A hiring manager I worked with recently spent three weeks screening candidates for a digital marketing role. Strong résumés, solid interviews, plenty of platform experience. She made an offer. The candidate accepted. Two months later, she called me: “They’re great, but they’re not what we actually needed.”
What she needed was someone to rebuild a broken attribution model and realign paid media spend with a new revenue target. What the job description asked for was someone to “manage campaigns across Google and Meta.” The role in the post and the role on day one were two different jobs.
This happens constantly, across every function and level. Job descriptions are written to describe the role that existed, not the role that’s needed. By the time a role gets approved, circulated, and posted, the business has already moved. You end up screening for last quarter’s problems while today’s challenges sit unaddressed—and the best candidates can tell. About a quarter of job seekers already say job descriptions are misleading or have unreasonable requirements. That’s not a perception problem. That’s a design problem.
The good news? You can fix it before you ever open a search. Start here:
1. DEFINE THE ROLE BEFORE YOU DESCRIBE IT
Most job descriptions start with the wrong thing: last year’s version of the role, a competitor’s post, or a platform wish list.
Instead, think about what business problem this person will own in the next 12 to 18 months. Not “what tasks will they handle,” but what problem are you handing them? “Fix declining organic traffic” is a business problem. “Manage SEO” is a task. One attracts candidates who think in outcomes. The other attracts candidates who check boxes.
Then, clarify what they’ll inherit versus what they’ll need to build from scratch. A candidate who thrives walking into structure will struggle in ambiguity, and vice versa. If the person is stepping into a role with no existing strategy, no clean data, and no defined process, that needs to be in the job description, not the third interview. When you’re honest about the starting line, you attract people who are energized by that challenge rather than blindsided by it.
Finally, be honest about what level of ownership the role actually carries. Many job posts describe senior-level responsibility with coordinator-level authority. If the person will need to align with three other departments, navigate competing priorities, and influence without direct control, say so. Candidates who need clean lanes will self-select out. Candidates who are good at exactly that will lean in.
2. REWRITE YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION AROUND OUTCOMES
The most common pattern I see placing digital marketing talent is job posts that list every platform in the tech stack and almost nothing about what success looks like. The implicit message is tool familiarity; the actual need is problem-solving.
Swap platform requirements for outcome expectations. Instead of “3+ years of experience in HubSpot,” try “Experience building or inheriting a CRM workflow and improving lead-to-close conversion.” Instead of “Proficiency in Google Ads,” try “Proven ability to diagnose underperforming paid campaigns and reallocate budget toward higher-return channels.” You’ll still attract technically capable people, but you’ll also surface candidates who think about the work the way you need them to.
This reframe helps you notice when a job description is secretly asking for three roles in one. If you list outcome after outcome and they span strategy, execution, and analytics equally, you may be describing a team, not a single hire.
3. DESIGN YOUR INTERVIEW TO SIMULATE THE ACTUAL JOB
A traditional interview tests what someone knows. It tells you almost nothing about how they’ll operate when things are unclear, the data is messy, or the priorities conflict—which is most of the time.
Build your process around real conditions instead. In digital marketing searches, I’ve seen the strongest signal come from realistic case studies. Give candidates a scenario that mirrors an actual challenge the team is facing. Have them walk through how they’d prioritize it, what questions they’d ask, and where they’d start.
Ask the questions that reveal how people think, not just what they know: “Tell me about a time the data told you one thing and your gut told you another. What did you do?” “Walk me through a campaign or project that failed. What did you learn, and what would you change?” These aren’t trick questions. They’re the situations your new hire will face in month two.
4. KNOW WHAT SENDS YOUR BEST CANDIDATES WALKING
Top candidates, the ones with options, do their own due diligence. And the signals that cause them to disengage are almost always structural.
When every interviewer describes the role differently, that’s a sign the team doesn’t have internal alignment. If leadership can’t articulate the priorities, that tells a high performer there’s no clear path to success. When the interview focuses entirely on platform experience and never asks about business outcomes, it signals the company values task completion over strategic thinking, and that’s not a role a growth-oriented candidate wants.
The candidates who walk away from these signals aren’t being difficult. They’re protecting themselves. They know that ambiguity at the hiring stage usually means ambiguity on the job—and that makes it very hard to win.
If you want to attract and keep great people, the process has to reflect the clarity they’ll need to succeed. That starts the moment they read your job post.
