Most job descriptions are assembled from a template, a previous posting, and twenty minutes of a hiring manager’s afternoon. Reading one well means knowing which parts were written with care and which were pasted in.
The three layers of a job description
- The role summary. Usually the first two or three sentences after the title. This is the part the hiring manager wrote, and it says what the team needs the person to do in the first year.
- The requirements list. A mix of the must-haves and everything anyone in the approval chain asked to add. The first three items are the ones that matter most; the order is rarely an accident.
- The boilerplate. Company description, benefits, equal-opportunity statement. Useful for context, not for deciding whether you fit.
Answering the real ask
Once you have found the role summary, write your application to it. A resume that mirrors the summary’s language in its first few lines reads as a match to a person skimming forty applications before lunch.
For the requirements list, be honest with yourself about the top three. If you meet two of them well, apply and say so plainly. If you meet none of them, the role is probably not the right one this year, and there are better uses of an evening.
Where Nico fits
Nico reads job descriptions the same way, and shows you the match between your experience and the role in the summary and the top requirements. When there is a gap, it points to courses and resources to close it, so that the next time that role comes around you meet all three.