Good and bad growth job descriptions
Red flags to watch out for and how to write a good growth JD. All with real-life examples.
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Looking through Growth job openings lately feels like reading a company’s wish list to Santa - and honestly, it gives me anxiety.
Most so-called growth roles have little to do with actual growth. Instead, they’re stuffed with all types of random requirements, such as: brand, positioning, content strategy, demand gen, marketing/rev ops, data instrumentation… the list goes on. Oh, and of course, you must deliver epic, once-in-a-lifetime virality and “hypergrowth” (whatever that means) while surviving on cold brew, vibes, and a mandatory return to the office.
It seems that a lot of open growth roles out there are either:
A catch-all for the responsibilities a company doesn’t have people yet.
Just a rebranded version of another role with “growth” slapped on top.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great roles out there (I’ll cover what those look like in this post too), but most just look… off. So let’s examine some.
Example #1: Growth role or entire marketing department?
Growth role at Consensus has responsibilities listed as:
The good: It starts off strong - ownership of experimentation across channels? Nice. It even throws in some promising lines about optimizing user journeys and name-drops the golden trio: activation, retention, and conversion. Sounds solid.
The bad: But then - bam! You’re also expected to own marketing strategy (!) and product launches (!!), meaning you’re essentially their Head of Marketing and Product Marketing. Even worse, they want growth to maintain the CRM - aka, be their marketing ops too (at least it’s just HubSpot and not Salesforce). I’m also unsure about their analytics expectations - while building your own dashboards is standard in growth, dedicated analytics resources are a must-have, and they aren’t mentioned here.
So what is this? This is marketing and growth jobs smashed together… But please repeat after me - growth is part of marketing, but not all of the marketing is growth. Growth is the performance side of marketing - think demand capture. They should be optimizing performance channels, landing pages, and user lifecycle. Marketing strategy, product launches, and HubSpot management are clearly marketing responsibilities. So please, hire a Head of Marketing for that.
Example #2: Demand Gen role rebranded as Growth.
Growth Marketing lead at Tofu has the following responsibilities listed:
The good: Mentions of measurement, experimentation, and a growth mindset. Good good. Iterating on multi-channel campaigns is questionable… If it’s optimizing email, paid media, or organic, I’m on board. But it lists events and content syndication, which is weird because those are not growth surfaces.
The bad: Full-funnel demand gen strategy? Owning the content calendar and content creation? Running campaigns? Managing the marketing tech stack (which, in a sales-led company, is usually a hot mess express - and a full-time job on its own)? These are responsibilities for your demand gen hire and marketing ops, not growth.
So what is this? What they are looking for here is a demand gen role. And a solid one, I’ll admit. But this is not a growth position.
Example #3: Why not just call it Head of Marketing?
Head of Growth at Niural has the following responsibilities listed:
The good: I like the mention of data-driven decisions, channel optimization, functional collaboration, research, and budget management. Good stuff.
The bad: The first bullet point lost me. Under "Growth Strategy," it says "build and lead overall marketing strategy." Uh… why not just hire a Head of Marketing? That makes even more sense when you realize this role is also responsible for brand building (definitely not a growth activity) and content strategy (let’s be real - numbers people usually aren’t great at content). Please, be reasonable.
What is this? This is just a Head of Marketing role with "Growth" slapped on the title. If they hire someone truly focused on growth, they’re in for a very disappointing surprise.
Example #4: Ship the product & own our brand, as Growth.
These are the responsibilities listed under Growth Product JD @ Propsoch:
The good: Being data-driven, doing CRO, and excelling at cross-functional collaboration. Love to see it.
The bad: But wait, candidate is also expected to ship products? WHUT? That sounds like a core product responsibility… what is your core product doing then? Combine that with "writing clear PRDs," and now it’s looking like a core product role in disguise. But wait - then it asks the candidate to lead product marketing initiatives and write compelling copy for landing pages and sales artifacts. But wait, there is more! It throws in ownership of GTM stack, risk management, and incident prevention. I’m so confused. This is Growth, Core Product, Marketing, and Ops all wrapped up into one person.
What is this? I honestly have no idea what this role is.
Honorable mention
I couldn’t pass this one up. Head of Growth JD @Hardware responsibilities include:
So you have two sentences to impress, or you are OUT. I wonder if meme’s would count? But wait, there is more:
Unrealistic expectations galore. Because everyone knows there’s a playbook for going viral (i’m being sarcastic). Please comment “viral” on this post and I’ll DM you the playbook (again, being sarcastic).
Why, oh why is this happening!?
Why do so many growth roles feel like a random mashup of different departments? To me, they scream:
A fundamental misunderstanding of what growth actually is. Is it marketing? Is it product? Who knows. But growth is HOT and therefore we need it. And when you join, expect to be handed a kitchen sink of responsibilities - which might be exciting or might be a total dumpster fire.
Companies rebranding hard-to-fill roles as “growth.” I’ve seen this firsthand - one company I worked with had a RevOps role they couldn’t fill, so they slapped a "Growth" title on it. The hiring manager literally admitted, “We’re not getting enough applicants.” This happens even more than we know.
Companies using “growth” to justify under-resourcing a team. Instead of hiring a product marketer, a demand gen lead, a RevOps person, and a data analyst, they lump it all into one job. Boom - congrats, you're a team of one! Hope you like working weekends.
And disappointment (from both sides) is almost guaranteed.
What does a GOOD Growth JD’s look like?
Growth Product job description example
Gitlab knows how to do it right. Beautiful Director of Product Growth JD with the following responsibilities:
Well done, GitLab! It’s all about growing key metrics, mentoring the team, improving the user journey, being data-driven, and working cross-functionally. Pure perfection.
Next up, let’s give a round of applause to Turno for an amazing Growth Product Manager role, featuring the following responsibilities:
This one emphasizes moving growth metrics, experimenting, optimizing the user experience, being data-driven, and working cross-functionally. Pure perfection.
has another great example of the Growth Product Manager job description he wrote during his days at Snyk, which you can use as a template.Growth Marketing job description
I direct your attention to Future’s Director of Growth Marketing JD, as they clearly get it:
No BS job description - just focused on what growth should own: performance & lifecycle marketing, collaboration with Product on PLG initiatives, referral programs, data, and cross-functional collaboration. Chef’s kiss!
Do job descriptions matter?
Job descriptions offer a peek into how a company thinks about growth - what they believe it means and what they think will make you successful.
That’s not to say you can’t carve your own path and shape the role, but a bad JD is a red flag. It’s something you should address head-on during interviews.
Most importantly, you don’t have to do it alone. High-quality communities, such as Sidebar, now exist where you can find people to help you through this confusing process.
Other useful reads:
P.S. Seen any particularly bad (or good) Growth JDs lately?
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This article strikes me to the heart core. Every time I see growth needs to develop creative content strategy I think 'maybe I'm doing it wrong?'
And the weirdest comment I heard on the interview was "We hope you won't conduct any experiments, it's not some institute here you know"
Thank you so much!
😂 So this is akin to what was a “Webmaster” in the 1990’s. This role was a jack-of-all…but really they wanted a master-of-all. Since the internet was relatively new consumer technology, you were expected to know coding (html, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL etc.), be a server administrator, be a website designer (both creative and technical), SEO specialist (although this came a bit later), and let’s not forget security & maintenance administrator. I am sure there was more along the way. My Point: We are better served when domain experts in the various fields have a better understanding of AI’s capabilities, potential and limitations, then they can hire (or contract) the various experts to fulfill their vision. We are still in the development of AI tools (or platforms ) that will be used for those projects. Growth of the digital marketing space did not even exist, yet some technical junkie was responsible for it In the late 90’s -early 2000’s! I do believe growth (in general) for companies will not come from mere efficiency gains but rather entirely new disruptive business models or even new AI markets that are yet to be built. (Yes , I have an idea for an AI information market). Great article, it certainly got me thinking!