I have been sent a number of senior administrative job descriptions over the past few weeks and, if I am honest, they have left me feeling more than a little frustrated.
On paper, they sound impressive. Board exposure. CEO reporting line. Global remit. Strategic language. All the right signals that this is a serious, high impact role.
And then you read the detail.
No salary band. No clarity about level. No sense of progression. No framework to anchor the capability required. Just a long list of tasks that, stripped of the glossy title, read as entirely transactional.
Calendar management. Logistics. Minute taking. Office coordination.
There is nothing wrong with any of those things. They matter. They are part of the role. But when that is the dominant story, while the headline talks about strategy and board partnership, there is a disconnect that candidates can see instantly.
You cannot talk about operating at board level and then define the role almost entirely through administrative tasks. You cannot say you value diversity and inclusion and omit salary transparency. And you cannot use the language of operational leadership while designing the job as support.
These things are not cosmetic. They tell people how you truly see the function.
So I find myself asking the same question again and again. Is it that they genuinely do not understand what the role has become? Is it that they are not listening? Or is it simply more comfortable to keep it slightly vague?
Because here is what I know.
If you want strategic partnership, you have to design for strategic partnership. That means clarity of scope. Clarity of level. Clarity of accountability. And yes, clarity of salary.
Otherwise we will continue to see impressive titles sitting on top of job descriptions that do not match the job offered.
And that is not fair on the candidates. It is not fair on the executive. And it is not fair on the profession.
I will keep saying this, not because I enjoy criticising job adverts, but because I care deeply about how this work is positioned. If we want the role to be taken seriously at board level, we have to write it that way from the start.
