ChatGPT can draft and revise supplied text. OpenAI's prompting guidance recommends explaining the task, relevant context, desired output, and the boundaries that matter. For a job description, one boundary is especially useful: do not turn an old posting or an AI suggestion into a new hiring requirement.
Separate the current role from the old advertisement
Gather the manager's current brief, approved employment details, and any older posting you intend to reuse. Label their dates and status. If an old posting is only a writing reference, say so. Otherwise its qualifications can quietly survive into the new draft.
This original fictional example concerns a museum collections assistant:
| Source | Supplied information | Drafting consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Approved current brief | Check object labels against catalog records; flag discrepancies to the registrar | Describe checking and referral; do not grant authority to change catalog records |
| Approved current brief | Collections-system training provided after joining | Do not require prior experience with that system |
| Previous senior-role advertisement | Supervise two assistants and approve catalog changes | Do not carry these duties into the assistant role |
| Manager's unfinished note | Occasional weekend cover? | Ask for a decision; do not publish a weekend commitment |
| Employment-details sheet | Compensation not yet approved | Keep the working draft incomplete until the authorized value is supplied |
These are invented teaching records, not a description of a real vacancy. They make the review problem visible: a confident draft can combine facts from incompatible roles.
Ask for a requirements review before the prose
Help draft a job description from the sources below.
Current role and approving owner: [ENTER]
Approved current duties and working arrangements: [PASTE]
Approved employment details: [PASTE]
Older advertisements, with their status: [PASTE OR NONE]
Open manager questions: [PASTE]
First list proposed duties and requirements beside their source.
Identify conflicts and distinguish required-on-entry skills from
training provided after joining. Ask me about unresolved decisions.
Treat the older advertisements as references only, not authority.
After I resolve the questions, write a plain-language review draft.
Preserve the role's decision-making limits. Do not invent qualifications,
years of experience, benefits, compensation, location, hours, or hiring
stages. Mark unresolved fields [OWNER TO CONFIRM] in this internal copy.
Return a short list of omissions and source conflicts with the draft.
Do not publish the vacancy or assess any candidates.
For the museum example, the initial review should catch the supervision and approval duties from the senior advertisement. It should also ask whether weekend cover is part of the actual role. Rewording “occasional weekends” more attractively would skip that decision.
Inspect the verbs that define authority
Compare “flag catalog discrepancies to the registrar” with “correct catalog errors.” The second sentence grants a different responsibility. Read verbs such as approve, authorize, supervise, decide, and own against the brief, even when the surrounding paragraph sounds plausible.
A source-faithful responsibility for this example is:
Compare object labels with the catalog record and send unresolved discrepancies to the registrar for review.
The entry requirement still needs the manager's decision. The brief supports teaching the particular system after joining; it does not by itself establish a degree requirement or a minimum number of years in a museum. Ask what someone must already be able to do and what the team will teach.
Check the actual posting before it leaves the team
Have the manager review the responsibilities and entry requirements, and route employment details through the organization's normal approval process. A draft with placeholders is useful internally but is not ready to post. Do not let the removal of square brackets conceal that a value was never confirmed.
Once the content is agreed, the job-description page guide covers presenting it for readers. Keep the approved wording in the hiring team's authoritative record. If an editor later adds a qualification, check it against that record before sending candidates a different version of the role.