Essential and desirable criteria: examples you can score a CV against

Essential criteria are the minimum a person must meet to be appointed, and desirable criteria are the extras you use to choose between people who meet that minimum. The essential and desirable criteria examples below are written so that a reader could find evidence for each one on a CV, which is what turns a person specification into something you can actually shortlist with.

The University of York's recruitment guidance on writing a job description draws the line the same way. A candidate must meet the essential requirements in order to be appointed, while desirable requirements should be advantageous and may be used to distinguish between applicants. York suggests listing five to ten essential and desirable attributes for a role, which is about right for a CV sift.

Three rules for writing criteria

1. Every essential criterion needs a reason

The Open University's free course on recruitment and selection says that if something is essential, you should be able to justify it. It also asks you to consider whether rigid requirements, such as those based on age or length of paid work experience, could amount to indirect discrimination. York adds that special requirements should be truly essential, because they may disadvantage applicants with caring responsibilities.

If the advert says you will train new starters in something, it should not be essential. A missing skill you have promised to teach should never sink an application.

2. Describe the evidence, not the person

"Good communicator" cannot be found on a CV. "Has explained products or services to customers, face to face or by phone" can. Write each criterion as something a person has done, so that two readers looking at the same CV would agree on whether it is there.

3. Say how you will check it

The Open University's sample person specification has a column headed "How ascertained?", which is there to make you think through how you will measure each requirement. For a CV sift the answer to every criterion should be the CV or the application form. Anything that can only be judged in person, such as how someone copes with a queue of annoyed customers, belongs in the interview plan or a trial shift.

Wording to avoid

Acas's page on advertising a job gives examples of wording that could be discriminatory. The same wording causes the same problem in a person specification:

• "Recent graduate" or "highly experienced" can discriminate because of age, and Acas says you must be able to prove you have a good reason for any job requirement.
• A nationality where you mean a language. Acas suggests "German-speaking sales rep" in place of "German sales rep".
• Gendered job titles such as "barmaid" or "handyman". Acas recommends inclusive language that describes the job itself.

"Five years' experience" raises the same question as "highly experienced". Replace it with whatever the five years were meant to prove, such as "has planned a weekly rota for a team of six or more".

Examples for five common roles

Each set below keeps the essentials short and puts the detail in the desirables, where it helps you rank the people who already meet the minimum.

Retail sales assistant

• Essential: has served customers in a shop, café, bar or similar public-facing job.
• Essential: available for the shift pattern in the advert, for example Saturdays and two evenings a week.
• Desirable: has used a till or card terminal without supervision.
• Desirable: has handled returns, refunds or complaints.
• Desirable: has worked through a peak trading period, such as Christmas or a sale.

Warehouse operative

• Essential: available for the advertised shift, for example nights from Sunday to Thursday.
• Essential: has followed written picking, packing or stock procedures in any workplace.
• Desirable: has used a handheld scanner or a warehouse management system.
• Desirable: holds a counterbalance forklift licence. Make this essential only if driving a forklift is the job.

Café or restaurant supervisor

• Essential: has supervised, trained or allocated work to other staff during a shift.
• Essential: has handled cash or card takings and closed down a till.
• Desirable: holds a food hygiene certificate. If you will pay for the course, say so in the advert and keep it desirable.
• Desirable: has written or managed a staff rota.

Office administrator

• Essential: has kept records, a diary or a booking system up to date for other people.
• Essential: has handled enquiries by phone or email on behalf of a team or business.
• Desirable: has used the accounting or booking software you run, named in the advert.
• Desirable: has taken minutes or prepared documents for meetings.

Delivery driver

• Essential: holds a full UK driving licence for the category of vehicle in the advert. Here the licence is the job.
• Essential: available for the delivery hours in the advert.
• Desirable: has done multi-drop deliveries against a schedule.
• Desirable: has used a route-planning or proof-of-delivery app.

From criteria to a score

Once the list is written, give the desirable criteria weights that add up to 100, and keep the essential ones as pass or fail. Treat a missing essential as a flag for a person to check before anyone is turned down, because the evidence may simply be missing from the CV.

Acas suggests turning each point in the job description and person specification into a checklist, scoring every application against it, and using a range wide enough to separate candidates, on its page about choosing who to interview. Our guide on how to shortlist candidates for interview walks through a scored example with the evidence recorded for each criterion.

Putting the advert in front of people

Acas recommends advertising in at least two different ways or places, such as a newspaper and a jobs website, to reach a wider range of people and reduce the risk of discrimination. It warns that if you only use social media you could miss applicants who do not use it.

If one of your two places is your own LinkedIn profile, Reachwyn, another Braivex product, turns your Story Bank and writing samples into a 7-day LinkedIn calendar of full drafts in your voice. Set the week's theme to the role you are filling, and every draft stays a draft until you approve it.

Screening against your criteria with HireSieve

HireSieve is Braivex's CV screening tool, built for criteria written this way. It screens a folder of CVs against a rubric written from your own job advert, and a person approves the rubric before it scores anyone. The weights must add up to 100, or the rubric will not load. Each criterion's points come with the line of the CV that earned them, and a candidate who misses a hard requirement is marked not eligible while keeping their full score for a person to read.

The engine also refuses to load a rubric that asks for things that do not belong in a person specification: names, schools, photos, CV length, grammar, social media, AI-writing detection, career gaps or part-time work. Gaps and part-time work are flagged for a person to ask about and never scored.

The Trial plan covers 5 screenings with no card. Put the criteria you wrote from this post into your next advert, then start free on HireSieve and check whether the quotes it finds match the evidence you had in mind.