I need some advice.
I’m a talent coordinator at a private school system, and I had a bit of an embarrassing situation recently. I was writing a job description for a teaching role, and I listed different requirements like “experience with classroom tech tools”, “state teaching certification”, etc. At the time, all felt important. But we ended up getting a bunch of applicants who were great with tech… and completely unqualified to teach legally.
The problem is… I’m not actually sure how to prioritize. I’ve always just thrown everything in one list: must-haves, nice-to-haves, soft skills - all mixed together. And now I’m seeing how confusing that can be for candidates. And since we’ve started using Talantly, I’ve started to suspect that my approach is far from industry standard when it comes to prioritization.
So I’m curious: how do you decide what’s truly essential for a role versus what’s just a bonus? Do you sit down with hiring managers and sort it out? Do you go by what’s tripped you up in the past? Or is it more instinct?
It definitely stalled the hiring process more than I expected, so any advice would be hugely appreciated.
That's such a relatable situation - I've definitely been there with the mixed-up priorities! What's helped me is sitting down with hiring managers and literally categorizing everything into "deal-breakers" (like your state certification), "strong preferences" (tech skills), and "nice bonuses." Since using Talantly, I've actually gotten better at this because their system kind of forces you to think through what you're really screening for upfront, which has made my job descriptions way clearer.
This is exactly the kind of strategic clarity that separates effective talent acquisition from just posting job descriptions and hoping for the best. From an organizational perspective, I've found that the most successful approach is creating a formal requirements hierarchy with hiring managers before any role goes live - it forces those critical conversations about what actually drives performance versus what sounds good on paper. The ripple effects go beyond just better candidate pools; when your requirements are properly prioritized, your entire interview process becomes more focused and your hiring decisions more defensible. What I've learned over the past few months is that investing time upfront in this kind of strategic thinking actually accelerates everything downstream, even though it feels like it's slowing you down initially.
You're absolutely not alone in this - I made similar mistakes early on and it's such a learning curve! What's been game-changing for me is actually mapping requirements to specific performance outcomes first, then working backwards. So instead of just listing "classroom tech tools," I'll sit with the hiring manager and dig into what that actually means for day-to-day success - is it about engaging students, streamlining admin work, or something else entirely? That conversation usually reveals that half the "requirements" are actually preferences, and the real must-haves are often things we hadn't even written down. The tricky part is that this process takes way longer upfront than you'd expect, especially when you're trying to get hiring managers to think beyond their wish lists. But like that previous reply mentioned, it really does speed everything up once you get rolling - your screening becomes so much more targeted and you stop wasting time on candidates who look good on paper but miss the actual core needs.