Job Spec Analysis
Find the problems in a job spec before you repost it
An intentionally imperfect specification, the issues found in it, the exact wording each issue refers to, and what to write instead.
What the agent was given
- Document
- Draft specification, 380 words
- Role title as written
- Senior Customer Success Manager
- Stated salary
- £60,000
- Location
- Manchester (hybrid)
- Analysis modules
- Seniority, skills, quality, salary alignment
What came back
Quality band
Risky
36 / 100 overall
5
issues found, each quoted against the wording that triggered it
Seniority
Overstated
Title says Senior; the responsibilities read as Mid
What was analysed
The source specification
Senior Customer Success Manager We are looking for a rockstar CSM to join our fast-paced, high-energy team and hit the ground running. The successful candidate will own a book of business and drive customer outcomes. Responsibilities: - Manage customer relationships - Drive adoption and retention - Work with internal teams - Support the sales team as required - Other duties as assigned Requirements: - 8+ years experience in customer success - Degree educated - Experience with Salesforce, Gainsight, Zendesk, Looker, SQL, Jira and Confluence - Strong communicator - Able to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment - Must be comfortable with a young, dynamic team - Salesforce Administrator certification Salary: £60,000. Manchester, hybrid.
Written deliberately badly for this example, but every problem in it is one that turns up in real internal specifications.
Quality breakdown
Quoted against your own wording
Issues found
Age-coded language narrows the applicant pool
“Must be comfortable with a young, dynamic team”
“Young” describes the team's age rather than how it works, and in a requirements list it reads as a characteristic the applicant is expected to share. Alongside “rockstar” and “high-energy”, this is the kind of phrasing that measurably reduces applications from experienced candidates, exactly the group an 8-year requirement is asking for.
Suggested fix
“You will join a collaborative team that ships quickly and reviews its own work.” Describe how the team operates; drop the age.
Seven named tools, all listed as requirements
“Experience with Salesforce, Gainsight, Zendesk, Looker, SQL, Jira and Confluence”
Nothing separates the tools someone must already know from the ones they will pick up. Candidates self-select out on the longest list they cannot fully match, and the evidence is consistent that this filters out strong applicants, disproportionately those less inclined to apply when they meet most, but not all, of a list.
Suggested fix
Name the two tools someone genuinely cannot start without, and move the rest to “tools you will use here”.
Responsibilities describe execution, not senior ownership
“Manage customer relationships / Work with internal teams / Support the sales team as required”
Every responsibility listed could describe a CSM two levels more junior. Nothing names a decision this person owns, an outcome they are accountable for, or anything they set direction on, so a genuinely senior candidate reading it sees a mid-level job with a senior title.
Suggested fix
State the accountability: “Own renewal and expansion outcomes across a portfolio of roughly 30 enterprise accounts, and set the engagement model the wider team follows.”
“Other duties as assigned” gives the role no edges
“Other duties as assigned”
It provides no information and signals that the role's boundaries have not been agreed internally. Senior candidates read it as a warning about scope creep.
Suggested fix
Delete it. If the role genuinely flexes, say what it flexes between.
Years-of-experience and degree requirements are unjustified
“8+ years experience in customer success” / “Degree educated”
Eight years is high for a role whose responsibilities describe execution-level work, and an unqualified degree requirement screens out capable applicants without being connected to anything in the role. Neither is linked to a responsibility in the spec.
Suggested fix
Replace with the capability you actually need evidence of, and state the degree requirement only if a specific discipline is genuinely required.
Seniority alignment
- Title claims
- Senior
- Wording implies
- Mid
- Assessment
- Overstated
The gap matters commercially: you are advertising a mid-level scope at a senior salary, so the strongest applicants discount the role and the weakest over-apply.
Missing from the specification
- Size and composition of the team
- Number or value of accounts in the portfolio
- How performance is measured in the first year
- Progression from this role
- Benefits and working arrangements beyond “hybrid”
Salary alignment
Not benchmarked. £60,000 is a scenario input for this example, so no market comparison was run. In the live agent this section compares a stated salary against benchmark quartiles where data exists for the role and location.
In priority order
Recommendations
Rewrite the responsibilities as accountabilities
High impactMedium effortThis is the finding that makes the title credible. Until a senior candidate can see what they own, the salary and the seniority are the only senior things in the document.
Split the tool list into must-have and will-learn
High impactLow effortThe single cheapest change here. It widens the pool without changing the role at all.
Remove age-coded and hyperbolic language
Medium impactLow effort“Rockstar”, “high-energy”, “hit the ground running” and “young” all do the same work: they narrow who reads this as being for them.
Add what is missing: team size, portfolio, progression
Medium impactMedium effortA senior candidate weighing a move needs to know the shape of the portfolio and who they work alongside. None of it is currently stated.
Assumptions and limits (4)
- The source specification is fictional and was written to contain findable problems. A healthy spec produces a shorter report.
- Salary alignment is only reported when benchmark data is available for the role and location; it is shown here as not benchmarked, because £60,000 is a scenario input rather than a benchmarked rate.
- Quality scores are a structured review, not a compliance ruling. Inclusivity findings are drafting guidance and are not legal advice.
- Recommendations are suggestions for a human editor. Nothing is rewritten automatically.
Why this matters
When a role is hard to fill, the specification is rarely the first thing re-examined. It gets reposted. But a spec that lists twelve essential requirements for a role budgeted at £60,000, or that describes responsibilities without saying what the person is accountable for, narrows the applicant pool before any advertising money is spent. The effect is invisible, because you never see who decided not to apply.
Read the rest of the background
Taligent's Job Spec Analysis reads a specification and reports what it finds: a quality band with a breakdown across clarity, specificity, seniority alignment, inclusivity and completeness; individual issues quoted against the passage that triggered them; the seniority the wording actually implies compared with the seniority the title claims; and a prioritised set of recommendations with suggested replacement wording. Quoting the evidence matters: a finding you cannot trace back to a sentence in your own document is not actionable.
The specification analysed below was written deliberately badly for this example, in the way real internal specs go wrong: inherited requirements nobody has revisited, a title that outranks the responsibilities beneath it, and phrases that quietly screen people out. The analysis shown is the shape of output the agent produces against that input.
Run this for your own role
Create a free account and Job Spec Analysis works from your role, your requirements and your numbers. You start with 3 credits; each agent shows what a run costs before you start it.