How to Write a Clear Job Description
If you’re hiring for Accounting, Finance or HR professionals, you will understand competition for skilled candidates can be challenging. The job description is usually the key reference for a candidate’s decision to apply for a role and accept a job offer.
An effective HR or Accountant job description balances the expectations for the role with the unique selling points about the position and organisation. You want to capture candidate interest, but you must also be honest about the position and your business.
To assist hiring managers, here is our guide to creating job descriptions that are engaging, accurate and inclusive – and make a positive first impression of your company.
Job Ad versus Job Description – What is the Difference?
Let’s first speak to the difference between job ads and job descriptions, as they’re often used interchangeably.
Your job ad is about encouraging qualified professionals to apply for the role, outlining its key responsibilities and deliverables along with unique selling points, such as the company culture, the remote/hybrid/flexible working options available and the perks and benefits on offer.
On the other hand, a job description drills down into role details. It gives candidates a deeper insight into what their day-to-day work will typically involve, and who they’ll interact with.
The Benefits of a Well-Written Job Description
As a leading UK HR, accounting and finance recruitment agency, we’ve observed numerous benefits for employers in writing job descriptions correctly. These include:
- Secure better-quality candidates and faster hiring
A well-written job description clearly outlines the role’s requirements, responsibilities and necessary qualifications. This helps potential candidates self-assess their fit, leading to interest from individuals most likely to succeed in the role. You’ll get a highly qualified talent pool from which to pick your interviewees, speeding up the time it takes to fill your position.
- Sets the right expectations and improves onboarding
Effective job descriptions set clear expectations for what’s required to succeed. This helps with onboarding and productivity as your new hire has a solid grasp of what they need to do. This also gives managers a framework for evaluating employee performance at review time.
- Helps with company integration
A job description can help a new employee understand how their role fits into the larger organisation. This instils a sense of purpose, direction and meaning – all important motivating factors for doing well in their job.
What to Include in an HR or Finance Job Description
There are a few fundamentals in a well-curated HR, Finance or Accountant job description. Before you begin creating one, ensure you consult all relevant stakeholders, such as HR or line management, about the role. Getting input from stakeholders ensures the role and key information has sign-off and the overall job description is accurate.
When formatting the document, opt for bullet points over longer narrative-style paragraphs. Use clear sections to separate duties from requirements, and ‘must-have’ from ‘nice-to-have’ skills.
THE COMPONENTS OF A GREAT JOB DESCRIPTION
Job title
Ensure the job title accurately reflects the position, avoiding generalisations. Use industry-standard terminology, not internal jargon and acronyms that may confuse potential applicants.
Duties and responsibilities
Use bullet points to outline the essential role functions, responsibilities and daily activities. Focus on the expected outcomes of the role by including the core KPIs – these will help candidates understand what success looks like. You may even like to provide a few short, medium and long-term objectives.
The level of detail you provide helps candidates determine if the role and your company are the right fit.
Employment type and conditions
Detail whether the position is permanent (full-time/part-time) or temporary/contract, along with details about work location, hours and any specific working conditions (i.e. requires travel). It’s also a good idea to explain where the role sits within the team, department and wider business, and who the hire will report to.
If you offer remote/hybrid/flexible working options, you can mention this here. These are highly sought-after benefits, so it’s good to highlight them in the job description.
Note: Employees now have a legal right to request flexible working in the UK and employers must respond to requests for flexible work in a ‘reasonable manner’. If you don’t offer this, we recommend being prepared to answer questions about it during the application and interview stages.
Required skills and qualifications
List the necessary skills, education, certifications and experience necessary for the role, and include a mix of hard and soft skills. Aim to list only the essentials, as having too many requisites can put candidates off applying (see the ‘restrictive requirements’ section below for more information).
Remuneration and benefits
After doing your due diligence to ensure the salary range is competitive (tip: we can help) you may include mention of the benefits and perks available to further sell your role and company. These are usually finalised during the job offer process but it’s still useful to provide a list of options available.
From our experience, these sit high up the benefits ‘wants list’ for HR, accounting and finance professionals:
- Progression opportunities (such as a training budget)
- Extra pension contributions
- Performance bonus
- Private medical insurance
- Enhanced maternity/paternity or sabbatical pay
- Remote/hybrid/flexible working options
- Extra paid time off/holiday allowance
- Company car/allowance
- Option to create a bespoke benefits package
- Health and wellness-related allowance
- Additional employee benefits such as perkbox or lifestyle advantages
What to Avoid in Job Descriptions
From a legal standpoint, certain things are off-limits for job descriptions and recruitment activities, which are outlined in UK employment regulations. In addition to the legal requirements, here are other pitfalls to avoid:
Unconscious bias
Unconscious bias in recruitment can prevent your business from hiring candidates from diverse backgrounds, which can impact your organisation’s diversity, equality and inclusion (DE&I) targets.
Unfortunately, only 38% of UK businesses feel they work hard to remove bias in their recruitment practices, so it helps to understand what steps you can take to reduce unconscious bias from the hiring process.
Gender-specific language
An in-depth survey of nearly 77,000 UK job ads uncovered a surprising statistic – only 20% are gender-neutral. It’s fair to assume these findings are similar in job descriptions.
When crafting your job description, aim for gender-neutral terms such as they/their instead of he/she. Try to avoid words that may have gender connotations such as ‘assertive and ‘decisive’ (masculine), or ‘caring’ and ‘empathetic (feminine). If that’s not possible, try to target an equal weighting of masculine and feminine terms.
Should you find this tricky, our specialist recruiters can guide you on using suitable language.
Restrictive requirements
A well-known recruitment statistic is that men will apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the job requirements, but women will only apply if they meet nearly all of them. This is why it’s important to determine what job qualifications are ‘must-haves’ and ‘nice-to-haves’, and list only the former. Sticking to the essentials can go a long way in boosting the number of female applicants.
You may also want to avoid stipulating a specific number of years of experience required. This may deter applicants who have transferable skills from different industries. Instead, focus on core competencies needed and soft skills.
Ambiguity
Using terminology and jargon unique to your organisation risks excluding qualified candidates. Use widely recognised industry terms instead.
Get Help from an Accounting, Finance and HR Recruitment Specialist
Writing an accurate job description can make all the difference to whether you hire the right (or wrong) person for the job! Do it well, and you’ll have a long-term motivated employee who’s able to grow with your business. At CMA we’re a people-focused business and believe in providing support to clients throughout the whole recruitment cycle. We can guide you through the job description writing process to ensure it helps you find the perfect fit for your team.
Contact us today to see how we can support you.