Why great candidates pass on your role
We have reviewed hundreds of marketing job descriptions as part of our recruiting practice, and the same mistakes appear with remarkable consistency. These mistakes do not just produce weak applicant pools; they actively turn away the candidates you most want to hire.
Senior marketing professionals read job descriptions very differently from early-career candidates. They are not scanning for requirements they can tick off a checklist. They are evaluating whether this is a role where they will be able to do meaningful work, whether the company understands what it actually needs, and whether the team they would be joining seems competent and self-aware. A poorly written job description tells them everything they need to know, and it is rarely encouraging.
The five most common mistakes
1. Listing tools instead of problems
A job description that leads with a list of software proficiency requirements, "must be fluent in HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Meta Ads Manager, Canva, Mailchimp, and five other tools", is telling the candidate nothing about what they will actually be doing or why it matters. Senior marketers adopt new tools constantly. What they cannot easily acquire is judgment, domain experience, and the ability to build something from scratch. Those are what you should be screening for.
2. Unicorn requirements
Looking for someone who can independently run paid media, own long-form content, manage all social channels, handle PR outreach, and coordinate the website, for a mid-level salary, is not a job description. It is a fantasy. You will either hire someone who genuinely does all of these things at a mediocre level, or you will spend six months wondering why nobody qualified is applying.
Define the role around the one or two things that will have the most impact on the business in the next twelve months. Everything else is secondary.
3. No defined success metrics
What does success look like for this role at thirty, sixty, and ninety days? What about at twelve months? If you cannot answer this clearly, you do not yet have a clear enough picture of the role to hire for it. And if you cannot tell a candidate what success looks like, you cannot evaluate whether you have hired the right person, or whether you have.
A job description is a first impression. If it is confusing, bloated, or full of jargon, the best candidates will assume the company is too.
4. Culture-first, clarity-never
Phrases like "fast-paced, high-energy team," "wear many hats," and "move fast and break things" tell candidates nothing useful and signal that the company has not thought carefully about what this role actually entails. Replace these phrases with concrete descriptions: how many direct reports does this person have, who do they report to, what is the current state of the function they are inheriting, and what are the constraints they will be working within?
5. Hiding the compensation range
Salary ranges should be in the job description. Not in the third interview. Not "negotiable depending on experience" with no anchor. In the description, from the beginning. Anything else wastes everyone's time and signals either disorganisation or a compensation philosophy the company knows candidates will not find attractive. Neither is a good first impression.
What a strong job description actually looks like
The best job descriptions we have seen share a few qualities. They open with two or three sentences explaining why this role exists now, what has changed in the business that makes this hire necessary and timely. They describe the one primary outcome the successful candidate will be accountable for. They are honest about the current state of the function, what is working, what is not, and what the new hire will need to fix or build. And they give a specific and realistic compensation range.
The job description is a signal
Before a single interview takes place, your job description has already told the most qualified candidates everything they need to know about how your organisation thinks. It either earns their attention or loses it, and the loss is silent. You never hear from the strong candidates who read it and moved on. Getting the description right is not a small improvement to the hiring process. It is the first and highest-leverage step in finding someone genuinely good.