I’m reworking our JD template to make employer brand tangible, not fluffy. Adding a 60-word “What it feels like here” blurb plus a concrete 90-day impact statement bumped qualified applicants by 18% in May (measured in Greenhouse). How are you balancing story with clarity — and what do you cut when the post starts to bloat?
Keep the “What it feels like here,” but make it two specifics: one recurring ritual and one decision rule, plus a single “You won’t like this if…” line; push perks/tech stack to the bottom or a link — think bonsai pruning. Are you seeing any drop-off when perks move off the main post?
I use a hard rule: every line must map to the interview scorecard — “if it’s not on the scorecard, it’s out” — and I cap the JD at about 500 words. To make culture concrete, swap adjectives for one verifiable behavior, e.g., “we demo unfinished work every Friday” (it’s like trimming a bonsai, little cuts often). Do you track a you:we ratio to keep it candidate-centered?
I track a simple “you:we” ratio in the JD — target 2:1 — and if it dips I cut anything about us that doesn’t change how you’ll work; for ops-heavy roles I loosen to 1:1. @ryasmit what ratio are you seeing?
I swap the culture para for one 20-word trade‑off from a real sprint (we killed a launch to fix onboarding that week), then cut any adjective that doesn’t change how you’d act; that nudged qualifieds +11% and kept the post under 450 words. @ryasmit does your ratio still win when you add a trade‑off line?