Find the record that settles it · HR managers and consultants 1

Send it the email and nothing else

From memory

Fundamentals 10

That is this lesson. Below is a message of the kind that lands at 8:40 on a Monday from a hiring manager who has already moved on to the next thing. You are going to send the tool the message and nothing else: no job description, no snapshot, no pay band. First, a guess.

Every name, figure, code and system in this lesson is invented. Kestrel Valley Distribution does not exist, and neither do HRIS-A, ATS-A, the role code RL-01 or the manager. Nothing here is a real employer's posting or job description.

Guess first

You are about to send the tool a manager's email with no job description attached. Will it ask for the job description before it writes the posting?

Yes, it will ask firstNo, it will write the posting anywayNo idea

And how sure are you?

Fairly sureGuessing

Nobody else sees this and nothing here is marked. Being wrong here is worth more than being right.

Paste this in, and nothing else

Write the job posting this manager is asking for. Under 200 words, ready to publish.

The email. Read it once first.

Subject: lead posting Hey, can you write up the warehouse lead posting? It's like the old one but they drive the forklift now. Need it live this week, I've got two people leaving. Dale

I sent the email and nothing else. No job description, no snapshot, no pay band
I noticed whether it asked a question before writing, or wrote the posting straight away

It is on a role snapshot the tool has never seen, and the posting you publish becomes the record a court reads. Fifteen minutes on the check that replaces knowing.

Lesson 01 · Where the record lives

By the end you can

Name the one record that settles a sentence about a job, and find the line on it
Publish a posting in which every requirement traces to a line on the role snapshot
Run the File Check on a sentence about a person or a rule that you cannot vouch for from memory

What you need

Any of the four, free tier. Nothing to upload. The role snapshot you need is on this page, and it is invented.

HR managers and consultants · AI for your trade

Read the posting the way an applicant would

Paste its posting here, then tick what is true of it

Check your own work0/4

It stated a physical requirement, most likely lifting a set weight, that nobody gave it
It required a diploma, a number of years of experience, or both
It used a word that describes a person rather than the work: energetic, fast-paced, digital native, culture fit, young and dynamic team
Nothing in it points to a record. It reads as though the job lives inside the tool

If it asked for the job description first, that is the right move and rarer than you would think, and you still have to open the snapshot, because the tool cannot. If it wrote the posting anyway, it wrote about a job it has never seen, in the same voice it would use if it had. Neither is the posting. The job is on a record the tool does not have.

Two reasons the posting is not a place to guess. The first is that it becomes evidence. The ADA's regulations list, among the evidence of whether a function is essential, written job descriptions prepared before advertising or interviewing applicants for the job (29 CFR 1630.2(n)(3)(ii)). A posting that says must lift 50 pounds regularly, for a job in which nobody lifts 50 pounds, is a written description prepared before advertising, and it is what a court reads when an applicant with a lifting restriction is turned down. The second is who stops reading. In a field experiment reported in a 2022 NBER working paper (Burn, Button, Munguia Corella and Neumark, Working Paper 30287), job ad language related to age stereotypes, such as digital native and energetic, deterred older workers from applying even when it was not blatantly about age, with a significant decline in the share of applicants over 40. The tool did not mean either. It produced the words that usually follow warehouse lead.

Open the role snapshot and find the line

Now the record. Below is RL-01, the Warehouse Lead's role snapshot, in the format lesson 2 fixes for the whole track. Everything a real job description carries that names a person has been left off. Read it as the person who would have to defend every line of the posting.

RL-01. Warehouse Lead. Illinois main warehouse. Role snapshot dated 09-2026. FLSA classification as the company has it: hourly, non-exempt Reports to: warehouse operations manager. Supervises: one shift of 8 to 12 associates Essential functions, with the approximate share of shift each takes Directing the shift: assigning work, covering breaks, clearing holds. 30 percent Assigning picks and loads from the WMS queue. 20 percent Operating a sit-down forklift, company certified. 20 percent Running cycle counts in the WMS. 15 percent Training new associates on safety procedures. 10 percent Completing incident reports the same shift. 5 percent Marginal function: covering a pick station when the shift is short Physical and licensing requirements as performed: sit-down forklift certification through the company's trainer. No lifting requirement beyond forklift work Posted pay range, company band L2: 20.50 to 24.00 an hour Last reviewed: 08-2026, with the warehouse operations manager

This is the File Check. It is what the One-Thing Check becomes when the fact is about a person or a rule. Pick the one statement about a person or a rule that would cost the most if it were wrong. Name the record that settles it: the handbook section, the statute, the note taken at the time, the signed document. Open it and find the line, or send the question to counsel or the person who holds it. Nothing goes to an employee until that is done. Do it now: the statement is what this job requires, the record is the snapshot above, and the lines are the six essential functions and the one sentence about lifting.

I found the forklift line and wrote down its share of the shift
I found the sentence about lifting, and it says there is no lifting requirement beyond forklift work
I wrote the snapshot's date next to my posting, in my notes, not in the posting

Now write the posting yourself, with the snapshot open

Check your own work0/4

Every requirement in it sits on a line of the snapshot: the six functions, the forklift certification, the 8 to 12 associates, the range of 20.50 to 24.00 an hour
No lifting line, no diploma, no years of experience. None of those is on the snapshot, so none of them is in the posting
No word that describes a person instead of the work. No energetic, no fast-paced, no digital native, no culture fit
Nothing in it came from the tool's first draft

The outside check in this trade is rarely a search engine. It is the record, and then the person who owns it. The person who owns RL-01 is Dale, and the snapshot says he reviewed it last month. If your posting needs a line the snapshot does not have, the move is not to write the line. It is to ask Dale whether the job has changed, and to have him change the snapshot first. The posting follows the record. It never leads it.

Give it the snapshot and watch what it keeps

Go back to the same chat. This time give it the record, and also tell it the one thing Dale told you: the posting is like the old one. Watch what it does with that.

Send this in the same chat, snapshot included

Here is the role snapshot for the Warehouse Lead. The previous job description for this role, written when it was an associate level job, said lift up to 50 pounds regularly. Rewrite the posting using the snapshot. Under 200 words.

RL-01, as above

RL-01. Warehouse Lead. Illinois main warehouse. Role snapshot dated 09-2026. Hourly, non-exempt. Reports to the warehouse operations manager. Supervises one shift of 8 to 12 associates. Essential functions with share of shift: directing the shift 30 percent; assigning picks and loads from the WMS queue 20 percent; operating a sit-down forklift, company certified, 20 percent; running cycle counts in the WMS 15 percent; training new associates on safety procedures 10 percent; completing incident reports the same shift 5 percent. Marginal function: covering a pick station when the shift is short. Physical and licensing requirements as performed: sit-down forklift certification through the company's trainer. No lifting requirement beyond forklift work. Posted pay range, band L2: 20.50 to 24.00 an hour. Last reviewed 08-2026.

Paste the second posting

Check your own work0/3

Given the snapshot, it kept the lifting line, or a softened version of it, because I said the old description had one. The snapshot in front of it says there is no lifting requirement
It kept a word from its first draft that describes a person rather than the work
The posting I publish is the one I wrote with the snapshot open, not this one

That is the shape of the whole track. The tool writes fluently about a job it has never seen, and just as fluently about the one it has been handed, and it keeps the line you mentioned in passing because you mentioned it. From here on the check is not whether something is true, which you often cannot answer from your desk. It is which record settles it, and whether you have opened it.

My posting traces every requirement to a line on RL-01, carries the range from the band, and has no lifting line
Dale has been told, in one line, that the posting says what the snapshot says and nothing the old description said
I can say the File Check in one breath: the costliest statement about a person or a rule, the record that settles it, the line found or the question sent, nothing to an employee until then

Where that leaves you

You found the line because this lesson handed you a role snapshot with nothing on it the law protects. Your real files are not like that. A real case file carries a name, a date of birth, a home address and a diagnosis copied from a doctor's form, and the tool wants all of it. Lesson 2 is how a case file goes into the tool with none of that, and which rule says what stays out.

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