Job descriptions are lying to you
A job description is not a picture of the job. It's a picture of what everyone involved in writing it was afraid to leave out.
Job descriptions are committee documents that list every possible requirement, optimize for legal coverage over clarity, and end up describing nobody. They set the wrong expectations for candidates, create the wrong filters for recruiters, and start a hiring process doomed to find someone who looks right rather than someone who is right.
How a job description gets written
Picture how a job description gets written. A hiring manager sends a Slack message to HR with three bullet points about what they need. HR combines those with the last JD for a similar role, adds the standard EEO language and the mandatory list of benefits, and sends it back for review. The hiring manager's manager adds two requirements. Legal flags a phrase. Someone in compensation asks whether the title should be "Senior" or "Lead." By the time it's posted, the document is twelve requirements long and describes a person who doesn't exist and probably wouldn't apply for this salary band if they did.
This is the starting point of every hire.
The fifteen-year experience paradox
The result is a set of filters that almost nobody passes. Research consistently finds that men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the listed criteria; women apply only when they meet close to 100%. Neither group is reading the JD correctly, because the JD wasn't written correctly. The requirements aren't ranked. The must-haves and the nice-to-haves are indistinguishable. The phrase "5+ years of experience" often means "we hired someone with 5 years once and it worked out," not that the role actually requires five years to do well.
The most notorious version of this is the entry-level job requiring three to five years of experience — a paradox born from nobody being willing to take responsibility for defining what "entry-level" actually means. The JD inflates requirements because inflation is safe. Nobody gets blamed for requiring too much. People get blamed for hiring someone who couldn't do the job.
What a JD actually filters for
The practical effect is that a JD filters for confidence, not competence. Candidates who apply despite not meeting all the criteria are not reckless — they're often the strongest applicants, because calibrated self-assessment is a real skill. Candidates who self-select out because they're missing one of fifteen requirements may be precisely the people the role needed. The document that was supposed to attract the right candidates is quietly repelling them and letting the wrong ones through.
It also filters for familiarity with the format. A well-crafted resume tailored to mirror the JD's language will pass the ATS screen even if the candidate's experience is thin. A career with genuine depth in a different vocabulary will not, even if the substance is exactly right.
The better approach
None of this means job descriptions should be abolished. They are a coordination tool — they align the team on what kind of hire is being made, set expectations for candidates, and give recruiters something to screen against. But they work better when they are honest about what matters. A short list of three or four real requirements, ranked by importance, outperforms a long list of twelve undifferentiated ones. "You'll own the end-to-end pipeline" is more informative than "strong understanding of data infrastructure." A paragraph about what the work actually looks like day-to-day tells a candidate more than any credentials section.
The JD that attracts the right candidate is not the one that lists everything a perfect hire would have. It's the one that's specific enough about the actual job that someone who can do it recognizes themselves in it — and specific enough about what's not required that someone who can't doesn't waste anyone's time applying.