I’m tired of reviewing resumes that all start to blur together.
I did not get into recruiting to spend my week opening hundreds of resumes that all seem to say the same thing, responding to the same generic job description, and trying to figure out who is actually worth a conversation.
And honestly, I don’t think candidates are getting much out of the process either.
The hiring market has changed. The way we source, evaluate, communicate and work has changed. So why are so many job descriptions still written so poorly?
A long list of requirements isn’t a recruiting strategy.
The JD should do more work
I’ve started thinking about the job description as part of the recruiting process itself, not just a document we need to publish before we start sourcing.
If I’m asking candidates to invest their time, I should give them some visibility into what they’re actually walking into.
That can include things like:
- How AI fits into the process: How I use it, where I don’t use it, and what I expect from candidates using it.
- What happens after you hit apply: When applications are reviewed, how the queue is worked, what happens after submission, and what the interview process actually looks like.
- How I review the pile: What matters to me on a resume, what immediately disqualifies someone, and whether LinkedIn, GitHub or other work samples actually matter.
- What happens when I find a strong candidate: Will I reach out? Should they reach out to me? What actually gets someone to the top of the pile?
- What the team actually needs: Not just a recycled list of technologies, but the problems the person is being hired to solve and where the team has gaps.
- What candidates should emphasize: If I know what the hiring team is missing, I can give candidates a much better idea of which experience is actually relevant.
- Keep the req connected to reality: Interview feedback, conversations with the team and what I’m seeing in the market should all feed back into the role.
The goal isn’t to make the JD longer.
It’s to make it more useful.
And this is where AI gets interesting
I recently started using a Claude skill that takes my intake notes from a hiring manager and turns them into a candidate-facing recruiting asset.
It ingests the messy stuff that usually comes out of an intake meeting: what the team needs, where the gaps are, what the hiring manager actually cares about, what the interview process looks like, what might make someone successful and what probably won’t work.
Then it turns that information into something structured, polished and the skill includes the company’s brand and voice guide.
That’s a pretty different starting point than:
“Here are 17 bullet points. Please apply.”
And that’s the part I think recruiters need to start paying more attention to.
We have technology that can help us take better intake information, organize it, personalize it, keep it current and turn it into something candidates can actually use.
So why are we still treating the JD like a compliance document?
The recruiter still owns the pile
As recruiters, it’s not necessarily our job to make someone’s resume great.
But it is our problem if we can’t sift through the pile and find the right people.
If 300 people apply and 250 of them look identical on paper, maybe the problem isn’t just that candidates aren’t telling their stories well enough.
Maybe we haven’t given them enough information to tell the right story.
A better req can help solve that.
It can tell candidates what matters. It can discourage people who aren’t a fit. It can give strong candidates a better way to position their experience. And it can give recruiters a better signal to work with when the applications start coming in.
The modern recruiter shouldn’t just be publishing requirements. We should be designing a better way for the right people to find their way through the process.
The technology is already here.
We just need to start using it.