AI prompts for writing job descriptions that attract the right people

Most job descriptions are assembled rather than written. Someone finds last year’s version, adds two responsibilities, pastes in a values paragraph, and posts it. The result describes an ideal candidate who does not exist and says almost nothing about the work.

Good job descriptions do the opposite: they describe the job so precisely that the wrong people rule themselves out and the right people recognise themselves. These five prompts get you there — a core writer, a variant for hard-to-fill roles, a variant for internal moves, a review prompt that hunts for exclusionary language, and a batch prompt for a whole hiring plan.

Why do most job descriptions attract the wrong applicants?

Because they are written as a list of requirements rather than a description of work. A requirements list is a filter the applicant applies to themselves, and it filters on the wrong axis: confident people apply when they meet half of it, cautious people do not apply when they meet nearly all of it.

The well-known consequence is a gendered application gap, but the general effect is worse than that. You lose career-changers, returners, and anyone whose experience is real but differently labelled — which is most people who would be good at the job.

The second failure is vagueness about outcomes. “Manage the social media channels” could mean scheduling three posts a week or owning a six-figure paid budget. Applicants cannot tell whether they are over- or under-qualified, so they either self-select out or arrive at interview with mismatched expectations.

Third, most job descriptions bury the things that actually drive the decision: salary, location reality, hours, and who the person reports to.

What should job descriptions actually contain?

Start with the work. What will this person spend Monday doing, and what will be different in six months because they were there? That single question produces better copy than any responsibilities list.

Then split requirements honestly into what someone must already be able to do on day one and what they can learn in the role. Most requirement lists conflate these, and the conflation is what does the damage.

State the salary. A range is fine; “competitive” is not, and in practice it reads as “below market or we would have said”. Say where the work happens, including how many days in an office and whether that is likely to change. Name the manager’s role. And describe the team as it is rather than as you would like it to be.

The core prompt for job descriptions

The refusal clause matters here as much as in any prompt on this site: a thin brief produces exactly the generic job descriptions you are trying to replace.

You are writing a job description for a UK employer. Write for the
person who will do the work, not for an HR file.

If any input below is missing, do not write the description. List
what you need and stop.

Role title: {{title as people would search for it}}
Team and size: {{team, how many people, what it owns}}
Reports to: {{job title of the manager}}
Salary: {{range}}
Location reality: {{office days per week, where, likely to change?}}
Contract: {{permanent / fixed term, hours, any flexibility}}
Week one: {{what this person actually does in their first week}}
Six-month outcome: {{what is different because they were here}}
Day-one skills: {{what they must already be able to do}}
Learnable in role: {{what they can pick up here}}
Hardest part of the job: {{the genuinely difficult bit}}
Interview process: {{stages and rough timeline}}

The output format

Ordering is the whole trick. Salary and location go near the top because they decide whether anyone reads the rest.

Write the description in this order:

1. One paragraph on what the role is for — the problem this
   person solves, not the department they sit in.
2. THE FACTS — salary, location and office days, contract, hours,
   who they report to. As a short list.
3. WHAT YOU WOULD DO — the week-one description, then the
   six-month outcome. Concrete and in second person.
4. WHAT YOU NEED ON DAY ONE — maximum five items, each one
   genuinely non-negotiable.
5. WHAT YOU CAN LEARN HERE — the rest.
6. THE HARD PART — the difficult aspect, stated plainly.
7. HOW HIRING WORKS — stages and timeline.

Rules:
- Maximum five day-one requirements. If the brief lists more,
  move the weakest into the learnable section and say so.
- No "you will be responsible for". Say what they will do.
- Ban: rockstar, ninja, guru, wear many hats, fast-paced,
  work hard play hard, like a family, passionate, self-starter,
  hit the ground running.
- No years-of-experience number unless it is a legal or
  regulatory requirement. Describe the capability instead.
- Do not describe the culture. Describe one thing the team does
  that demonstrates it.
- The hard part must be a real difficulty, not a humblebrag.

A worked example

The brief

Role title: Bookkeeper (part-time)
Team and size: finance team of 3, owns payroll and month-end for
  a 40-person agency
Reports to: Finance Manager
Salary: £32,000-£36,000 pro rata
Location reality: 2 days in the Leeds office, 3 remote, not
  expected to change
Contract: permanent, 24 hours, days flexible
Week one: take over the purchase ledger, meet the two account
  managers who raise most of the invoices, learn our Xero setup
Six-month outcome: month-end closes in 4 days instead of 9
Day-one skills: double-entry bookkeeping, Xero, confident
  chasing invoices by phone
Learnable in role: our approval workflow, CIS, the reporting pack
Hardest part: the account managers submit expenses late and you
  will need to chase people who outrank you
Interview process: 30-min call, then a 90-min in-person with a
  short practical, decision within a week

The result

Why this role exists
Our month-end takes nine days and it should take four. Most of the delay is the purchase ledger and late expense claims. We want someone to own that end of the finance function and fix it.

The facts
£32,000–£36,000 pro rata · 24 hours a week, days flexible · permanent · two days in our Leeds office, three remote, and we do not expect that to change · reporting to our Finance Manager.

What you would do
In your first week you would take over the purchase ledger, meet the two account managers who raise most of our invoices, and get to know our Xero setup. By six months, month-end closes in four days.

What you need on day one
Double-entry bookkeeping. Xero. The confidence to chase an invoice by phone.

What you can learn here
Our approval workflow, CIS, and the monthly reporting pack.

The hard part
Account managers submit expenses late, and you will need to chase people who are senior to you. We will back you, but it is the part of the job people find uncomfortable.

Three day-one requirements rather than fourteen. And the hard part is a genuine warning, which is what makes the rest credible.

The prompt for hard-to-fill roles

When a role has been open for months, the problem is usually not reach. It is that the description asks for a common skill set in an uncommon combination, or that something about the offer is uncompetitive and unaddressed.

This role has been open {{n}} weeks with {{n}} applicants.

Current description: {{paste}}
Salary: {{range}}
Market rate, if known: {{figure}}
What we cannot change: {{constraints}}
What we could change: {{flexibility available}}
Who has applied so far: {{pattern in the applicants}}
Who we actually want: {{profile}}

Do three things, in order:

1. DIAGNOSE. List every reason this description would deter the
   target profile. Be specific and quote the text. Include:
   requirements that are really preferences, an unaddressed gap
   between salary and market, location terms stated in a way that
   reads as inflexible, and any signal that the role is a
   step down in scope.

2. REFRAME. Rewrite the description using only what we can
   change. Where the offer is genuinely below market, do not
   hide it — name the compensating thing that is true.

3. STATE THE TRADE. In one paragraph addressed to the hiring
   manager, say what will not be solved by rewriting and what
   would have to change in the offer itself.

Do not produce an optimistic rewrite that ignores the constraint.
The honest diagnosis is the useful part.

The prompt for internal moves

You are writing an internal job description for a move or
promotion within {{company}}.

Role: {{title}}
Current holder, if replacing: {{what they did that is not in the
  formal description}}
What changes for the person taking it: {{scope, reporting,
  decision rights}}
Salary band and whether a move guarantees a rise: {{detail}}
What happens to their current work: {{plan}}
Who else might apply: {{internal candidates}}

Write the description for a colleague, not a stranger. Include:
- What genuinely changes day to day, beyond the title.
- The decisions this role gets to make that the current one
  does not. This is what people actually want to know.
- Whether the move comes with a pay change, stated plainly.
- What happens to their existing responsibilities.
- How the process works, and specifically whether an internal
  applicant who is unsuccessful can expect feedback.

Rules:
- No external marketing language. They already work here.
- Do not imply the move is a formality or that a preferred
  candidate exists.
- If the role is a sideways move rather than a promotion, say
  so and say what makes it worth doing.

The review prompt: finding exclusionary language

Audit the job description below. Output findings only, quoting
the exact text.

1. FALSE REQUIREMENTS — anything listed as essential that is
   plainly learnable, or a preference written as a requirement.
2. CODED LANGUAGE — wording that narrows the applicant pool
   without meaning to: cultural-fit signals, sporting or
   military metaphors, informal register that reads as
   in-group, references to energy or pace that stand in for age.
3. ACCESSIBILITY — physical requirements not essential to the
   role, and anything that assumes a way of working rather
   than an outcome.
4. YEARS OF EXPERIENCE — every instance, with what capability
   it is standing in for.
5. MISSING FACTS — is salary stated, is location reality
   stated, are hours stated, is the manager named by role.
6. UNVERIFIABLE CLAIMS — any statement about the company a
   candidate could not check and would discount.

Then give the single change most likely to widen the pool
without lowering the bar.

DESCRIPTION: {{paste}}

Category two is worth running even on job descriptions you are happy with. “Fast-paced” and “hit the ground running” are so common that they read as neutral to the person writing them and as a warning to anyone with a disability or caring responsibilities.

Writing job descriptions across a hiring plan

You are writing job descriptions for {{n}} roles in one hiring
plan. They will be read by candidates who may look at several,
so they must be consistent without being interchangeable.

Company constants: {{location policy, benefits, interview
  process, anything true of every role}}
Voice reference: {{paste one approved description}}
Roles: {{table — title, team, reports to, salary, week one,
  six-month outcome, day-one skills, learnable, hardest part}}

For each role, write the description in the established format.

Rules for the batch:
- Company constants appear in every description, worded the
  same way each time.
- Never carry a role-specific requirement between rows.
- If two roles have overlapping scope, flag it:
  OVERLAP: {{role A}} / {{role B}} — {{what overlaps}}. Two
  descriptions competing for the same candidate is a hiring
  plan problem, not a copy problem.
- Any row missing salary or week-one detail: output
  ROW {{n}} NEEDS {{items}} and write nothing for it.
- Flag any role whose day-one list still exceeds five items
  after your edit.

Common mistakes with job descriptions

Writing the week-one field aspirationally. If you describe a first week of strategy workshops when the reality is three weeks of untangling a spreadsheet, the person will leave in month four. The field is a retention tool disguised as a copy input.

Treating the hardest-part field as optional. It is the highest-signal sentence in the whole document. Candidates who read a real difficulty and apply anyway are pre-qualified in a way no requirements list achieves.

Keeping a years-of-experience number because it feels like a safeguard. It is not: it excludes career-changers and includes people who repeated one year eight times. Describe the capability and let the interview test it.

Letting the model write a culture paragraph. It will produce something warm, fluent and entirely unfalsifiable, and candidates discount it completely. One concrete example of how the team works beats a paragraph of values every time.

What to check before publishing job descriptions

Read it as someone who is currently employed, reasonably happy, and reading on a phone at lunchtime. If they cannot find the salary, the location terms and what the job actually involves within about twenty seconds, they will close it.

Check that every day-one requirement is genuinely non-negotiable by asking whether you would reject an otherwise excellent candidate for missing it. If the answer is no, it belongs in the learnable list.

Confirm nothing in the description could be read as an indirect requirement relating to a protected characteristic. The Equality Act 2010 guidance is the reference point, and a fluent draft is where this slips through most easily.

Finally, send it to someone doing the same job elsewhere and ask whether it describes their week. If it does not, the description is about the org chart rather than the work.