Must-have vs nice-to-have: how to write job requirements that find the right people

A must-have is something the person needs on their first day, which you would turn down an otherwise excellent applicant for lacking. Most job postings list too many of them, and many aren’t really requirements at all: they’re proxies like a degree or a year count, chosen because they’re quick to check. Three to five genuine must-haves, each written as something you can see evidence of, will find more of the right people than a list of eleven.

This guide gives you a four-question test for every requirement, a worked before-and-after, and a free requirements worksheet (PDF) to do it on.

Why the list matters more than it looks

Your requirement list does two jobs. It tells people whether to apply, and it decides who you screen out. Both go wrong when the list is long.

Screening is where the damage is clearest. In a survey of 2,275 employers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, Harvard Business School and Accenture (2021) found that most employers using recruiting software relied on it to filter or rank applicants. Of those, 88% said their process screened out qualified high-skills candidates at least some of the time because they didn’t match the exact criteria in the job description; for middle-skills roles it was 94%. The report describes applicants being dropped for lacking a “nice to have” qualification, or for describing a skill in different words from the posting.

A long list doesn’t need software to do that. A tired reader working down a pile of applications does the same thing.

The four-question test

Put every candidate requirement through these, in order.

1. Is it a qualification or a duty?

“Will manage the month-end close” is a duty: something the person will do in the job. The qualification is what they need to already have to do it, such as “has run a month-end close independently”. Duties belong in the job description. If you screen on duties, you screen for people who have held the exact title before.

2. Is it the real thing, or a stand-in for it?

Degrees, year counts and well-known previous employers are easy to check, which is why they end up on lists. Ask what the item is standing in for, and whether you could ask for that instead.

The evidence on stand-ins is not kind. In a 2022 re-analysis of selection research, years of job experience correlated just .07 with later performance. A degree requirement may be legally required for some roles, and it may genuinely matter for others, but as a filter it often screens out people who could do the work. Removing it from the posting isn’t enough on its own, either: a study of large U.S. employers found that dropping degree requirements changed who was actually hired at only a minority of firms. Our article on skills-based hiring explains why.

3. Would you really reject a great applicant without it?

Picture the best applicant you can imagine for this job, minus this one item. If you’d still want to talk to them, it’s a nice-to-have. This single question moves most items off the must-have list.

4. Can someone learn it in the first few months?

If yes, it’s probably a nice-to-have, unless you genuinely can’t afford the ramp-up time. Be honest about which. A specific software package is the most common example: most can be learned, and the ability to learn systems is the real requirement.

Write each must-have as evidence

For each item that survives, write down what you would expect to see in an application, or hear in an interview, from someone who has it. This step is what makes a requirement usable for screening. If you can’t say what evidence would show it, you won’t be able to judge it consistently.

Weak requirement	Written as evidence
“Strong communication skills”	Has explained financial results to non-accountants (describe how)
“5+ years of accounting experience”	Has run a month-end close independently, including sign-off
“Detail-oriented”	Has prepared work that was reviewed by an auditor or regulator
“Proficient in Excel”	Builds reconciliations or schedules in a spreadsheet (ask for an example)

A worked before-and-after

Here is a draft requirement list for the fictional Senior Accountant role at Larkspur Partners, used throughout our guides. It’s typical of what a first draft looks like.

Before (11 requirements, all listed as required):

1. Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance
2. CPA designation
3. 5+ years of progressive accounting experience
4. Public accounting experience
5. Manages the month-end close
6. Reviews the work of junior staff
7. Experience with QuickBooks Online
8. Advanced Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP)
9. Excellent written and verbal communication
10. Detail-oriented self-starter
11. Prepares audit working papers

Working through the test:

Item	Verdict	Why
1 Degree	Removed	Anyone holding the CPA designation has already met its education requirements, so a separate degree check adds little.
2 CPA	Must-have (knockout)	Required for the work the firm signs off. A yes/no fact; ask it as a screening question.
3 5+ years	Replaced by 5	A stand-in for having done the work independently. Ask for that.
4 Public accounting	Nice-to-have	Useful, but an excellent industry accountant would still get a call.
5 Month-end close	Must-have, rewritten	“Has run a month-end close independently” is the qualification.
6 Reviews juniors	Moved to the job description	A duty. Test how they’d do it in the interview.
7 QuickBooks Online	Nice-to-have, widened	Any cloud ledger shows the same thing; learnable.
8 Advanced Excel	Dropped from screening	Nearly universal in the field; test it in a work sample if it matters.
9 Communication	Interview only	Can’t be judged from a resume. Write it as evidence and test it.
10 Detail-oriented	Dropped	Every applicant will claim it. A work sample shows it.
11 Audit working papers	Nice-to-have	Valuable, learnable in the first months.

After (2 must-haves, 3 nice-to-haves):

Requirement	Type	Evidence
CPA designation	Must-have (knockout)	Designation listed, or CPA candidate with completion date
Runs month-end close independently	Must-have	Describes owning or leading a close, not only contributing
Prepares audit working papers	Nice-to-have	Mentions preparing files or schedules for an external audit
Cloud accounting experience	Nice-to-have	Names a cloud ledger, or describes migrating to one
Public accounting background	Nice-to-have	Has worked at a public accounting firm

Two must-haves is fine. The point is that each one is real. Communication, reviewing others’ work and spreadsheet skill haven’t disappeared; they’ve moved to the structured interview and the work sample, where they can actually be judged.

Nice-to-haves should rank, not reject

A nice-to-have should never remove anyone. Use them to decide who to look at first among people who meet the must-haves. If you find yourself rejecting someone for a nice-to-have, either it was really a must-have (move it, and say so in the posting) or you’re filtering on something you said didn’t matter.

Knockouts: only for true yes-or-no facts

A knockout ends an application on its own. Use one only for something that is a fact, not a judgement: a licence the law requires, the right to work in the country, availability for a fixed shift. Ask it as a direct question on the application form rather than inferring it from a resume, and check every knockout once more before the job opens. Some requirements aren’t just unwise but unlawful in some places: Ontario, for example, prohibits requiring Canadian experience in public job postings (Ontario Ministry of Labour).

The wording of the posting matters too

The list decides who you screen out. The language around it affects who applies. In a series of studies, Gaucher, Friesen and Kay (2011) found that job ads for male-dominated occupations used more masculine-associated words such as “competitive” and “dominant”, and that when ads were written with more of these words, women found the jobs less appealing and anticipated belonging less. The studies used constructed ads, so treat the size of the effect with caution, but the practical lesson costs nothing: describe the work and the evidence you want, not a personality.

Using the worksheet

The requirements worksheet (PDF) is one page: a column to brain-dump every requirement, the four questions as tick boxes, and a final table of must-haves, nice-to-haves and knockouts, each with the evidence you’ll look for. It takes about 20 minutes, and the result is the first rows of your candidate scorecard.

Where SortTheStack fits

SortTheStack drafts requirements from your job description as Must have and Nice to have, written as qualifications rather than duties, for you to edit before anything is screened. Knockout rules are separate yes-or-no screening questions that you write; no AI is involved in them. Each application is then read against your final list, with the evidence quoted. See how the screening works.

Sources

• Fuller, J. B., Raman, M., Sage-Gavin, E., & Hines, K. (2021). Hidden workers: Untapped talent. Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work and Accenture.
• Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040–2068. doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994
• Sigelman, M., Fuller, J., & Martin, A. (2024). Skills-based hiring: The long road from pronouncements to practice. Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School.
• Gaucher, D., Friesen, J., & Kay, A. C. (2011). Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 109–128. doi.org/10.1037/a0022530
• Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, Requirements related to publicly advertised job postings, accessed 12 October 2026.