Help employers identify when an entry-level role has accidentally become a mid-level role, by separating must-have, nice-to-have, and trainable skills.
The problem
Job adverts often accumulate requirements from multiple team members until the role asks for everything: design, video, coding, social media, strategy, and project management. This creates a vacancy that no entry-level candidate can fill, and signals to emerging talent that they are not qualified.
What good looks like
Employers separate requirements into three categories: must-have, nice-to-have, and trainable. The must-have list is short and focused on what the person genuinely needs to do the job. The nice-to-have list is optional. The trainable list identifies skills that can be developed on the job.
The Lab framework
The Must / Nice / Trainable framework:
- Must-have: The essential skills and qualities needed to do the job. Keep this list short. If you have more than five, you are probably asking for too much.
- Nice-to-have: Skills that would be beneficial but are not essential. These should not be used to filter candidates out.
- Trainable: Skills that can be learned on the job. Do not require these upfront; instead, assess the candidate's capacity to learn.
Example
Bad: "Junior Designer skilled in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Figma, HTML, CSS, WordPress, social media strategy, project management, and client presentation."
Better: "Junior Designer with strong layout and typography skills (must-have). Experience with motion or video is a bonus (nice-to-have). Training provided in our content management system and project workflow (trainable)."
Employer checklist
- Does the must-have list have five or fewer items?
- Have you separated essential from desirable skills?
- Have you identified which skills are genuinely trainable on the job?
- Would a talented recent graduate feel encouraged or discouraged reading this advert?
- Have you removed any requirements that describe a mid-level role?
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