11 minutes
Who the posting is written for A job posting is a filter. Most of what it filters out was never a requirement of the work, and the filtering happens before anyone in the division sees a name.
What you’ll be able to do Examine a job posting and selection process and distinguish requirements essential to the work from wording, credentials and steps that screen out people whose experience is real but differently shaped. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Which change does the most for the quality of this hire? Document a next step for Who the posting is written for: Take the last posting your area wrote. Beside each requirement, write the duty it is there to protect. Delete or rewrite every requirement you cannot connect to a duty, and name the equivalent experience that will count instead. What a posting is actually doing A posting looks like a description of a job. It behaves like a set of instructions to the public about who should not bother. Most of the narrowing in a hiring process happens here, before anyone in the division has seen a name, and it is invisible to the people doing the hiring because they only ever meet the people who got through.
Three requirements do most of the damage in public administration. A degree requirement on a role where the degree is not used excludes people who did the work without one, and it correlates with family money more closely than with capability. A years-of-experience floor set at five rather than three is almost always a guess, and it removes people who moved faster. “Experience in this specific program” is the narrowest of all: it guarantees that the unit hires people who already think the way the unit thinks, which is exactly the opposite of what a redesign or an equity review needs.
Then there is the wording. A posting written in internal shorthand, thick with program names and division abbreviations, reads as a private conversation. People inside the agency read it and see a job. People outside read it and see a room they are not in. That is not a small effect; for a division that says it wants perspectives it does not already have, it is the whole effect.
Five places a selection process quietly narrows The requirement list Ask of each line: can the duties in this position description be performed without it? If yes, it is a preference, and preferences belong in a separate section or nowhere. Where a credential is genuinely needed, name the equivalent experience that will also count, and mean it — a list of equivalents nobody on the panel knows how to score is decoration.
The wording Read the draft as somebody who has never worked in state government. Every program name, division abbreviation and internal phrase is a small signal about who this is for. Say what the person will actually do on a Tuesday, in plain words, and keep the sentences short enough to read on a phone.
The application itself Time it. If completing it honestly takes four hours, you have set a price that people working two jobs or managing a health condition cannot pay. Check that every step works with a keyboard and a screen reader, that documents can be read by the tools people use, and that there is a named contact for anyone who needs the process to work differently.
The interview design Questions handed out at the door test recall speed and comfort with improvisation, neither of which is in the position description. Send the questions in advance, say how long the interview will run, offer a remote option, and ask the same questions of everyone so the answers can actually be compared.
The panel A panel drawn from one unit will recognize one kind of good. Add somebody from another area, somebody who will use what this role produces, and where the role touches services, consider a paid community advisor with the clarity to say what the unit cannot hear from inside.
Essential to the job, screening people out, or an accessibility barrier? A professional license the position is legally required to hold in order to sign the work it produces.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier A master's degree for an analyst role whose duties list no research design or supervision.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier An online application that cannot be completed with a keyboard alone.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier Five years of experience specifically inside one DHS program area, for a role that reviews that area's design.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier The ability to analyze program data and write findings that a non-specialist can act on, which is the core of the position description.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier Interview questions handed to candidates at the door, with no option to see them beforehand.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier A valid driver's license for a desk-based role with no required travel.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier An application window that opens Friday afternoon and closes the following Wednesday.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier An in-person interview at the central office with no remote option and no information about the building's entrance.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier Fluency in written English sufficient to draft public notices, which this role drafts every week.
Choose a category Essential to the job Screens people out without adding quality Accessibility barrier Check matches Reset Write only the requirements you can defend What you can change You control every line in the draft posting and every step in the selection plan, up to the point where the requisition leaves your desk.
What to watch for Do not copy the last posting forward. Inherited requirements are the most common reason a division keeps hiring people who resemble the people it already has, and nobody in the room chose that outcome.
Your next step On your next requisition, write the duty each requirement protects in the margin. Anything with an empty margin comes out before it posts, and the equivalent experience that counts goes in.
I did the work for eleven years at a nonprofit. The posting wanted the degree, so I did not apply. A colleague told me afterward that they would have counted my experience. Nobody told me that in the posting, and the posting was all I had.
Composite applicant perspective, illustrative A private reflection, for you alone. Picture the last person you hired or helped to select. What did they arrive with that made the process easy for them, and who would have found the same process expensive? Does this posting make sense to somebody who does not already know how this agency works? Nothing you write here is collected, seen or kept.
Try a situation A DSD program area is filling a policy analyst position. The draft posting requires a master's degree, five years of experience in a DHS waiver program, “excellent verbal communication,” and a valid driver's license. The posting opens on a Friday afternoon and closes the following Wednesday. Interviews are held the same week, in person at the central office, with the questions handed to candidates at the door. The panel is the hiring supervisor and two analysts from the same unit.
Which change does the most for the quality of this hire? Extend the posting window and add a line encouraging people from underrepresented groups to apply.
Test each requirement against the actual duties, drop the ones that are not essential, name the equivalent experience that counts, send the questions in advance, offer a remote option for the interview, and put an analyst from another unit on the panel.
Keep the requirements as written and rely on the panel to look past them when a strong candidate comes through.
Consider your choice Try another response Carry this forward A requirement is essential when the work genuinely cannot be done without it. Everything else is a convenience, and conveniences do the quiet work of narrowing a candidate pool.
Degree requirements, years-of-experience floors and “experience in this specific program” each exclude people who can do the job, and none of them predicts performance on its own.
Wording carries as much weight as requirements. A posting full of internal shorthand tells outsiders the job is not for them, and the people already inside read it without noticing.
The steps are part of the filter: a short window over a holiday, an application that takes four hours, an inaccessible form, interview questions handed out at the door, and a panel drawn from one unit.
The fixes are unglamorous and effective: test each requirement against the duties, name the equivalent experience that counts, send questions in advance, make every step usable, and put somebody from outside the unit on the panel.
A scenario about a draft policy analyst posting, sorting practice separating essential requirements from convenient ones and accessibility barriers, and a knowledge check on what discretion late in a process can and cannot repair.
Take the last posting your area wrote. Beside each requirement, write the duty it is there to protect. Delete or rewrite every requirement you cannot connect to a duty, and name the equivalent experience that will count instead.
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Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
