Rewrite a Job Description for Skills-Based Hiring and Generate a Structured Interview Rubric From It

The task

You inherited a job description written in 2017. It lists a four-year degree, "5+ years of experience," and a wall of soft-skill clichés. Leadership wants this role opened to a wider pool, scored consistently, and defensible if a rejected candidate asks why. This workflow rewrites the JD around demonstrable skills and produces a matching interview rubric in one sitting.

Before AI

A careful HR business partner does this in pieces: pulls the old JD, talks to the hiring manager about what the role actually does, strips out proxies for experience (degree, years), drafts skill statements, then builds a separate scoring guide so panel interviews aren't a vibe contest. Realistically, 90 minutes to two hours per req, and rubrics often get skipped under deadline pressure — which is exactly when bias creeps in. Federal guidance on moving away from degree screens and toward demonstrated competencies is summarized in the OPM chief human capital officers' skills-based hiring memo.

The workflow

1. Audit the legacy JD for bias and proxy requirements.

Paste the old JD into the prompt below. You'll get back a marked-up list of what to cut, what to keep, and what to convert into a skill statement.

You are an HR business partner specializing in skills-based hiring and EEO-compliant job postings. I will paste a legacy job description below. Do three things in plain language:

1. List every requirement that is a PROXY for skill rather than a skill itself (e.g., specific degrees, years of experience, "culture fit," brand-name employers, commute requirements). For each one, explain in one line why it's a proxy and what underlying skill or behavior it's probably trying to measure.

2. List every line that contains vague or coded language (e.g., "rockstar," "digital native," "works hard and plays hard," "recent graduate") and flag the bias risk in one line each.

3. Extract the genuine job content: the actual tasks, decisions, and outputs the person will be responsible for. Keep this list factual and concrete — verbs and objects, no adjectives.

Format your response as three clearly labeled sections. Do not rewrite the JD yet. Here is the legacy JD:

Job Title: Senior Benefits Coordinator
Department: People Operations
Reports to: Director of Total Rewards

About Us:
Northgate Mutual is a fast-paced, family-feel insurance carrier headquartered in Columbus. We're looking for a rockstar Benefits Coordinator who thrives in a high-energy environment and isn't afraid to wear many hats. Recent grads with hustle welcome!

Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, or related field required
- 5-7 years of progressive benefits administration experience
- Experience at a Fortune 500 strongly preferred
- CEBS or PHR certification preferred
- Proficient in Workday (must have)
- Strong attention to detail and a positive attitude
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities
- Local candidates only — must commute to Columbus HQ 4 days per week

Responsibilities:
- Administer health, dental, vision, life, and disability plans for ~1,200 employees
- Serve as primary point of contact for employee benefits questions
- Reconcile monthly carrier invoices and resolve discrepancies
- Support annual open enrollment, including vendor coordination and employee communications
- Ensure ACA, ERISA, HIPAA, and COBRA compliance
- Partner with payroll on deduction setup and corrections
- Run ad-hoc reports for finance and leadership

Compensation: Competitive

2. Rewrite the JD around demonstrable skills.

Now convert the audit into a skills-based posting. The prompt forces concrete skill statements with observable evidence, removes the degree screen unless it's legally required, and adds a pay range placeholder so the requisition can't ship without one.

Using the audit you just produced, rewrite the job description as a skills-based posting. Follow these rules:

- Replace degree and years-of-experience requirements with 5-8 specific, observable skill statements. Each skill statement must include: (a) the skill, (b) the level expected (foundational / working / advanced), and (c) one example of what "demonstrating" that skill looks like on the job.
- Separate "Required skills" from "Preferred skills." Keep required to the minimum truly needed on day 30.
- Use neutral, plain language. No "rockstar," "ninja," "fast-paced," "culture fit," or gendered terms. Replace vague soft skills with behavioral descriptions.
- Keep any legally or contractually required credential (e.g., a license) but mark it clearly as "Credential required by [reason]."
- Include a pay range placeholder: "[Pay range: $X – $Y, to be confirmed by Comp]" so the req can't post without one.
- Keep the responsibilities concrete and outcome-oriented.
- Add a short, factual "About the team" paragraph — no marketing fluff.

Output the full rewritten JD in posting-ready format with clear section headers.

3. Generate the structured interview rubric from the rewritten JD.

This is the step most teams skip. The rubric must map back to the skills in the posting — otherwise you're scoring something you never told candidates you'd score.

Now build a structured interview rubric based on the rewritten JD. The rubric will be used by a 3-person panel. Requirements:

- For each REQUIRED skill in the rewritten JD, create one behavioral interview question that elicits evidence of that skill. Prefer past-behavior questions ("Tell me about a time…") over hypotheticals.
- For each question, provide an anchored 1-5 scoring scale with concrete descriptions of what a 1, 3, and 5 response sounds like. A 5 should describe specific evidence, not adjectives.
- Add 2 situational questions tied to the actual responsibilities listed in the JD, with the same 1-5 anchors.
- Include a "red flags" row under each question — answers that should lower the score regardless of polish.
- End with a panel calibration section: how scores are aggregated, how disagreements > 2 points get resolved, and a reminder that notes must reference what the candidate SAID, not how they came across.

Format as a clean table the panel can print or paste into a doc. Keep the language neutral and the anchors observable.

4. Sanity-check the package before it leaves your desk.

One last pass. This catches the things the model misses on a first run — usually a stray "fast-paced" that snuck back in, or a rubric anchor that's really just a personality judgment in disguise.

Review the rewritten JD and the rubric you just produced. Act as a skeptical reviewer. Flag, in a short bullet list:

1. Any requirement or rubric anchor that is still a proxy for class, age, or background rather than skill.
2. Any rubric anchor that describes a personality trait (confidence, charisma, energy) instead of observable behavior or work product.
3. Any required skill in the JD that does NOT have a matching interview question, and any interview question that scores a skill NOT listed as required.
4. Any place the language drifted back into marketing tone ("dynamic," "passionate," "thrives").

Then output a final, corrected version of both the JD and the rubric with the issues fixed. Do not add new requirements.

Gotchas

• Legally required credentials get dropped. The model will sometimes cut a license or certification that's actually mandated by regulation (Series 7, RN license, CPA for sign-off authority). Always have the hiring manager confirm the required-credentials list before posting.
• "Years of experience" sneaks back in through the rubric. Watch for anchors like "5 = has done this many times before." That's just tenure with extra steps. Rewrite to describe the quality of the evidence, not the count.
• Pay range placeholder. The model will dutifully insert [Pay range: $X – $Y] and the JD will still post that way if nobody fills it in. Make Comp sign-off a gate.
• Edge case — heavily regulated roles. For roles where a specific degree IS legally or accreditation-bound (e.g., licensed clinical staff, some controller roles), the "remove the degree" instruction will overshoot. Override it manually.
• Rubric ≠ validated assessment. A structured rubric reduces inconsistency across a panel. It is not a validated selection instrument. For high-volume or high-stakes roles, pair it with a work sample, not just interviews.
• Don't paste real candidate data into the model. This workflow is for the JD and rubric only. Resume screening is a different conversation with different privacy considerations.

Time saved

A clean JD rewrite plus a panel-ready rubric typically runs 90 minutes to two hours when done carefully by hand — longer if you have to chase the hiring manager for skill definitions. This workflow gets you a defensible first draft in roughly 15-20 minutes, leaving the saved time for the conversation that actually matters: the calibration call with the hiring manager. Estimate, not a measurement — your mileage varies with how messy the legacy JD is and how opinionated your hiring manager is about the rewrite.

What we got when we ran it

We executed every prompt above, in order, against the sample input (model: claude-sonnet-4-6). Outputs below are real and unedited apart from length truncation.

Step 1 output

Section 1: Proxy Requirements | Requirement | Why It's a Proxy | Underlying Skill or Behavior It's Trying to Measure | |---|---|---| | Bachelor's degree in HR, Business, or related field | A degree certifies time spent in school, not demonstrated competence. Many capable benefits administrators are self-taught or trained on the job. | Ability to understand benefits concepts, regulations, and administrative processes | | 5–7 years of progressive benefits administration experience | Years elapsed is a time measure, not a quality measure. Someone can have seven years of low-complexity work or two years of intensive, high-responsibility work. | Depth and complexity of hands-on benefits administration; ability to work independently without heavy supervision | | Experience at a Fortune 500 strongly preferred | Company brand or size is a credential about an employer, not the candidate. Skills transferred from a mid-market or nonprofit environment are equally valid. | Ability to manage high-volume, multi-plan benefit programs and navigate complex vendor relationships | | CEBS or PHR certification preferred | Certifications signal that someone sat for an exam, not that they apply the knowledge effectively on the job. | Working knowledge of benefits regulations (ERISA, ACA, COBRA, HIPAA) and HR principles | | Local candidates only / must commute to Columbus HQ 4 days per week | Geographic location is a logistical constraint, not a competency. It can have disparate impact on protected classes with caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, or limited transportation access. | Availability for in-person collaboration, access to on-site systems,

…output truncated at 250 words.

Step 2 output

# Senior Benefits Coordinator Department: People Operations Reports to: Director of Total Rewards Location: Columbus, OH — hybrid, 4 days per week on-site Pay range: [Pay range: $X – $Y, to be confirmed by Comp] --- ## About the Team The People Operations team at Northgate Mutual supports approximately 1,200 employees across the organization. The Benefits function sits within the Total Rewards team and is responsible for plan administration, compliance, open enrollment, and day-to-day employee support. This role works closely with payroll, finance, and external carriers and vendors. The team currently consists of [X] people and uses Workday as its primary HRIS. --- ## What This Role Does The Senior Benefits Coordinator owns the daily administration of Northgate Mutual's health, dental, vision, life, and disability plans. On any given week, this person is reconciling carrier invoices, answering employee questions, keeping the organization compliant with federal benefits law, and preparing data for finance and leadership. During open enrollment season, this role leads coordination across vendors, systems, and employee communications. The work is detailed, deadline-driven, and directly affects employees' access to their benefits. --- ## Responsibilities Plan Administration - Administer health, dental, vision, life, and disability plans for approximately 1,200 employees, including enrollments, changes, and terminations processed accurately and on time - Coordinate with payroll to set up, update, and correct benefit deductions; resolve errors before they affect employee paychecks - Serve as the primary contact for employee benefits questions, providing clear and accurate responses or escalating appropriately Financial Reconciliation - Reconcile

…output truncated at 250 words.

Step 3 output

# Structured Interview Rubric — Senior Benefits Coordinator Department: People Operations | Hiring Manager: _____________ Interview date: _____________ | Candidate name: _____________ Panelist name/role: _____________ --- ## Instructions for Panelists Ask your assigned question exactly as written. Do not rephrase, add hints, or follow up with leading prompts. If a candidate's answer is incomplete, use only neutral probes: "Can you tell me more about that?" or "What was your specific role in that?" Score independently before discussing with the panel. Write notes that record what the candidate said — specific actions, systems, outcomes, numbers — not impressions of confidence, likability, or communication style. --- ## Question Assignment | Question # | Topic | Assigned Panelist | |---|---|---| | Q1 | Benefits plan administration | Panelist A | | Q2 | Federal benefits compliance | Panelist B | | Q3 | Carrier invoice reconciliation | Panelist C | | Q4 | Workday HRIS | Panelist A | | Q5 | Written communication | Panelist B | | Q6 | Data accuracy and self-review | Panelist C | | Q7 | Cross-functional coordination | Panelist A | | Q8 (Situational) | Open enrollment under pressure | Panelist B | | Q9 (Situational) | Compliance risk identification | Panelist C | Panelists ask only their assigned questions during the interview. All panelists score all answers. --- --- ## Q1 — Benefits Plan Administration (Required Skill) Question: *"Tell me about a time you managed a benefits enrollment or mid-year change that involved multiple plan

…output truncated at 250 words.

Step 4 output

Skeptical Review — Issues Found ### 1. Proxy for Class, Age, or Background - **On-site requirement framing:** The JD states the on-site requirement exists partly because of "handling confidential employee data in a secured environment." This implies remote workers cannot handle data securely, which is not a skills-based rationale and could have disparate impact on caregivers, people with disabilities, and lower-income candidates who may have longer commutes. The rationale needs to be more precise or the requirement needs to be re-examined. - **Work sample described as "45 minutes, completed asynchronously"** in the JD: Unpaid work samples create access barriers for candidates who are currently employed and have constrained time. The JD should either name a time limit that is genuinely minimal or commit to compensating candidates for work samples above a certain length. This is not fixed in the rubric but should be flagged to the hiring team. - **Q5 anchor score 5 references "a question rate comparison year-over-year"**: This implies access to longitudinal program data, which candidates from smaller organizations, contract roles, or roles where they did not own the full program may never have had. It is a proxy for organizational tenure and program ownership, not for writing skill itself. - **Q7 red flag: "escalated a stall to their manager as a first step, before attempting independent follow-up"**: Penalizing manager escalation as a first step assumes a workplace culture where independent action is always preferred. In highly regulated or hierarchical environments, early escalation is the correct behavior.

…output truncated at 250 words.