At some point in almost every HR role, you end up reviewing job descriptions.

Sometimes they are out of date. Sometimes the business has grown, roles have shifted, or someone is being promoted and suddenly everyone is looking at the JD again. The natural response is to start editing: update the wording, add a few responsibilities, make the senior role sound more senior and, somewhere along the way, add the word "strategic".

I’ve been doing some of this recently while working on a progression framework, and it made me think that we often start in the wrong place.

Instead of asking how do we rewrite this job description?, the more useful question is: what fundamentally changes from one level to the next?

Take Manager and Senior Manager. The difference shouldn’t simply be that the Senior Manager has been doing the job for longer or has a longer list of responsibilities. If that is all we can point to, then we haven’t really defined what seniority means.

What should change is the level of ownership, judgement and accountability. A Manager may be expected to run their area well, make day-to-day decisions independently and deliver consistently. At Senior Manager level, the accountability becomes broader. They may be expected to make decisions with wider consequences, anticipate issues rather than only respond to them, influence beyond their immediate area, or take responsibility for a larger commercial or team outcome.

The exact distinction will be different in every company. The important part is being able to articulate it.

Because this is where job descriptions often become unnecessarily complicated. We try to create clarity by adding more detail. The senior role gets a few more responsibilities, some broader language and another paragraph on leadership.

Before long, the JD is three pages long.

And if we need three pages to explain what someone should be doing, I think we have to ask whether the problem is really the document.

A long list of responsibilities can tell someone what activities sit within their role, but it doesn’t necessarily tell them what they truly own or what they are accountable for.

That distinction matters particularly when we talk about progression.

Someone can be responsible for coordinating work, contributing to decisions and managing stakeholders without being accountable for the final outcome. As roles become more senior, the shift is often not about doing more things. It is about carrying greater accountability for what happens as a result.

That is a much more useful way to think about progression than years of experience alone. Experience matters, of course, but it should help someone develop stronger judgement, greater independence and the ability to handle wider accountability. It shouldn’t become the definition of seniority itself.

It also makes progression conversations much clearer. Instead of telling someone that they simply “need more experience”, you can explain what the next level actually requires and where their scope, decision-making or accountability still needs to grow.

I still think job descriptions are useful. But I increasingly think they should come after the harder conversation.

First define the role.

What does this person own? What are they accountable for? What decisions should they be able to make? What genuinely changes at the next level?

Once those answers are clear, the JD usually becomes much easier to write.

And probably much shorter.