a candidate must have to do them, such as a license or experience. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), you judge a candidate with a disability on whether they can perform the essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation, so list the duties first and build the requirements from them.

The EEOC’s regulation, 29 CFR 1630.2(n), defines essential functions as “the fundamental job duties” of the position and excludes marginal ones. A function can be essential because the position exists to perform it, because few other employees could take it over, or because it’s highly specialized. The evidence the EEOC weighs includes your judgment, “written job descriptions prepared before advertising or interviewing applicants,” the time spent on the task, what happens if it isn’t done, and the experience of people who’ve held the job.

Requirements carry their own rule. Under 29 CFR 1630.10, a qualification standard that screens out people with disabilities has to be “job related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity.” The EEOC’s guide The ADA: Your Responsibilities as an Employer notes that this part of the ADA covers employers with 15 or more employees.

Example: Picture a three-truck HVAC company hiring an office dispatcher. The draft says “must have a valid driver’s license and be able to lift 50 lb.” If the dispatcher never drives a company vehicle or moves equipment, both lines are inherited from the technician posting, and they screen out capable applicants for no job-related reason.

Write physical demands as the task, not the body part. “Moves 50-lb cartons from pallet to shelf about 20 times a shift” tells an applicant, and anyone reviewing an accommodation request, exactly what the job involves.

What words should you avoid in a job description?

Short answer: A job description should avoid anything that shows a preference for, or discourages, applicants because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information, which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says is illegal in job ads. Federal regulations name age-coded terms such as “young” and “recent college graduate,” and limiting a job to U.S. citizens is unlawful in most cases.

The EEOC’s page on prohibited practices gives the classic example: an ad seeking “females” or “recent college graduates” may discourage men and people over 40 from applying. The age rule is spelled out in 29 CFR 1625.4, which says ads containing terms such as “age 25 to 35, young, college student, recent college graduate, boy, girl” violate the age law unless an exception applies.

Two of those rows need context. The EEOC’s national origin guidance (2016) says an English fluency requirement is permissible only if it’s required for effective performance of the position, so leave it out of jobs that don’t need it. And under 28 CFR 44.200, employers with more than three employees can’t discriminate in hiring or recruiting based on citizenship status against protected individuals unless a law, regulation, executive order or government contract requires it. If you think a role must be limited by citizenship, or you want to say anything about visa sponsorship, have an employment or immigration lawyer approve the wording. Work authorization is checked on Form I-9 after the hire; see remote I-9 verification if the new hire won’t be on site.

Coverage depends on size. The EEOC says the federal laws it enforces cover businesses with 15 or more employees for at least 20 calendar weeks, or 20 or more for age, and that state and local laws may cover smaller employers. Clean wording costs nothing, so write as if you’re covered. If widening your applicant pool is a goal, our diversity recruiting page explains how we widen where your jobs are seen.

Do you have to put a pay range in a job description?

Short answer: Whether a job description must show a pay range depends on where the job is. As of October 2026, 14 states and Washington, D.C. require pay information in job postings, often including remote jobs tied to the state, according to our pay transparency guide.

Two examples show how the rules differ:

• California: employers with 15 or more employees must put the pay scale in every job posting. The pay scale is “a good faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range” you expect to pay at hire. If a recruiter or job board posts the ad, give them the range; they must include it. The Labor Commissioner applies the rule to any job that may be filled in California, on-site or remote (DIR FAQ).
• New York State: businesses with four or more employees must include a compensation range, the minimum and maximum the employer believes in good faith is accurate, in ads for jobs, promotions and transfers, and say if a role is commission-based. The law has been in effect since September 2023 and reaches remote roles that report to a supervisor, office or work site in New York (NYSDOL).

Other states and some cities set their own headcounts and wording; the pay transparency guide lists each one. Even where you aren’t required to, a range cuts down on applicants who’d turn the offer down anyway.

Should a job description say exempt or non-exempt?

Short answer: Yes, a job description should say whether the role is exempt or non-exempt. Whether a job is exempt from overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) depends on the salary level, the salary basis and the actual duties, not the title. As of October 2026, the federal salary level is $684 a week ($35,568 a year).

The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #17A sets out the tests. Exempt employees generally must be paid on a salary basis of at least $684 a week, and highly compensated employees need at least $107,432 a year in total pay. Then the duties have to fit an exemption, such as executive (managing a department and directing at least two full-time employees), administrative or learned professional, each with its own primary-duty test.

The salary level has been through a court fight. The DOL’s 2024 rule raising it was vacated by federal courts, and on May 15, 2026 the DOL published a technical amendment removing that rule’s text and restoring the earlier regulations. States can set higher bars: California’s test for exempt white-collar roles requires pay of at least two times the monthly state minimum wage for full-time employment (DIR).

For non-exempt roles, say that overtime applies: the FLSA requires at least 1.5 times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek.

Watch out: “Job titles do not determine exempt status,” in the DOL’s own words. Renaming a dispatcher a “dispatch manager” doesn’t make the job exempt; the pay and the actual duties decide it. If the call is close, ask an employment lawyer before you post.

How is skills-based hiring changing job descriptions?

Short answer: More employers say they hire for skills: the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found 70% use skills-based hiring for entry-level roles. But a 2024 Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School study found the shift reached “not even 1 in 700 hires,” and Indeed’s Hiring Lab found degree requirements in postings rose from 16.6% (November 2023) to 19.3% (November 2025).

NACE’s January 23, 2026 release on its Job Outlook 2026 survey puts that 70% up from 65% a year earlier, and says more than 80% of employers list the skills they seek in their job descriptions.

Practice lags the headlines. The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School study, published in February 2024, looked at 11,300 roles at large firms. About 45% of the firms that dropped a degree requirement changed it in name only, with little change in who they hired.

Postings are moving the other way too. Indeed’s Hiring Lab says in its January 2026 report that the 19.3% share is still slightly below pre-pandemic levels, and 51% of postings ask for no formal education at all.

Our take: If you drop the degree, change the screening with it. Name the skill in the job description (“builds a weekly technician schedule in your dispatch software”), then test that skill with a short work sample or structured interview questions. A skills line in the ad does nothing if you still sort resumes by diploma.

What to do this week

1. Interview the person in the role, or its manager, and list last week’s tasks with rough time shares.
2. Mark the essential functions, then write each requirement so it points back to one.
3. Add the pay range and FLSA status, and check the posting rules where the job, or the remote worker, will be.
4. Run the wording check against the table above.
5. Date and save the approved version before the ad goes live.

Rules here are current as of October 2026; on a specific hire, let an employment lawyer have the final word. If you’re weighing outside help, here’s how much staffing agencies charge. Our permanent staffing fees are quoted per role, in writing, before any work starts.