Most unrealistic job descriptions probably don't start that way. A hiring manager begins with a reasonable idea of what the role needs. Then someone adds a few years of industry experience. Another stakeholder wants experience with a particular tool. A previous employee happened to know something useful, so that gets added too. Someone remembers a problem the team had last year and adds another requirement to make sure it doesn't happen again.
None of these additions seems unreasonable on its own. The problem appears when they're combined. A role that originally needed five important capabilities gradually becomes a list of fifteen, and the company starts looking for someone who can do everything the team could possibly want rather than someone who can actually succeed in the job. At that point, the job description has stopped describing the role and started describing an ideal candidate who may barely exist.
Requirements are easy to add and surprisingly hard to remove
Adding a requirement feels safe. If experience with a certain system might be useful, why not include it? If someone with five years of experience would be good, why not ask for five? If knowledge of the industry would make onboarding easier, why not make that another requirement?
The cost of each addition is less visible. Every requirement narrows the candidate pool, and combinations narrow it further. Someone may have the judgment, technical ability, and communication skills needed for the job but come from a different industry. Another candidate may have four years of highly relevant experience rather than the requested five. Someone else may know a competing tool well enough to learn the company's preferred system quickly. When every preference becomes a requirement, potentially strong candidates can disappear before the company ever gets the chance to understand them.
This doesn't mean requirements should be lowered simply to attract more applicants. Some things genuinely are necessary. The challenge is distinguishing “this person cannot do the job without this” from “this would make the person easier to hire.”
Sometimes the company is describing several people at once
Wish-list job descriptions can also reveal something about the role itself. A company may be trying to replace someone who gradually accumulated responsibilities over several years. That employee started in one area, learned another, picked up a tool nobody else knew, became the person who handled a particular client, and eventually built a role around their own combination of experience.
When they leave, the company writes all of those responsibilities into the replacement job description. The problem is that the previous employee didn't necessarily arrive with all those abilities either. They developed them while doing the job.
The same thing happens when several stakeholders contribute requirements. Marketing wants one capability, operations adds another, leadership adds strategic responsibilities, and the immediate manager adds everything needed for the day-to-day work. The resulting description may be accurate in the sense that every skill would be useful, but usefulness isn't the same as necessity.
Sometimes an impossible candidate profile is a sign that the company needs to clarify the job before it starts searching for someone to fill it.
Start with the work, not the person you imagine doing it
A useful way to challenge a growing wish list is to return to the work itself. What will this person actually be responsible for during their first six or twelve months? What problems are they expected to solve? Which capabilities would prevent them from doing that work if they were missing? Which things could reasonably be learned after joining?
That changes the conversation from designing an ideal person to defining the evidence that actually matters. If the role requires handling difficult customer situations, for example, previous experience with the company's exact CRM may matter less than judgment, communication, and the ability to learn a new system. If someone needs to manage a team, ten years in the industry doesn't automatically demonstrate that they can give feedback, delegate effectively, or develop other people.
Clearer requirements also make the later stages of hiring easier. Recruiters know what they're screening for, interviewers can focus their questions on the same criteria, and hiring managers have a stronger basis for comparing candidates. Without that clarity, different people can quietly evaluate different versions of the role.
The perfect candidate can distract you from the right candidate
There is nothing wrong with knowing what an exceptional candidate might look like. The problem comes when exceptional becomes the minimum. Companies can spend weeks searching for someone who matches every preference while overlooking people who meet the requirements that actually determine whether they can succeed.
This is particularly important when a role changes over time. A candidate doesn't need to arrive as the finished version of the employee they might become two years later. Some knowledge can be learned, some skills can develop, and some responsibilities may only become relevant after the person has grown into the position.
A useful job description should therefore make trade-offs visible rather than pretend there aren't any. What is essential? What is strongly preferred? What can be learned? And what would simply be a bonus if the right person happens to have it?
A job description should help a company recognize someone who can succeed in the role. It shouldn't describe every quality the company could possibly hope to find in one person.
Hirona helps hiring teams define what they want to evaluate and gather structured candidate responses around those criteria, while the hiring decision remains with the team. See how it works →