How to Write a Job Description for a Shipping Company

If you want to know how to write a shipping job description that works, here is the direct answer. Name the company type before the job title, set the role level and department, write responsibilities as outcomes, split skills into must-have, good-to-have and premium, state experience honestly, and tell candidates exactly what the hiring steps are. Do those six things and the right people recognise themselves in the first ten seconds.

The rest of this guide explains each step, shows a worked example for a port agency role, and lists the mistakes that send good candidates elsewhere.

Why most shipping job descriptions underperform

Shipping job titles carry less information than they appear to. “Operations Executive” is advertised by liner companies, feeder operators, NVOCCs, freight forwarders, bulk carrier owners and port agents. The work in each of those seats is different. A candidate who spent six years coordinating feeder port rotations may be a poor fit for a bulk operator who needs someone to manage voyage instructions and laytime.

When a job description is copied from a generic template, three things go wrong.

• The wrong people apply. Candidates match on the title and not on the work.
• The right people do not apply. An experienced specialist cannot tell from the text whether the role is theirs.
• Screening becomes guesswork. Whether you screen by hand or with software, a vague description gives you nothing to measure a resume against.

A shipping job description is a measurement instrument. Write it as one.

How to write a shipping job description in six steps

1. Start with company type

State what kind of maritime business you are in the first line of the role summary. Liner, Feeder, NVOCC, Freight Forwarder, Ship Management, Bulk Carrier, RoRo, CFS, port agency. This single fact tells an experienced candidate more than a paragraph of responsibilities.

It also changes what you write next. The skills expected of a documentation executive at an NVOCC, where house bills of lading and consolidation are daily work, differ from those at a liner agency handling master bills and manifests.

2. Set the role level and the department

Say plainly whether the role is entry level, executive, senior executive, assistant manager or manager, and which department it sits in. Add who the role reports to. Candidates use this to judge seniority and salary range before they read anything else, and vague levels are a common reason for mismatched applications.

3. Write responsibilities as outcomes

Compare two lines.

• “Responsible for vessel operations.”
• “Coordinate berthing, cargo operations and sailing for eight to ten feeder calls a month, keeping port stay within the planned window.”

The second line tells the candidate what success looks like and tells a screener what evidence to look for in a resume. Five to eight outcome lines is enough. If you need fifteen, you are describing two jobs.

4. Split skills into three tiers

This is the step that most improves the quality of your shortlist.

• Must-have. Without these the candidate cannot do the job in the first month. Keep it to five to eight.
• Good-to-have. Skills that shorten the learning curve.
• Premium. Rare skills that would make you move quickly on a candidate.

Tiers force a decision that hiring managers often avoid: what is truly required and what is a wish. They also make screening measurable. When resumes are ranked against the role, the tiers are what the ranking is built on. Our walkthrough of how AI resume screening works for maritime roles shows this in practice.

5. State qualifications and experience honestly

Give a minimum number of years and say what kind of experience counts. “Three years in port agency or vessel operations” is useful. “Three to ten years of relevant experience” is not.

For seagoing ranks, name the statutory certificates required under the IMO’s STCW Convention precisely, including the grade and any flag endorsements. For shore-side roles, be clear when sea time is preferred and when it is required. Many strong shore-side candidates have none, and many roles do not need it.

6. Tell candidates the hiring steps

State what happens after they apply: resume review, a skills assessment, an interview, and roughly how long each takes. Candidates who know an assessment is coming prepare for it, and those who are not serious drop out early. Both outcomes save you time.

A worked shipping job description example

Here is the skeleton for a Port Agency Executive at a feeder agency, built with the six steps.

Role summary. We are a port agency serving feeder operators at two container terminals. The Port Agency Executive is the single point of contact between the vessel, the terminal, port authorities and the principal for every call assigned to them. Executive level, Operations department, reporting to the Agency Manager.

Responsibilities.

• Handle eight to ten vessel calls a month from pre-arrival to departure, including berth application, pilot and tug booking and port clearance.
• Prepare the proforma disbursement account before arrival and the final disbursement account within the agreed number of days after sailing, with supporting vouchers.
• Issue accurate arrival, berthing and departure reports and the statement of facts to the principal on the day of each event.
• Coordinate husbandry services: crew changes, fresh water, provisions, spares clearance and medical attendance.
• Resolve terminal and port authority queries in real time so that no vessel is delayed for documentation.

Must-have skills. Port agency coordination. Disbursement account preparation. Port authority and customs liaison. Statement of facts preparation. Clear written English.

Good-to-have skills. Feeder schedule and transhipment knowledge. Crew change formalities. Experience with a port community system.

Premium skills. Auditing and challenging disbursement costs. An established network across the trade region’s ports.

Experience. Two to four years in port agency or vessel operations. Sea time is not required.

Hiring steps. Resume review, a 60 minute skills assessment covering agency and disbursement topics, then one interview. We aim to decide within two weeks.

Notice what is absent: “dynamic”, “fast-paced”, “team player”. None of those help a candidate decide or a screener measure.

How long should it be?

Shorter than you think. A role summary of three or four sentences, five to eight responsibilities, three short skill lists, one line on experience and one on the hiring steps. That fits on a single screen, which is where most candidates will read it.

Length is usually a symptom. When a description runs to two pages, it is because nobody decided what mattered, so everything was kept. The tiering in step 4 is the cure. If a line does not help a candidate decide whether to apply or help you decide whether to shortlist them, cut it.

Mistakes to avoid

Copying the last vacancy. Roles drift. The job description you used two years ago describes the person who left, not the person you need.

Listing every skill as required. A must-have list of twenty items produces a shortlist of nobody. If you would hire a candidate who lacks it, it is not a must-have.

Hiding the company type. Some companies leave it out for confidentiality. You can stay anonymous and still say “a feeder operator with regional services”. Omitting it entirely costs you the specialists.

Writing for the wrong reader. Internal shorthand, system names and department codes mean nothing outside your company. Write for a capable professional at a competitor.

Forgetting the role is changing. Shore-side jobs are absorbing work that used to happen on board, as remote monitoring and shore-based operations centres grow. Some of these new roles need seagoing judgment. If your vacancy is one of these, say so.

Starting from a template instead of a blank page

You do not have to write from scratch. Marine Ideas maintains a library of 100+ ready-made maritime job description templates, organised by company type, department and role level. You can browse the public job profile library without an account.

Inside the platform, the same six steps are built into the workflow.

• Filter templates by company type, department, role level, years of experience and skill, then import one into your own template set.
• Paste or upload an existing description and have its fields extracted: department, level, responsibilities, qualifications and the three skill tiers.
• Generate a first draft from a job title and a short brief when no template fits, then edit it.
• Publish the job to get a public application link, and generate a LinkedIn hiring post from the published role.

A template is a starting point. The edits that matter are the ones only you can make: the call volume, the trade, the systems, the reporting line.

Put the description to work

A job description earns its keep when it is used to measure. Once yours is written, run your incoming resumes against it and see whether the ranking matches your instinct. If it does not, the tiers need adjusting, and that is a ten minute fix. Later in the process, the same description shapes the questions candidates are asked in an AI voice interview.

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