Your Job Descriptions Are Three Years Out of Date
SEO Manager, Paid Media Specialist, Content Strategist — the titles survived, the jobs changed underneath them. What to rewrite before you post the role again.
Most marketing job descriptions get reused. Someone opens the last version, changes the reporting line, and posts it. It looks fine, because the title is the same as it was.
The title is the problem. Several core marketing roles have changed substantially underneath names that haven't moved, and descriptions written against the old version of the job attract either the wrong candidates or none at all.
What changed, role by role
SEO Manager. Used to be keywords, on-page, link building, reporting. Now it demands technical fluency, AI-assisted content workflows, and conversion rate awareness. A description that lists "keyword research and meta tag optimisation" describes an assistant, and the people who can do the current job read it as a junior role and skip it.
Paid Media Specialist. The job was campaign construction and manual optimisation. Platforms automated most of that. The role now is managing automation — feeding it the right signals, structuring accounts so the algorithms have something to work with, and knowing when to override. "Daily bid adjustments" as a responsibility signals you haven't noticed.
Content Strategist / Content Manager. Writing was the centre of the job. Now the centre is distribution, analytics and performance — a content team that only produces is a cost line. Descriptions that describe an editorial calendar and no measurement attract writers when you need someone accountable for whether the content did anything.
Analyst roles. The reporting portion is increasingly automated. What's left is the harder part: deciding what to measure, spotting when a number is lying, and translating for people who don't read dashboards.
The signal you're sending
A stale description does more damage than an unfilled role, because of who reads it and how.
Strong candidates in these markets read job descriptions as evidence about the organisation. A posting describing 2022's version of the job says the hiring manager hasn't been close to the work recently, and that the team is probably behind. That is a reasonable inference, and it's often correct.
Meanwhile the description performs well with candidates whose experience matches it — which is exactly the group you don't need.
How to fix one in an hour
Ask the person doing the job now. Not what's on the old description — what they actually spent last month on. The gap between those two lists is your rewrite.
Cut the responsibilities that automation absorbed. If a task is now a tool setting, it isn't a responsibility. Every line you cut makes room for something that distinguishes the role.
Name the outcome, not the activity. "Own paid media performance across three channels with a $200k quarterly budget" tells a candidate more than fifteen bullet points about platforms.
Be honest about the AI expectation. If you expect the person to work AI-first, say so and say what that means concretely — which workflows, what you've already changed, what you want them to change. Vagueness here attracts people at every level of ability and lets you sort none of them.
State the scope of ownership. Marketing leaders are increasingly held to measurable, revenue-linked standards, and candidates know it. Someone taking a role where the number is theirs wants to know that before the final round, not after.
Drop the requirements nobody checks. Degree requirements, arbitrary year counts, and lists of eleven platforms narrow your pool without improving the hire. If you wouldn't reject a strong candidate for missing it, it isn't a requirement.
The test
Show the description to someone who does that job well, at any company, and ask a single question: would you apply?
If they hesitate, ask what put them off. The answer is usually specific and easy to fix — a responsibility that reads as junior, a salary range that doesn't match the scope, or a list of duties that describes a job nobody wants anymore.
Why this matters more this year
Role consolidation is compressing several jobs into fewer, better-paid ones. Organisations are hiring fewer generalists and more specialists who can directly move growth. That means the descriptions doing the worst are the ones assembled by merging two old ones — they read as two jobs at one salary, because that's frequently what they are.
If your posting has been live for two months with a weak pipeline, the market is telling you something. It is usually not that the talent doesn't exist.
Want a second opinion on a role that isn't attracting the right people? Send it to us — we read hundreds of these and can usually spot the problem quickly.
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