Your job description may be screening out the person you want to hire.

Fifteen “required” qualifications. A degree the work doesn’t need. A title that doesn’t match the job. Pay listed as “competitive.” Then everyone wonders why the right people didn’t apply.

In Monster’s 2026 survey, 44% of employers named candidates’ salary and benefit expectations as a hiring hurdle. A posting without a pay range invites exactly that mismatch, and it gets discovered three interviews in, when everyone’s time is already spent.

A job description isn’t paperwork. It’s the first filter in your hiring process, and it runs before anyone talks to anyone.

How to write one that finds the right people:

1. Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. Five real must-haves, at most.
2. Describe outcomes, not a résumé. What will this person deliver in the first 12 months?
3. Post the pay range. It saves both sides weeks.
4. Use the title the market uses. So the right people can find it.

Write for the person who can do the job, not the one who matches every keyword.

Next in the series: the black hole between “apply” and “hello.”

What’s the most unrealistic requirement you’ve ever seen on a job post?