Job descriptions - How good are yours?
Set yourself up for success from the start! Keep your job descriptions up to date and relevant. Make them work for you, for your employment process and for your employees.
A new vacancy is a new opportunity!
A good job description is an often overlooked first step in the recruitment process. Any new vacancy, whether newly created or a replacement of an employee who has moved on, is an opportunity to reappraise the role and its relevance. Take a moment to sit down and analyze the existing job description, its context in your current environment and its relevance to your strategic future plans.
Take a look at how that role has fulfilled its objectives to date and whether it can be tweaked to better effect. Interestingly, it often comes as a revelation to realize that what you now need can be significantly different to your previous requirements.
Having ruthlessly reassessed the existing job description, you may well find that it sits awkwardly in its current context and may in fact be the cause of issues you have been experiencing. You may find that rearranging the position allows for development of other staff. It may even be that the role is no longer required at all, certainly not in its current form.
Is there more to a JD than a list of duties?
Of course it is fundamental to have a JD which describes duties and responsibilities that accurately reflect the company’s needs and fits well within the structure of the team or department. But the next few steps add dimension and clarity, create a working document which sets in place parameters for performance and forms a basis for communication between the employee and the manager.
The next step is assessing the skill set and personal qualities required to successfully carry out these requirements.
The candidate profile
You know what you need, now you must assess who you need. What qualities, what qualifications, experience and skill set? Who is going to best fit the role, the company and/or the team or department?
It pays to re-evaluate your brand new JD. Have a look at all those duties and responsibilities. Are they reasonable, practical and acceptable to the ideal candidate? For example, you may genuinely need a top flight individual, well qualified in his or her field and with experience already at senior level. Incorporating junior duties into the role, simply because it suits the company or the division, is unlikely to be a clever mix and it certainly will neither attract nor retain a good candidate for the role.
There are times, especially in a smaller company, where it can be more than tempting to throw two roles together which may share the need for similar qualities. But is it attractive to a single individual and indeed, is it practical to ask one person to take ownership of a diverse and often contradictory set of KPIs? The end result is often a frustrated employee or one who naturally leans toward one or the other of the roles. Either way, this situation is unlikely to benefit your organisation in the long run. Make sure your JD works from the outset.
Measurement.
For some companies and some positions it can be enough to have a concise outline of duties. Generally however, a good JD will benefit from the inclusion of a clear set of performance expectations or Key Performance Indicators( KPIs). It may be that there are deadlines to meet, sales to achieve, budgets to attain or projects which require a specific outcome. Maybe it’s simply that the mail is collected on time in the morning and posted by deadline in the afternoon. Whatever the key criteria for performance may be for the position in question, keep them simple, relevant, achievable and, wherever possible, measurable.
Relationships
Naturally, your JD will clearly identify any and all reporting relationships. In a large or complex organisation there can be many ‘dotted line’ relationships and other positions which have an impact on the position you are describing.
And by return?
So you’ve got a great JD and you know exactly who you need to fulfil it. What are you going to have to offer by return? What is the role worth on the market?
Whether you are seeking to retain an incumbent or having to go to the market to attract a new employee, getting this part of the equation right is critical. While evaluating the salary or wage accurately is vital, there are also other ways of building value into the remuneration package. Be creative! Training, educational support, a car allowance? Defined long term career opportunities? Maybe just some flexibility around a preplanned holiday or family responsibilities. Any of these and many other options can be as attractive as the dollars and sometimes more so. But without a clear idea of what you need to offer, you will have a rough time trying to attract new talent to your organisation, even in our current market, and you may not avoid the costly effect of high turnover and low retention. It pays to look closely at what your company can offer and learn to promote and use it. A great environment, a vibrant team, opportunities for career and personal development, mentoring, family values … if you’ve got it, flaunt it! It just may pay dividends!
Wrap it up
You now have a clear description of the job, a supporting candidate description, a matching remuneration package and a well-rounded brief of what the company can offer. Now you’ve got a JD that will support the company’s goals, add value to the division or the team, bring satisfaction to the employee and attract him or her in the first place. That’s what I call a good JD!