Write your Job Description: Keep it short and include a secret question.

Candidates apply to dozens of jobs and read twice as many job descriptions. You have an opportunity to make their lives easier. All you have to do is keep your JD bite-sized and simple.

The follow snippets are pulled form our most recent hire at Memberstack. 👇

React Expert | Long-term, part-time contract for YC Company.

The Company

The Company -----------------------Memberstack is a self-serve membership platform for Webflow. We've helped over 8,000 businesses (Slack, Reddit, Intuit, etc.) turn websites into web apps.

Sentence one: What does your company do in 10 words or less? Aim for 100% clarity; meaning your reader feels they understand what you do. “Feels” is the most important word in that sentence.

Sentence two: What’s your most exciting fact or accomplishment? Lead with that and don’t worry about the rest. If your “most exciting fact” doesn’t hook them, 3 more less exciting facts probably won’t either.

The Job

The Job  -----------------------We need your help with the Memberstack dashboard.

1. Turn high-fi designs into React UI .
2. Connect backend and front end.
3. Create and run test cases.
4. Review code written by others before it's pushed to production.

Highlight only the most essential activities this person will be responsible for. For this role we picked four + a tiny bit of context: “We need your help with …”

There are many nitty-gritty tasks I could have mentioned like “Communicate clearly via Slack” or “Attend a 15-minute Monday meeting.” But I want to get my message across fast, and most of the details can show up later in the hiring process or during onboarding.

The Stack / The Tools

The Stack  -----------------------

1. React / TypeScript
2. Apollo / GraphQL
3. TailwindCSS

Again, we only include the most important tools that applicants MUST have experience with. It’s tempting to list every bit of software we use as a team, but those easy-to-learn or non-essential tools would be distracting here.

Your Coworkers

Your Co-workers  -----------------------

1. Our friendly and talented CTO who manages the backend.
2. Our friendly and talented product designer who creates hi-fidelity designs for new features in Figma.
3. Our friendly and talented front-end engineer who has been sole responsible for creating the dashboard we have today.
4. Secret question - what's your favorite fruit?

Who will be working directly with your new hire? Give each person or team their own line and briefly explain what they do. This has the double benefit of shifting the focus from the idea of the company to the actual people who make that company what it is.  While also teaching them more about how you work, how you talk about your team, and what it might be like to work at your company.

Secret Question

We included a secret question in every JD because it’s a HUGE help when narrowing down big lists of applicants. I don’t automatically disqualify someone who skips it, but it’s often the grain of sand that tips the scale. The shorter your JD, the more helpful the secret question is. I.e. I wouldn’t blame someone for missing a single question in a 2,000 word description.  But ours is short and I expect serious applicants to read it.

Hiring Process

Hiring Process  -----------------------We try to keep these things moving along quickly. Please allow 1 week for applications to be submitted and reviewed. If you are selected, the interview process will go as follows:

1. Async interview. We will ask you to submit a short loom video answering a few questions. We love async communication at Memberstack.
2. Paid trial project. We will pay your full hourly rate to complete a real task related to this job. Usually takes 2-4 hours to complete. You will have a full week to finish this project.

How you hire says a lot about you and your company. Applicants can see right away if you value their time. Are you asking for 3 hours of unpaid interview calls + hours of homework for a job they have a 3% change of getting? We can do better.

Come up with process that shows candidates you value them and their time. Or, you can just steal our process. We’ve had a surprising number of people tell us that “This was the most pleasant interview experience” after we told them they did NOT get the job. Come on, that’s pretty cool right?

Logistics

Other things to include in your post:

Paid Hourly - 20 hrs/week

The expected number of hours that this person should be working. This example hire is not a full-time position, so we made sure to denote that in the title.

Expert - I am willing to pay higher rates for the most experienced freelancers

Pretty self explanatory..

Remote - Worldwide with 4 hours of overlap of EST timezone

And then we are willing to hire people anywhere in the world so long as they are actively working  with four hours of overlap with our time zone. We do work with people in far away timezones like Australia or Japan, but it's rare. I have to have somebody convince me that this is a good thing for them and their life. That they're going to be available to jump on co-working calls without being miserable or asleep.

How to Apply

You will be asked to answer the following questions when submitting a proposal:1) What's the most complex Figma UI you recreated with React? Can you share a link? (If no, please pick another example)

2. When was the last time you used Typescript in a production application?
3. Where do test cases fit into your workflow?
4. Did you have a chance to read the job description? Anything else you'd like to add?

If you're hiring software allows for required application-questions, definitely add them. And if you can't, then this should be your first line of questioning whenever people submit applications. Applicants should not move forward until you have seen their answers to your questions.

Make the questions specific and ask candidates to talk about their past experiences. Why?

2. When was the last time you used Typescript in a production application?

If they say yesterday, I am free to send a follow up questions saying something like, “Wonderful! Can you please tell me more about that project and your code contribution yesterday? Are you able to share a link to the production site or some screenshots of the code you wrote?”

Because it's a specific experience-based question, I'm then able to ask for evidence, which is really important when getting to know someone.

Most people don't, I think, lie on these things, but it's really easy to start to stretch the truth or lean into the messiness of language. Specific and experience based questions will help.

This is also a good place to give them the opportunity to mention their answer to the secret question.