Recruiters and hiring managers are starting to spill their secrets. LinkedIn has become a place where professionals are trying to promote transparency. 

That’s how job seekers know that descriptions can be complete nonsense. Often, they weren’t written by someone in your industry or department. They could have been copy-pasted and reused dozens of times over the years.

They might not even be up-to-date. The truth is, inaccurate job descriptions are costing you the top talent you would otherwise attract. 

Does someone need a Bachelor’s Degree to excel in this position? And is having ‘computer skills’ —to fill out an application that already requires a fair amount of digital comfort—a necessary bullet to list?

Job descriptions can stop the right candidate from even applying. But job details are crucial because they set the baseline for expectations. 

The employer is outlaying what they want to see. No matter what is said or explained in job interviews or in onboarding, it comes back to the job description. 

After all, performance is often compared to the basic activities outlined in the job details to determine promotions or raises. It’s crucial that those details be correct. 

Everyone expects their role to eventually expand beyond the bare-bones description. But at its core, the description should be accurate. 

If it’s not, you will attract people who are the wrong fit for the role. You’ll waste money hiring and firing, or hiring and receiving resignations because expectations don’t match up.

In the past, mocking job candidates was something of a pastime for some recruiters. Potential candidates who wrote their resumes in Papyrus fonts or who added gifs to their skills description were lampooned.

After reviewing thousands of resumes, a little levity on behalf of the recruiter is perhaps deserved. But many companies are equally deserving of similar treatment. 

For instance, some jobs require you to upload your resume. Then, they ask you to painstakingly fill out each entry into tiny boxes to rewrite your resume into their form fields all over again. 

Or, you’re forced to weed through company jargon with words like ‘rockstar’ and ‘wizard’ and ‘work hard, play hard’ to disguise a toxic company culture without clarity when it comes to expectations. 

For some time, the expectation was that potential candidates were beggars. They were lucky to get anyone but a robot to read their resume, much less get called in for an interview. 

This culture of disrespect on the part of some recruiters led to a dramatic reversal. Challenging the perception that ’employers just don’t care’ is key to attracting the right talent that fits your culture.