Guide

Draft a fair job description from a real role brief

Use the fictional role brief to separate real responsibilities, must-have skills and optional experience. Remove requirements the team never agreed to.

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1

Describe the work before describing the person

Use this fictional operations role to practise writing a job description for owner review. Start with the work and the evidence someone could show, not a wish list of impressive adjectives. You can write the draft yourself or use one approved assistant; AhaDo does not publish a job or assess applicants. Do not paste CVs or personal profiles. A coordinator needs a clear role, not a job advert secretly looking for an entire department.

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  1. Describe the work before describing the person

    Use this fictional operations role to practise writing a job description for owner review. Start with the work and the evidence someone could show, not a wish list of impressive adjectives. You can write the draft yourself or use one approved assistant; AhaDo does not publish a job or assess applicants. Do not paste CVs or personal profiles. A coordinator needs a clear role, not a job advert secretly looking for an entire department.

  2. Keep duties, criteria and unknown terms separate

    Fictional role brief for an operations coordinator. [J1] Work: prepare weekly reporting and follow up meeting actions across teams. No people-management, sales quota or on-call responsibility is supplied. Approved practice criteria for this example: [C1] Turn meeting notes into an action list with actions, owners and dates; label missing fields instead of guessing. [C2] Ask a clear follow-up when an action has no owner or deadline. [C3] Explain a correction and show how the revised list was checked. [J2] No degree, years-of-experience threshold or named software requirement has been approved. Separate essential job skills from preferences; do not invent a screening rule. [J3] Salary, location, employment type, hours, benefits, reporting line and application method are not decided. [J4] Produce an internal review draft. The hiring owner must confirm public terms and any must-have requirement before publication. No applicants or hiring outcomes are part of this exercise. Keep C1–C3: the related interview lesson uses the same labelled criteria.

  3. Ask for a draft whose requirements can be traced

    Use only the supplied role brief and work criteria, preserving their labels. Draft an internal job description with role purpose, responsibilities, proposed essential skills, optional preferences and terms to confirm. Link each responsibility and proposed skill to its source. Keep source-stated criteria distinct from your proposed wording and from an approved public hiring requirement. Preserve supplied terms as stated, but flag unclear, unrelated or potentially exclusionary criteria for review rather than endorsing them. Do not invent a degree, experience threshold, software brand, personal trait proxy, benefit or employment term. A supplied preference is not necessarily approved; if approval is not stated, mark it unconfirmed. If no preference is supplied, say none is supplied. For the fictional J1–J4/C1–C3 exercise use those criteria only; other roles must use their own facts and labels. Include one proposed observable work-output example tied to the brief and a pre-publication decision list. Ask for missing role criteria instead of inventing duties. Do not score applicants or claim legal compliance. Source:

  4. Compare with a complete owner-review draft

    Operations coordinator — internal review draft, not a published vacancy. Purpose [J1] Help teams keep weekly updates and meeting follow-up clear, so people can see the next action and what still needs confirmation. Responsibilities • Prepare weekly updates from supplied information; distinguish completed work, planned work and missing details [J1]. • Turn meeting notes into an action list with an action, owner and date; mark absent fields as unknown [C1]. • Ask the relevant team to clarify an unassigned action or unclear deadline [C2]. • Explain corrections and check the revised list against its source before sharing it [C3]. Proposed essential skills — owner approval required before public use [J2, J4] • Organise supplied notes into a clear action list without inventing details [C1]. • Write a specific follow-up question about an owner or date [C2]. • Explain a change and demonstrate a source check [C3]. These describe observable work. They do not establish a degree, experience or software requirement. Optional preferences [J2] None have been approved. Familiarity with a particular tool must not quietly become a must-have. Example work output [C1–C2] Source note: “Send the review summary next week.” Action list: action, send the review summary; owner, unconfirmed; due date, exact date unconfirmed. Follow-up: “Who will send the summary, and on which date?” This is a fictional illustration, not a candidate’s work or an extra responsibility. Terms to confirm before publication [J3–J4] Salary, location, employment type, hours, benefits, reporting line and application method. The owner must also approve which skills are essential and which evidence candidates may use to demonstrate them. This draft is not ready to post while those decisions are open. Wrong addition: “Young digital native with five years’ experience in our favourite tool.” Repair: “Can turn supplied notes into a clear action list and explain missing fields.” The original phrase adds an age-related proxy, an unsupported experience threshold and an unapproved software requirement [J2]. Interview handoff: keep C1, C2 and C3 with the approved role criteria. Use those labels in the next lesson’s questions; do not let a polished job description grow a different assessment list.

  5. Check each requirement against the actual work

    For every responsibility and proposed must-have, find its J or C source label. Would the person need it to do the stated work, and can they show it through a relevant example? Remove unsupported duties, degrees, years, brands and personal-trait proxies. Keep preferences separate from essentials and leave unsupplied terms undecided. Ask the hiring owner how equivalent experience or accessible ways of demonstrating the skill will be handled, and whether local publication requirements need further review. Do not invent an answer or declare compliance from this exercise. Check that C1–C3 still mean the same thing before using them in interview questions. Edit the draft before ticking the checks below; checking this worksheet does not approve a public vacancy.

  6. Take the approved criteria into the interview

    Copy the reviewed draft and open decisions before leaving; edited worksheet text is not saved. Ask the hiring owner to resolve public terms and approve the final requirements. Then open the interview-questions Task below and carry over the approved C1–C3 wording. The example there uses the same operations role, so the questions should assess the work you just described. Keep a reason for any later criterion change instead of adding it mid-interview. AhaDo does not publish the vacancy, contact applicants or make hiring decisions. Completion here means a draft and review questions are ready, not that a vacancy is approved.

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