Refinement prototype · Activate job › Describe the role

Field and travel jobs: where must the worker live?

Today one address field does two unrelated jobs. It says where the work happens and it decides who gets sourced, what the job displays as, and whether the AI recruiter asks about a commute. For a field service tech that address may not exist, so customers type a blank street and a generic ZIP and the whole downstream experience behaves as if candidates will drive there every morning. This splits the address into the two questions it was always answering, and shows the consequence in the two places it lands. Change the two questions in Describe the role and watch Sourcing strategy and Screening style follow.

Scoped to a first slice: two answers per axis, at one worksite or in the field, and near a location or anywhere in the U.S. The model has two more values, one per axis, and both sit outside the current pitch. They are held back rather than designed away, and the last two sections below show what they cost.

Describe the role

Share essential job details

Job title*

Hire type*

Pay range*

Where is the work performed?*

How often is the work away overnight?*

Where must the worker live?*

City*

State*

Within

How far from this city a candidate can live. This is not a commute distance, and it is not how far they travel for work.

Posts publicly as

Company name

Heartland Industrial

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How your AI recruiter will raise location

What the candidate actually reads

The form change only matters because of this. Both threads below are the same traveling electrician req, a role that drives to job sites all week but still needs someone living near the branch. On the left is the behavior a branch street address produces today. On the right is the same role once in the field + near a location is a thing a job can say. Both sides are inside the first slice.

Today

AI recruiter

Hi Marcus, thanks for your interest in the Traveling Electrician role. Quick question before we go further: are you able to commute to 2200 NW 2nd Ave, Boca Raton, FL each day?

Marcus Johnson

Every day? I’m 40 minutes out. The posting said traveling, so I figured I’d be on the road to sites, not driving into a shop.

AI recruiter

The role is based at our Boca Raton, FL location. Is a daily commute there workable for you?

With the two questions answered

AI recruiter

Hi Marcus, thanks for your interest in the Traveling Electrician role. This job runs out of job sites around Boca Raton, FL rather than one location, and we need you living within about 25 miles of there. You’d drive out to sites and be home most nights. Is that the kind of work you’re after?

Marcus Johnson

That’s what I’m looking for. I’m in Deerfield Beach, so about 15 miles. Been doing commercial service calls for six years.

The commute question is the failure, not a symptom of it. This role genuinely requires living near Boca Raton, so the geography was never the problem. The problem is that the only way to express it was an address, and an address makes the AI ask about driving to a building the candidate will almost never enter. The candidate reads that as a bait and switch against the word “traveling” in the title, and the req loses someone who lived 15 miles away and wanted the job. The copy on the right needs a brand voice pass before it ships.

Does the model actually hold?

Six reqs from customer calls, each one a shape the current form cannot express. The test is not whether each has a travel toggle. It is whether two questions and no free text can carry all six, including the two that travel constantly but still require a specific home base.

Req	The two answers	Posted today as	What the AI raises instead
Remote customer service rep, hires anywhere	Anywhere in the U.S. From home Needs From home	Company HQ address, ZIP required	Nothing about location. States it is remote and moves on.
Traveling electrician, must live near the branch	Within 25 mi of Boca Raton, FL In the field, day trips	Branch street address	Confirms they live near Boca Raton, then asks about driving to sites in the area.
Field service tech, dense metro, home nightly	Within 100 mi of Anaheim, CA In the field, day trips	Office address + 100 mi radius	Asks about driving up to two hours to job sites and being home most nights.
Field service tech, multi state region, overnight midweek	GA, AL, TN, MS In the field, overnight Needs In certain states	One metro address, radius maxed	Names the four states, says overnight during the week and home on weekends.
Travel mechanic, no company site in the metro	Within 50 mi of New Orleans, LA In the field, day trips	blank street + generic metro ZIP	Confirms they live in the New Orleans area. Never claims a worksite that does not exist.
Traveling field engineer, follows projects	Anywhere in the U.S. In the field, extended stays	`Remote, TX 11111`	Says the work follows projects nationwide, months at a site, home between projects.

Rows two and five are the ones that decide the model. Both are travel jobs that still require a specific home base, so any design built around a single “does this job involve travel?” switch collapses them into nationwide and sources the wrong country. Splitting where they live from how they travel is what keeps a 25 mile electrician and a nationwide field engineer in the same feature. Four of the six rows ship in the first slice. The two flagged rows are below.

Held back from the first slice

These are the two values the model needs and the pitch does not currently cover. Neither is designed away, because both are one option in an existing control rather than a new surface. But In certain states is regional targeting and From home is remote jobs, and the pitch explicitly no-gos both. If either is required now, the pitch needs updating and the appetite needs to stop being a 2x4.

In certain states

Third option under Where must the worker live?

States*

GA AL TN MS + Add state

Candidates living anywhere in these states qualify. Use this when the role covers a region rather than one metro.

Sourcing scope

Candidates living anywhere in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.

No radius. A candidate in the far corner of a qualifying state is in the pool.

What it costs to skip. One customer runs exactly this shape: a southeast territory, overnight midweek, and a search he describes as “the whole state, sometimes three.” Without it he picks Near a location at 200 miles, which is a compromise but not the old one. Today’s radius caps at 100, so the first slice already doubles his reach and he asked for 200 by name. Anywhere in the U.S. is the wrong fallback here and would over source him badly.

From home

Third option under Where is the work performed?

Today, on a fully remote req

AI recruiter

Quick question before we go further: would you be able to commute to Boca Raton, FL if needed?

Priya Patel

Wait, do I have to live in Boca? The posting said remote. I’m in Ohio.

Would post as Remote · Nationwide (U.S.) No street address and no ZIP. The AI states it once and asks nothing.

What it costs to skip. This is the sharpest evidence in the whole research set, and it is the one row the first slice cannot touch. Note the hedge: “if needed” reads to a candidate as a real requirement they cannot evaluate, so it makes the damage worse rather than softening it. Shipping the value without a remote experience around it is the cheap version, and the alternative is a location model that still cannot describe a job with no worksite.

4 of 6

customer reqs fully served by the first slice

degraded to a 200 mile radius instead of a region

not served at all, and it is the one with the trust evidence

new surfaces either value would need. Both are one more card in a control that already exists

What this prototype does not settle

Named here rather than designed around, because each one needs a decision from outside design.

Ranking and capping a nationwide pool. The scope panel says candidates are ranked by match quality. Two customers raised the opposite halves of this in the same week: one worried nationwide will pull in too many resumes, one would rather talk to someone 101 miles out than never reach them. Needs a ranking spec, not a copy decision.
The per board capability map. Deliberately not drawn as UI here. Listing boards with a field/travel state means asserting what each partner can represent, and that is an engineering discovery. The rule the copy commits to is the safe half: a board that requires one fixed location gets skipped rather than fed a location that is not real. That reduces channel coverage for some jobs and we should say so out loud.
Whether the first slice is actually the shipping scope. The two held back values are a pitch decision, not a design one. If they stay out, ONE-6479 is honest at a 2x4 and one customer req goes unserved. If either comes in, the pitch needs a rewrite, because In certain states is the customer configured target markets no go and From home is the general remote no go. What should not happen is quietly building both and still calling it a 2x4.
Existing jobs. Every live job today has an address and a radius. Nothing here says what they migrate to, or whether a customer has to answer two new questions on jobs that are already running.