How to Cut Your Must-Haves to Three

Look at the requirements in most job ads and you'll find ten, twelve, sometimes fifteen bullet points. Five years of experience, a degree, three specific tools, a driver's license, "excellent communication skills", fluent in two languages, and "a hands-on mentality" on top. And the funny thing is, if you ask the hiring manager about the last great person they hired, that person often didn't have half of it.

The problem is that a long list doesn't filter for the right people. It filters for the confident ones. A good candidate reads twelve requirements, sees they have eight, and thinks "I won't get this anyway", so they don't apply. That's the belief gap. And the people who apply to everything apply anyway.

So you cut the list. Three real must-haves, a few nice-to-haves, and the rest goes. The place to do that is the intake with the hiring manager, and you need a script, because "can we make the list shorter?" never works.

What you need

• Every requirement for this job on one sheet: from the old job ad, the job description, and whatever the hiring manager said before.
• 30 minutes with the hiring manager. Book it as a separate meeting, not five minutes at the end of something else.
• The intake script and the pushback answers below.
• A sorting table (in step 3).

Step 1: Put every requirement on one sheet

Before the meeting, collect everything. Copy the requirements from the last job ad, the internal job description, any notes from earlier conversations. Put them all in one list, one requirement per line, and number them so you can go through them one by one. Don't clean it up yet. If "experience with Excel" shows up twice, leave it, that just means someone thought it mattered twice.

Step 2: Go through every requirement with one question

This is the core of the whole thing. For every single line, you ask the hiring manager the same question:

OPENING
"I want to make sure great people don't skip this job because the
list scares them off. So I'm going to go through every requirement
with one question. It's quick, I promise."

FOR EVERY REQUIREMENT
"Would we reject someone great who doesn't have this?"

  If YES  -> "Okay, so if they're great in everything else and they
              miss this, it's a no?" (If still yes: must-have.)
  If NO   -> "Could they learn it in the first few months?"
              Yes -> nice-to-have
              No, but it barely matters -> delete
  If "IT DEPENDS" -> "On what?" (The answer is usually the real
              requirement. Write that down instead.)

CLOSING
"If we could only check three things before the first conversation,
which three would they be?"

Keep the question exactly the same every time. It sounds a bit repetitive, but that's the point: after a few lines the hiring manager gets into it and answers faster and more honestly.

Pay attention to the "it depends" answers. "Five years of experience" often turns into "they need to be able to plan on their own without someone checking everything." That's a much better requirement, and you can actually write that in an ad.

Step 3: Sort everything into must-have, nice-to-have and delete

While you go through the list, sort it right there in the meeting. Share your screen or write on a whiteboard, so the hiring manager sees it happening:

Some quick guidance on what usually ends up where:

• Delete: soft clichés like "team player", "stress-resistant", "hands-on mentality". Everyone says they have them, so they filter nobody. Also things everyone in that job already has anyway.
• Nice-to-have: specific tools that can be learned, "experience in our industry", most years-of-experience numbers.
• Must-have: things that are legally required (a license, a certification), or skills that would take far too long to learn on the job.

Step 4: Force it down to three

Most of the time you'll end up with five or six must-haves after the first round. That's normal. Now you use the closing question from the script: "If we could only check three things, which three?"

Let the hiring manager pick. Then look at the ones that didn't make it and ask, "So if someone has those three but not this one, would you still want to talk to them?" If yes, it's a nice-to-have. If the answer is really no, you can have four, but make them defend it.

Write the three must-haves in plain words, the way you'd say them out loud. Not "excellent analytical capabilities" but "you're comfortable working with numbers in Excel every day."

Step 5: Handle the pushback

You'll get pushback. That's fine, it usually means the hiring manager cares about the hire. Here are answers for the most common ones:

"But then we'll get a lot of unqualified applicants."
-> "Maybe a few more, yes. But we're losing good people right now who
   skip the job because they don't tick every box. I'd rather filter
   a few extra applications than never see the great ones."

"We've always asked for this."
-> "Totally fair. Do you remember the last person who was great in this
   job? Did they have it when they started?"

"It's on the job description from HR."
-> "The job description can keep it. The ad is there to get the right
   people to apply, so it only needs what we'd actually reject on."

"I want someone who can start right away, without training."
-> "Got it. Which of these would take longest to learn? That one
   probably belongs in the top three. The rest they can pick up."

"Just leave it in, it doesn't hurt."
-> "It does, a little. Every line is one more reason for someone good
   to think they won't get it. Let's put it under nice-to-have."

Don't argue about every point. If the hiring manager really wants something in, put it under nice-to-have instead of fighting about it. That's still a win, because nice-to-haves don't scare people the same way must-haves do.

Step 6: Rewrite the requirements section

Now write it up. Three must-haves, max three nice-to-haves, and one line that tells good people to apply anyway:

You don't need to tick every box. If you have the three things above
and the rest sounds like something you'd like to learn, apply anyway.
We'd rather talk to you than miss you.

Here's a before and after. This is a made-up example for an office role, not a real company:

Before:

• Bachelor's degree in business or similar
• At least 5 years of relevant experience
• Experience with SAP, Excel and Power BI
• Excellent communication skills in Dutch and English
• Stress-resistant and flexible
• Team player with a hands-on mentality
• Analytical thinker
• Driver's license

After:

What you need:

• You've done planning or scheduling work before, somewhere
• You're comfortable in Excel every day
• You speak English well enough to call suppliers abroad

Nice to have: SAP, Power BI, a driver's license.

You don't need to tick every box. If you have the three things above and the rest sounds like something you'd like to learn, apply anyway. We'd rather talk to you than miss you.

Same job. One of those lists makes a good candidate think "I've got this." The other one makes them close the tab.

What "done" looks like

• Every requirement went through the one question, out loud, with the hiring manager.
• You have three must-haves (four at most, and only if they defended it), written in plain words.
• Nice-to-haves are a short separate line, not a second list of bullets.
• The clichés are deleted.
• The "You don't need to tick every box" line is in the ad.
• The hiring manager agreed to the final version before it went live.

Common mistakes

"Max 3 must-haves" is check 5 of the Job Ad Scorecard. Once the requirements are short, the next thing to fix is usually the list of duties right above it, and turning it into a day in the job takes about 45 minutes.