Job description template
A complete HR manager JD covering the full employee lifecycle — and how to stop writing a recruiter's job description by accident, which is what most HR manager postings in India actually are.
Read ten HR Manager job descriptions from Indian employers and six of them are recruiting job descriptions with an HR title on top. That mismatch is why the role is so often mis-hired: the posting attracts talent-acquisition specialists, the interview panel asks about sourcing, and the person who joins discovers that the actual job is payroll inputs, an unresolved grievance, a performance cycle nobody has run before, and an exit that is going to go badly. Decide which job you are filling before you write a word.
Replace everything in [square brackets] before you post it.
Job title
HR Manager
[Company name] is a [industry] company with [headcount] employees across [locations]. The HR function is [size and structure — e.g. a team of three, or you would be the first HR hire].
We are hiring an HR Manager to own the employee lifecycle for [headcount] employees at [location/entity]. You will run hiring plans with department heads, onboarding, HR operations and records, the performance cycle, employee relations, and exits — and you will be the person managers come to when something people-related is unclear. This is an ownership role: you will inherit [what exists today] and be expected to improve it.
Experience: [x–y] years, with a clear statement of the headcount and number of locations you have supported.
Location and work model: [city, office locality] — [on-site / hybrid]. HR roles that own employee relations usually need meaningful office presence; say what you actually expect rather than defaulting to a policy line.
Reports to: [Founder / CHRO / Head of Operations]. Direct reports: [number and roles, or 'none today'].
Compensation: [band and structure, or a statement that it is benchmarked to experience and headcount scope]. State the notice period you can accommodate.
To apply: send your resume to [email / apply link], mentioning the headcount you currently support and the HRMS you use. Process: [n] rounds including a case discussion on a real situation from our environment.
The template is the easy half. These are the decisions that decide whether the posting works.
If more than about a third of your responsibility list is sourcing, screening, scheduling and closing candidates, you are writing a talent acquisition JD. That is a legitimate role — but post it under its own title, because the two attract different people and the mismatch is only discovered after joining, which is the most expensive place to discover it.
A generalist HR Manager owns hiring as one process among eight. If hiring is genuinely the dominant workload right now, say that explicitly in the summary — "in the first two quarters this role is roughly two-thirds hiring, moving toward a full generalist scope as the team stabilises" — and you will get candidates who signed up for the real shape of the job.
Years of experience is a weak proxy in HR because the workload is driven by headcount, spread and workforce type. Ten years supporting a 25-person office is a smaller job than four years supporting 250 across three states with a field workforce. Put the numbers in the JD: current headcount, number of locations, whether the workforce is office-based, field or shop-floor, and whether there are multiple legal entities.
Candidates who have handled your scale will recognise it instantly. Candidates who have not will either stretch honestly or self-select out, and both outcomes save you interview cycles.
"You will inherit an HRMS with clean data and a functioning performance cycle" and "you will inherit spreadsheets, no documented policies and a performance process that has never been run" describe wildly different jobs. Experienced HR people are used to the second and will take it — they will not take being told it was the first. Write the honest version. It is also the strongest filter you have, because the people who are energised by build-from-scratch work will tell you so in the first line of their reply.
Signals specific to hr manager applications — not generic screening advice.
The senior generalists you want have all worked somewhere the function had no authority, and they screen for that.
HR is the role where title-based matching fails most often, because the same job is posted as HR Manager, HR Business Partner, People Operations Manager, Manager – Human Resources and HR Generalist, and candidates carry whichever title their last employer used. Matching on titles alone will hide qualified people from you.
Other roles, hiring guides and recruiter tooling.
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Early attrition is a JD problem. Disclose field-vs-inside and lead source up front.
Six roles, each with its own screening guidance
The components a job offer letter usually carries, the difference between an offer letter and an appointment letter, and the omissions that cause offers to be declined or disputed later.
A working method for shortlisting at scale: build the scorecard first, run two passes, know which filters are real and which are proxies, and calibrate before you trust anyone's judgement
Score applications against your own job description
JD screening scores every application against your own job description and shows the requirement-level gaps behind the score.