The most common error is writing a description of somebody rather than of a job. Lists of adjectives about being self motivated, detail oriented, and a team player describe qualities everybody claims and filter nothing. What tells a candidate whether the role suits them is what they would actually do on a Tuesday.
Start with the tasks and their proportions, because that is what determines fit. Somebody reading that the role is sixty percent customer correspondence, thirty percent scheduling, and ten percent everything else can decide immediately whether it appeals. That honesty also prevents the departure at three months when the job turns out to be different from the description.
State the pay range, which is increasingly required in some jurisdictions and worth doing regardless. Postings without one receive applications from people whose expectations are far outside what you can offer, and both parties discover that after several conversations. Including it removes the mismatch before anybody invests time.
Be honest about what the role lacks as well as what it offers. A first year business role is broader, less structured, and more interruption driven than a comparable job at a larger company, and there is nobody to escalate to. Somebody who reads that accurately and still wants it is a considerably better bet than somebody who accepts a version that was made to sound appealing.
Separate the requirements you genuinely need from the ones you listed out of habit. Degree requirements, years of experience, and specific tool knowledge each remove candidates, and most of them are proxies rather than necessities. Ask what somebody must be able to do on day one and what you could teach in a fortnight, and require only the first.
Write it in the voice of the business rather than in the register of a job posting, since the description is also a marketing document. A small business competing for people against larger employers wins on the things that are actually different: proximity to the work, visible impact, and a person rather than a process. Those are worth saying plainly.
Explain what happens next, including how many stages, roughly how long, and when they will hear. Candidates apply to many roles and the ones that communicate clearly receive better responses, particularly from people who have options.
Then read it as somebody outside your business would, or better, have somebody read it. The most common finding is that the posting assumes knowledge of what your business does, and a candidate who cannot tell what the company is will apply elsewhere.
Include something about the business itself rather than only the role, since a candidate is choosing an employer as well as a job. A few sentences about what the business does, who it serves, and why the role exists gives somebody a reason to prefer you over a better known name.
Post it where the people you want actually look, which for a small business is frequently a local network or an industry group rather than a general job board. Volume from a broad posting is the problem you are trying to avoid, and a narrower channel produces fewer and better applications.
Revisit it after the first round of applications, since what arrives tells you whether the description communicated what you meant. Consistently wrong applicants indicate a posting problem rather than a market problem.