Writing a job description that doesn't lie to you.
Most JDs are aspirational fiction — every skill, every responsibility, every nice-to-have. Here's the 30/60/90 method we use to write descriptions that are honest with the candidate and with us.
Isha Yadav
Call My Crew · ydesigns
Job descriptions are the only document in your hiring process that almost nobody questions. They get copied from a template, stuffed with skills, and posted. Then everyone is surprised when the applicants don't match the role.
The first lie most JDs tell is the "essentials vs. nice-to-haves" split. In theory, this separates must-have from would-be-nice. In practice, hiring managers reach the resume review stage and treat every nice-to-have as a tiebreaker, which means every nice-to-have is actually essential. So just list what's essential, and be honest about what isn't.
The second lie is responsibilities written as activities. "Will work cross-functionally with stakeholders to deliver impactful initiatives." That's not a responsibility — it's the description of being employed. It tells the candidate nothing about what they'll spend their week doing, and it gives you nothing to evaluate against later.
The method we use is called **30/60/90**. Before writing a single bullet, write down what success looks like at day 30, day 60, and day 90. Specific outputs, not feelings. "By day 30, has shipped a meaningful PR to the production codebase. By day 60, is the on-call for at least one service. By day 90, is leading at least one project end-to-end." Then reverse-engineer the JD from those outputs — only list skills, experiences, and responsibilities that map to one of those milestones.
This produces JDs that are shorter, more specific, and dramatically more honest. It also produces JDs that more senior people actually want to apply to, because senior candidates know how to read between the lines on a vague JD and they don't bother.
There's a useful sanity check we call the **previous-hire test**: would the last person who held this role have applied to the JD you just wrote? If the answer is no — if the JD doesn't capture what they actually did — then you're hiring for a role that doesn't exist. Rewrite it.
Job descriptions are contracts with future-you. Write them like you'll be the one who has to explain in six months why the hire didn't work out, because you will be.