A job description is a starting point, not a search plan.
Most JDs are a mix of what the team truly needs, what the last person in the seat happened to know, and a few lines copied from an older posting. If I source straight from that, you get resumes that match the words and miss the work.
Everyone who interviews should agree first
I start with the hiring manager, then bring in everyone involved in interviews whenever possible. It's common for a hiring manager to want deep hands-on design experience while another interviewer is screening for leadership, or for one person to treat a skill as required that another sees as a nice-to-have. When that isn't settled up front, good candidates get rejected for reasons nobody agreed on.
So we go through the role line by line. What's truly required? What can be learned in the first six months? What separates a good hire from a great one on this team?
Then a reality check
Alignment also means being honest about the market. If the budget doesn't match the level of engineer the team actually needs, I'll say so before we start, not after weeks of candidates turning you down.
A recent search
On a recent search for a defense startup, the team needed a rare mix: radar leadership with hands-on FPGA and DSP, in someone who could grow into the VP seat. We went through the role line by line with the hiring team, reset salary expectations to match the level they needed, and I vetted every interested engineer against what the team had agreed on.
One candidate passed. I presented him, he was hired, and he's now moving into the VP role.
Why it works
Alignment up front is what makes a short list possible. When everyone agrees on what great looks like, I can say no to the near misses on your behalf, and you only spend interview time on engineers worth meeting.
That's the whole idea behind Atoms Technical: fewer submissions, stronger alignment.