How to Use JD Template for exceptional job description and hiring success?
April 15, 2023
When you Google the term "jd templates" or "job description template", it shows about 243 million results.
The Internet has millions of templates to help recruiters with job descriptions. But do they help?
They give a great starting point for drafting a JD, with apt responsibilities, qualifications, etc. requirements.
They maintain consistency amongst all the job descriptions across the company job postings.
They save time and make JD drafting easy.
They are customizable and come with relevant information to give a head start.
They ensure compliance with laws and regulations to avoid any mishap.
So, templates are worth recruiters' time and give them an edge while creating JDs. However, provided that they are so valuable, recruiters cannot exploit and extract true value from them. They have to redraft the entire thing again with wasted resources and time.
Today's blog will look at how you can use JD templates and create exceptional job postings. This will help to attract the right kind of talent and top candidates. Let us start with the job description and why you must leverage templates instead of drafting them from scratch.
What is a Job Description?
We see job descriptions everywhere when the hiring process is in place. Job descriptions are valuable to the company and hiring, be it job postings or reaching out to candidates.
But, what are the job descriptions and examples?
IMAGE: an image with the text: "Just as the name suggests, a job description is a description about the job!"
A job description is a document or a summary of all the required relevant information about the job vacancy. It includes a brief company introduction, job role, responsibilities, qualifications, salary, and perks, etc. In a nutshell, it provides complete detail about the job role for which the vacancy arises to set clear expectations for employers and candidates.
Example: Amazon posted a job description for the SDE role.
This job description specifies the job details and gives an overview of what the candidate can expect when she/he joins the organization. It elaborates on the essential and preferred qualifications along with basic company information. It also shares the job role in a storytelling format.
Ps:- The 'Related Jobs' section stands out as it helps the applicants to apply for the most appropriate job position.
Do you want to read more job descriptions with an innovative touch to attract top talent? Read about top JD examples (case study plus templates available).
Recruiters must make job descriptions comprehensive and concise with all the details specified, setting clear expectations for the applicants.
But, What is in the job description?
A job description must be specific and concise and include all the information to give applicants a clear picture of the job role. Recruiters can focus on the following aspects while drafting a job description:
Job title
Job purpose
Job duties and responsibilities
Qualifications (must have and nice to have)
Working conditions
Salary and perks
Company brief (about product or service)
One must not include all the sections, but it is advisable to mention all the relevant details to get an ideal candidate. Moreover, this reduces the chances of unqualified applicants, making the hiring process fast.
With this discussion, we can conclude that job descriptions are critical to hiring success. Is it a good choice to depend on job description templates? Won't they be inefficient and hamper the hiring process?
Why Use A Job Description Template?
IMAGE: A visual summarising the points:
Consistency
Time-Saving
Avoid Legal Issues
Clarity
Evaluate and Develop a Career Map
Standardization
Accuracy
Job description templates can be an aid to recruiters when drafting job descriptions. They are not a one-done solution, but they give a head start when making JDs for job postings. But how do they help?
They help in saving time by providing a rough first draft for JDs.
They ensure consistency among all the job descriptions to set apart brand voice.
They comply will all the legal rules and regulations to avoid legal issues.
They help in drafting clear and accurate job descriptions for providing comprehensive information.
These templates specify basic information and all the requirements for the job role. This provides the basis for performance evaluation and ensures employee trade development. Additionally, this helps in progressive career growth.
They make it easier to standardize the job descriptions to ensure consistency throughout all the job vacancies.
They help draft accurate job descriptions by providing a starting point, including job duties, responsibilities, qualifications, etc.
Hence, templates are popular amongst recruiters to prepare job descriptions for job postings. Also, one thing to notice is that job descriptions are not restricted to job board postings only. Recruiters also share them during the outbound recruitment and use them to share information about the job opening.
But that raises a question: Can recruiters solely rely on one job description template?
No!
Each job description caters to a specific job role to provide accurate information. The job of marketing manager and SDE is not the same, then how can we expect to work with the same JD template for both roles?
Why Should A Job Description Template Match To The Job Role?
The content writer's core job is to create content, while the core job of a coder is to write codes. How can these two people have the same job description template?
A job description template is not a skeleton that would specify the sections to include. Rather it is like a rough first draft that recruiters edit and modify according to their requirements.
IMAGE: JD parts to be edited:
Role title
Job Summary
Job Responsibilities
Job Requirements
Employee perks and benefits
For each job description template, recruiters must edit the role title, job role summary, responsibilities, qualifications, perks, and benefits. Generally, each template provides this information, but the recruiter must align this to their hiring needs.
For instance, a template might specify that a product marketing manager has to work with the marketing and product team for product success. But your company needs them to focus on a marketing effort to communicate product specifications. Hence, job descriptions must be modified based on business needs and match specific job roles.
But, Why is it critical to edit and modify the job description templates?
You can create clear job descriptions that provide accurate information and bring employers and candidates on the same page.
You can set accurate and clear expectations regarding the job role and company culture for the candidates.
You avoid dissatisfaction among candidates by setting clear expectations and amongst the HR team by reducing the number of unqualified candidates.
You can identify the right candidate as a job description template and act as an evaluation basis, setting a baseline expectation from the candidates.
You remove ambiguity about the job role and reduce misunderstandings between the employer and employee post-hiring.
You improve employee satisfaction and retention rates by providing clear information regarding the job role, ensuring no surprises after the onboarding.
You mitigate the chances of writing biased or discriminated job descriptions that drive away the underestimated candidates.
You promote a healthy and positive company culture using consistent and inclusive language.
Job descriptions must match specific job roles to ensure you hire the best candidate and provide them with the best experience. But how do you use the templates correctly to attract the right candidate for your company?
You don't just take these templates and post them with minor changes. You must modify them to leverage them and attract the right candidate. Let us learn how!
How to Customize Job Description Templates?
IMAGE: a visual summarising points: "Making Exceptional Job Descriptions With Templates"
Analyze business needs
Match the template to the specific job role
Add specific skill set requirements
Add specific responsibilities
Censor exclusive language
Add qualifications (must haves and nice to have)
Specify perks and benefits
Proofread
Ensure legal compliance
Add the visuals
Finding a suitable template is not the end job. A recruiter has to spend more time modifying the template each time a job vacancy arises. This will include making changes that align the job description with the job requirement.
So, how do you modify and edit?
Creating a remarkable job description requires a clear understanding of the business needs and job role requirements. If the recruiter doesn't have clarity about the same, the job description will not set realistic expectations. This will result in poor candidate experience and hiring failure. Below are the top 10 practices for hiring success and correctly leveraging templates.
The first step before editing the template is to analyze the business need and review whether the template suits and fits your business needs. Recruiters have to modify the template to match the business needs. This ensures that there are no misunderstandings and clear expectations.
The next step is to match the template to the specific job role. Ideally, there are job role-specific templates, but the recruiters must tailor them further and add primary and secondary responsibilities based on job requirements. This will set clear expectations and ensure give comprehensive view to candidates.
Add specific skill set requirements and other job-specific qualifications as per business needs. Often, executive job roles have specific skill set requirements that recruiters must mention in the job descriptions. Apart from that, dynamic markets often lead to the creation of new job roles which demand specific skill sets. Hence, recruiters must edit the templates to match their job role requirements.
The job descriptions must include a detailed list of job responsibilities and duties related to technical and personality aspects. Since these are job and company-specific, the recruiters have to modify these with each template. A template may lay baseline responsibilities, but the recruiters must edit them to match their requirements.
Edit and censor the template to eliminate any kind of exclusive language that might drive underrepresented candidates away. This will include gender-biased language and the inclusion of other discriminatory phrases. Having inclusive language throughout the company material is critical, including the job description!
Add/ edit the qualifications requirements, segregating them between "must haves" and "nice to have". Qualifications can be regarding academic or skill efficiency. For instance, many jobs demand a graduate while some demand pure skill without dependency on any degree. A recruiter must outline and map these qualifications to add them to the template.
Specify the perks and benefits associated with the job. This detail is based on industry standards and personal research. A template may provide an outdated industry standard and may need to align with business policy and compensation plans. Hence, a recruiter almost always has to edit this section. They must specify the salary expectations, perks, additional benefits, etc.
Editing and modifying the template may lead to some grammatical errors and typos. Tools like Grammarly and Hemmingway Editor will help you to edit your job description for more than grammatical errors. You can modify the language to make it more concise and match your brand voice.
Proofread and ensure your job description complies with the rules and regulations without stimulating legal issues. Recruiters can run them through the legal department to ensure no violations. This can include issues related to discrimination, equal opportunity employment laws, etc. Many organizations add extra provisions to the application form to ensure legal compliance.
The final step is to add visual appeal to ensure that the job description is not a big blob of text but rather is concise and skimmable. A poor job description can drive away top candidates while leaving them confused and uninterested. Add a bit of a visual aspect and ensure that the job description is not cluttered and specifies all the information in a digestible manner.
How to Scale Job Description Templates For Hiring Success?
The first step to hiring success is finding templates and drafting the perfect job description. But having to search and maintain many templates and job descriptions can be tedious. Do you want to spend hours drafting and sending job descriptions to the relevant candidate?
Need a solution to source and manage job descriptions in one place?
NurtureBox can be your end-to-end solution for hiring success that will automate the job description distribution. Especially, if your company relies on outbound recruitment, you know the struggle of personalizing and sharing JDs with the candidates.
NurtureBox is a talent engagement platform that helps you source and engage with your ideal candidate on multiple platforms. It also provides the automation option for job descriptions to share with desired candidates in a few clicks. You will no longer spend hours preparing and sending JDs to qualified candidates.
Scaling your hiring reach and automating job descriptions becomes easier with NurtureBox!
Create Exceptional Job Descriptions ft. NurtureBox
Job description templates mean drafting exceptional JDs that set clear expectations, attract the right candidate, and promote a positive company image! All you need is to edit them as per your hiring needs to boost your hiring pace.
Do you want an easy tool to add, edit, manage, and share job descriptions?
Your search ends at NurtureBox!
NurtureBox provides a job description automation option to edit the existing templates or add a new job description. This tool integrates with your existing HR tech stack, making sharing job descriptions easier. You can create a dedicated landing page with all the job descriptions or share job descriptions on desired social media platforms directly.
So, you can create and manage your job descriptions easily and get all the information right into your tech stack without going back and forth. Download our plugin today and make hiring easy!
Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.
Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.
Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.
From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:
Build positive brand awareness
Make your audience stick around for longer
Get better traction on social media
Gain more trust of your audience than ever
Generate qualified leads
Improve conversion rates
Boost business visibility with SEO
Position your brand as an authority
Cultivate loyal brand fans
While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.
What is The Role of a Content Marketer?
A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.
As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.
To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.
Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:
Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly.
Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
Types of content to be created
Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.
Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.
While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with
Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide
Continous publishing and distributing content
Measuring and analyzing performance
How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?
Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.
Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.
Top Must-Have Skills in a Content Marketer
Apart from having relevant industry experience, a good Content Marketer must possess the following skills.
Excellent Writing Skills
A Content Marketer’s prior skillset should be writing excellent attention-grabbing content. From long-form blog posts to website copy, ad copies, social media content, video scripts, emails, newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, and more – a Content Marketer should be able to adapt to the business’s specific requirements and create quality content.
Audience Research
Identifying user behavior is vital for framing the story in the right direction. So a Content Marketer must know how to identify and analyze the needs and pain points to develop a buyer persona. User research can be performed through social listening, relevant communities, in-person calls with customers, analyzing sales call recordings, and more.
Keyword Research
Creating valuable thought-leadership content isn’t enough. Researching the right set of keywords is an essential skill to further educate your target audience on the Whys, Hows and Whats of your business, and have your website rank on Google.
Data-oriented Content
Content that’s not backed by relevant data points does not build enough trust. Experienced content marketing professionals would always prefer data over hollow claims. No doubt that only data doesn’t help a content piece succeed, but it’s essential..
Project Management, Planning, and Publishing –
A Content Marketer is also expected to break down and analyze the pain points to turn keyword research into content ideas. So a professional must be able to identify and solve content gaps.
Further, they must know how to create a content calendar, decide the different types of content, and choose relevant platforms to publish and schedule marketing campaigns.
Content Promotion
Creating a valuable content piece, for example - an ebook, isn’t enough. Your content marketing team needs to promote it proactively for bringing enough attention and engagement.
Performance Analysis
Setting up goals and plans is one thing, but continuously executing, measuring, and analyzing content performance is another. A Content Marketer should always be monitoring key performance parameters to figure out the upcoming plans with the necessary updates required.
Not to forget - stakeholders and marketing heads need the performance reports regularly. So Content Marketers must be able to collect and comprehend all the data to make it worth presenting.
Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona
Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:
What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
Where do they look for a new job?
What are their career and life goals?
Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.
Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process
Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?
You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.
Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.
Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.
As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.
Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description
Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.
Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:
Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.
Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.
Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.
Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.
About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?
Content Marketer Job Description Template
Role
The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.
Responsibilities
Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
Include and optimize all content for SEO
Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence
Requirements
Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
Fluency in English or any other required language
Soft Skills
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Excellent writing and editing skills
The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables
Step 4: Source Candidates
Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.
Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:
LinkedIn
Indeed
Instahyre
ZipRecruiter
Monster
GlassDoor
CareerBuilder
Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.
Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones
Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.
Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.
Step 5: Make the Hire
Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.
Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.
Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.
Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.
Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox
Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?
Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.
Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:
On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.
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