How to Write a Job Description for a Senior Construction or Facilities Leadership Role That Actually Attracts the Right Candidates
Most job descriptions for VP and Director-level construction and facilities leadership roles are written to satisfy an internal HR process rather than to communicate with the candidate the organization actually needs to hire. They are long, they lead with the organization’s history and mission, they describe the role’s responsibilities in the passive voice of a compliance document, and they say almost nothing that would allow a qualified passive candidate, someone currently employed and not actively looking, to understand why this role is worth leaving a good situation for. The result is that the job description, when it reaches candidates at all, functions as a filter that screens out the interested rather than attracting the right.
This checklist covers the specific elements that make a VP or Director-level construction or facilities job description effective, and the common patterns that make most of them ineffective.
What to Get Right Before You Write a Word
Agree on What the Role Is Actually For
The most common cause of a job description that fails to attract the right candidates is that the hiring team has not reached internal agreement on what the role is actually supposed to accomplish before anyone starts writing. A VP of Facilities opening that is primarily about stabilizing a deferred maintenance backlog requires a different description than one that is primarily about standing up a major capital program, and a Director of Construction role that requires someone to build a construction management function from scratch reads differently than one that requires someone to step into an existing function and deliver a specific project pipeline. If the job description tries to describe all possible versions of the role to appeal to as many candidates as possible, it ends up describing none of them specifically enough to attract anyone with the experience the role actually requires.
Resolve this before writing by answering two questions: what are the two or three things this person must accomplish in the first eighteen months for the hire to be considered successful? And what is the one experience or capability that, if a candidate does not have it, makes them unsuitable regardless of how strong they are in everything else? Those answers are the foundation of an effective job description.
The Checklist: What an Effective Job Description Includes
A Headline That Describes the Opportunity, Not Just the Title
The job title itself is not the headline. The headline is the one or two sentences that tell a qualified passive candidate why this role is worth reading further. For a VP of Facilities at a major research university, the headline might be: “Lead a $2 billion capital program and a 150-person facilities operation at a top-10 research university entering its most ambitious infrastructure investment cycle in twenty years.” That is a specific, honest description of what makes the role distinctive. It tells a candidate whether they are the right person before they read the full description, which is what the headline is supposed to do.
A Brief, Specific Organization Context (Not a History Lesson)
Strong candidates for VP and Director-level roles already know the organizations they are considering. The organization context section of a job description should be two to three sentences that tell the candidate something specific and relevant about the organization’s current moment: the size and composition of the portfolio the role will manage, any significant capital program underway or planned, the organization’s financial position relative to peer institutions, and the leadership transition or strategic initiative that is driving the search. This is different from the standard three-paragraph mission statement and history that most job descriptions lead with, which says nothing a candidate could not have found on the organization’s website in thirty seconds.
Responsibilities Written at the Right Level of Abstraction
VP and Director-level job descriptions fail in two opposite ways on the responsibilities section: they are either too abstract, describing responsibilities in the generic leadership language that applies to any senior role in any organization, or they are too granular, listing tactical tasks that belong in a position description for someone two levels below the role being described. The right level for a VP of Facilities or Director of Construction responsibilities section is: the four or five primary accountabilities of the role stated in terms of outcomes rather than activities, each specific enough to communicate what success looks like but broad enough to apply to how a senior leader would actually approach the work. “Manage the capital planning and delivery function” is too abstract. “Develop and execute the annual capital improvement plan, manage GC and design partner relationships, and lead a team of eight project managers through a $75 million annual program” is specific without being tactical.
Qualifications That Distinguish the Role From Generic Leadership Openings
The qualifications section of a VP or Director-level construction or facilities job description should do one thing that most qualifications sections do not: it should state the specific experience requirement that distinguishes this role from a generic leadership opening. For a Director of Construction at a life sciences developer, that requirement might be “demonstrated experience delivering GMP manufacturing or BSL-2/3 laboratory projects through commissioning.” For a VP of Facilities at a major health system, it might be “demonstrated experience managing a facilities operation with direct accountability for Joint Commission compliance and a capital program exceeding $50 million annually.” These requirements tell qualified candidates immediately whether they are in the right place. They also filter out unqualified applicants more effectively than a list of years of experience and education requirements, which can be satisfied by candidates whose experience is not relevant to what the role actually requires.
A Compensation Statement That Does Not Obscure the Range
The single most common reason a qualified passive candidate decides not to pursue a role after seeing the job description is a compensation statement that is too vague to allow them to assess whether the role is worth the disruption of leaving their current position. “Competitive compensation commensurate with experience” communicates nothing and signals that the organization either does not know what the role should pay or is not willing to say. Stating the range, even a wide one, immediately screens in candidates who are in the right zone and screens out candidates who are not, which is what the job description is supposed to do. For VP and Director-level construction and facilities roles, the compensation range is typically known before the job description is written. It should appear in the description.
A Closing That Describes the Next Step Specifically
The closing of a job description should tell a qualified candidate exactly what to do and what to expect. “Submit a resume and cover letter to [address]” is minimal but functional. Better is a closing that describes the search process at a high level, including who is conducting the search and how long the review process will take, and that gives a passive candidate a reason to engage even if they are not immediately ready to submit materials. A sentence like “Initial conversations with qualified candidates will be confidential and exploratory” removes a real barrier for passive candidates who are employed and want to learn more about the role before committing to a formal application process.
What to Leave Out
Two things that appear in most VP and Director-level construction and facilities job descriptions actively harm their effectiveness. The first is a generic list of personal characteristics, such as “strong communication skills,” “team player,” and “results-oriented,” that says nothing differentiating about the role or the organization and reads as filler. The second is a boilerplate equal opportunity statement that is legally required but should appear at the very end of the document rather than consuming space in the qualifications section. Every line of a job description for a senior role competes for the attention of a passive candidate who has many other demands on their time. Lines that carry no information cost more than they are worth.
Real8 Group works with clients on search process design, including job description development, for VP and Director-level construction, facilities, and real estate leadership searches. To learn more about how we approach the process from the beginning, visit real8group.com/how-we-work or real8group.com/finding-talent, or reach out at real8group.com/contact.
Real8 Group is a specialized executive search firm serving the real estate, construction, engineering, and facilities operations sectors across the U.S.