Most bad job descriptions are really unfinished business decisions
The company says it needs a VP. One leader wants a builder. Another wants someone who has already run a mature function. The founder wants a strategic partner who will also stay close to every detail. Finance approved one budget. The candidate profile being discussed appears to require another.
Then someone opens a job description from the last company, adds “AI” twice, requests twelve years of experience, and asks the market to sort it out.
The market will sort it out. It will usually do that by sending you applicants who each match a different interpretation of the role.
A job description cannot create alignment the hiring team avoided.
Write the business problem before the responsibilities
Why does this role exist now? What is not happening because nobody owns it? What changed in the company, market, team, product, or growth plan that made this hire necessary?
“Lead marketing” is a function. “Rebuild demand generation so the company can create a more predictable enterprise pipeline” is a mandate. “Own operations” is a department label. “Create an operating system that lets the founder stop personally resolving every cross-functional decision” tells a candidate what they are walking into.
The problem should be specific enough that the hiring team can recognize the relevant evidence and honest enough that a strong candidate can decide whether they want it.
Define what success changes
Executive candidates need more than a list of recurring duties. They need to understand the finish line. Define the outcomes expected in the first 6, 12, and 18 months: what must be built, repaired, accelerated, stabilized, hired, exited, launched, or made more predictable?
Not every outcome needs a neat percentage before the search starts. It does need an observable result. “Improve collaboration” is fog. “Create one operating cadence across sales, marketing, product, and customer success so priorities and tradeoffs are resolved before they reach the CEO” can be assessed.
Those outcomes should also feed the executive hiring scorecard. The job description tells the candidate what success means. The scorecard keeps the interview team from redefining it every time someone charismatic enters the room.
Use six tests before the role goes to market
Problem
Name the business problem this hire must solve. A title is not a problem statement.
Outcomes
Define what must be measurably different after 6, 12, and 18 months.
Ownership
Separate what the executive owns from what they influence, inherit, build, or repair.
Authority
Show the decisions, budget, team, and tradeoffs the person can actually control.
Evidence
Ask for proof that predicts this mandate, not a museum exhibit of every possible credential.
Proposition
Explain why a strong executive would take this job, including the hard and interesting parts.
The rewrite
Replace executive wallpaper with decision-useful language
| Weak brief | Useful brief |
|---|---|
| Strategic and hands-on leader | Sets the three-year direction and personally builds the first operating cadence and leadership team |
| Proven track record of success | Has led this kind of change at comparable scale, with evidence of the decisions and results personally owned |
| Excellent communicator | Can align a founder, board, and functional leaders when the tradeoff is real and the preferred answers conflict |
| Must thrive in ambiguity | Will inherit an incomplete structure, clarify ownership, and build repeatable systems without waiting for perfect information |
| Industry experience required | Must understand the specific customer, regulatory, channel, or operating realities that cannot be learned during the available ramp |
| Other duties as assigned | Names the recurring scope, near-term mandate, and decisions that genuinely belong to the role |
Separate ownership from influence
Executive job descriptions often make one person accountable for results controlled by four other leaders and a founder who has not agreed to release the decisions. That is less a leadership opportunity and more an elegant setup.
State what the executive owns. Name the team, budget, functions, metrics, decisions, and resources attached to that ownership. Then distinguish where the person must influence peers, advise the CEO, partner with the board, or obtain approval.
This matters most in founder-led companies. A new executive cannot own the outcome if the founder still owns every meaningful lever. My guide to hiring your first executive walks through the founder handoff that must happen before the title means anything.
Stop treating every preference like a requirement
The requirement list often becomes a collection of everyone’s favorite protection against risk. Same industry. Same stage. Bigger company. Smaller company. Scrappy builder. Scaled operator. Public-company polish. Founder-led flexibility. Deep specialist. Broad generalist. Ideally all in one human, available immediately, at the bottom of the range.
Separate the hard gates from useful preferences and learnable context. A hard gate should connect to the work. If industry experience is required, name the specific knowledge, relationships, regulations, customer dynamics, or operating pattern that makes it essential.
Then define equivalent evidence. A candidate may not have the exact title or logo but may have solved the same business problem with comparable complexity. That is why I tell hiring teams to evaluate the work beneath the résumé instead of letting familiar labels do all the thinking.
Tell the truth about the opportunity
Strong executives are not only asking whether they can do the job. They are deciding whether the mandate is credible, the authority is real, the leadership team is aligned, and the company understands what it is asking them to risk.
Say what is working. Say what is not. Explain why the role is open, what support exists, which constraints are real, and what will make the first year hard. You do not need to publish private company information or turn the job description into group therapy. You do need to stop describing every company as a fast-paced family seeking a visionary change agent.
A truthful challenge can attract the right operator. Corporate perfume usually attracts people who are comfortable selling it back to you.
Make the title, scope, and compensation agree
If the title says Director, the scope says C-suite, and the compensation says the company has been browsing wishfully, the search will teach you that. Unfortunately, it may require several lost candidates and six weeks of debate first.
Calibrate the level against the work, internal structure, external market, and authority. Then make sure the compensation can attract people who have already produced the evidence you want. If every credible executive wants more than the budget, read my guide to calibrating executive scope and compensation before deciding the market has become unreasonable as a group project.
Write for the strong candidate who was not already looking
A passive executive is not searching for a new collection of responsibilities. They need to see a meaningful mandate, legitimate sponsorship, room to make decisions, and a business problem worth attaching their reputation to.
Lead with what the company is trying to accomplish and why this person matters now. Make the scope and constraints visible. Describe the evidence needed in plain language. Include practical details such as location, travel, reporting line, employment model, and compensation when available.
Generic copy may produce more applications. A specific brief helps the right people recognize themselves and gives the wrong people a fair reason to opt out. That is useful recruiting, not a failure of employer branding.
Use the job description to improve the entire search
A strong brief should shape sourcing, screening, interviews, references, finalist comparison, and onboarding. If the recruiter is sourcing against one profile while the CEO interviews for another, the document did not do its job.
Ask every interviewer to test evidence connected to the same outcomes. Use working sessions and follow-up questions to understand ownership, judgment, tradeoffs, and results. My guide to evaluating executives beyond interview polish shows how to follow the story until it reaches proof.
The brief should survive contact with candidates. If early market conversations show that the profile is unavailable, unaffordable, or built from contradictory expectations, recalibrate. That is market intelligence doing its job, not permission to quietly lower the bar halfway through.
When you should call me
Call me before the job description has been edited by twelve people and now requires a visionary operator who can transform the business without changing anything important.
I help founders and hiring teams turn an urgent request into a search-ready mandate. We clarify the business problem, outcomes, ownership, authority, candidate evidence, level, compensation, market proposition, and interview standard. Then I can help you find and assess the people who actually fit it.
I have spent more than 20 years recruiting across Google, Meta, TKO, and founder-led companies. I have seen beautifully written descriptions hide impossible jobs and rough briefs become excellent searches once the decision-makers finally name what they need.
Bring me the current job description, org chart, business goals, compensation range, and the three different versions of the role currently living in everyone’s head. I will help you turn them into one hireable job.
Frequently asked questions about executive job descriptions
What should an executive job description include?
Include the business context, role mandate, first-year outcomes, scope, decision authority, reporting relationships, team and budget ownership, must-have evidence, practical constraints, compensation when available, and a truthful explanation of why the opportunity is worth considering.
How long should an executive job description be?
Long enough to make the mandate and opportunity clear, but not long enough to document every task the company has ever needed. Two focused pages can be more useful than one vague page or five pages of corporate archaeology. Clarity matters more than an arbitrary word count.
Should an executive job description list years of experience?
Only when the number reflects a real requirement. Years can be a rough proxy for pattern recognition or leadership range, but they do not prove the candidate has solved this problem at the necessary scale. Define the evidence you need instead of treating tenure as the evidence.
How many requirements should an executive job description have?
Keep the true gates short. Separate non-negotiable evidence from preferences and items that can be learned. When everything is required, the hiring team has usually postponed the tradeoff until candidate review, where it becomes slower and more political.
Should we include compensation in an executive job description?
When possible, include the approved range and explain the major components of total compensation. If the package is still being calibrated, resolve that early. Publishing an impressive mandate against an imaginary budget creates activity, not a viable search.
What is the difference between an executive job description and an executive scorecard?
The job description explains the opportunity to the market. The scorecard defines how the hiring team will evaluate candidates. They should share the same mandate and outcomes, but one attracts and informs candidates while the other creates an internal decision standard.
Who should write the executive job description?
The person who owns the business outcome should help define the mandate, with input from the CEO, board, hiring leader, people team, and search partner as appropriate. One person should resolve the final brief. Collaborative input is useful. A document assembled by committee with no decision owner is how contradictions earn bullet points.
Should we use an executive job description template?
Use a template for structure, not thinking. A template can remind you to cover scope, outcomes, authority, and qualifications. It cannot decide what your company needs, what the founder will release, or why the right executive should choose this opportunity.