Talent GPS

The Journey Begins with a Job Description If this book is to serve as your GPS for developing employees, then crafting a clear, concise job description is your route’s starting point. A job description defines the job title, essential skills, responsibilities, and qualities for the role. It also serves as the foundation for the relationship between an employee, you as the manager, and the organization. It’s imperative that the job description be accurate, appropriately worded, and that it sets clear expectations for job performance, not only during the interview and onboarding period, but throughout an employee’s tenure in the role. When performance or discipline issues occur, the job description is your reference to benchmark the employee’s performance and actions against the expectations that have been communicated. It can also be used to assess superior performance—perhaps an employee consistently performs at a level much higher than outlined in the job description—it’s important that you benchmark those successes as well! While the creation of a job description format or template may be the responsibility of your Human Resources department, it’s your obligation to ensure that a job description is kept updated and accurately outlines the position. As new leaders, organizational priorities, mergers and acquisitions, and other job-altering events occur, job responsibilities often shift. The job description should outline the role as it’s being filled now, not a decade ago or whenever the role was originally created. As you’re looking to fill a role—whether through internal or external hiring, carefully review the job description on file and ask yourself these questions: ● What purpose does this role fill on my team and within the organization? ● How does this role impact or interact with our customers, organization, and industry? ● What are the MUST-HAVE skills, experiences, and competencies for an employee to be successful in this role? ● What are the important, but less critical, skills, experiences, and competencies that would be helpful for an employee to be successful in this role? ● When was the last time the job description for this role was updated? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to thoroughly audit your job descriptions and ensure you’ve defined what’s necessary or desirable for a successful employee. It’s more than just the job description Hiring is about making sure that the best person fits the job. Below are the important deliverables required for effective job matching. Developing Key Accountabilities: Create 3-5 statements explaining what the job must deliver for the organization to thrive. These statements are reflections of specific actions, not competencies. To ensure that an accurate reflection of job actions is created, this should be done by a small group of Subject Matter Experts who perform the job or interact closely with that role, ideally with no more than 10 people involved. Once the Key Accountabilities are created, rank them in order of importance and indicate the percentage of time spent focused on that function on the job. This will help you in the interview and candidate selection process. You’ll find an example of Key Accountabilities in Appendix D Templates and Worksheets) Job Benchmark: The next step of the process, based on the Key Accountabilities, is to establish a Job Benchmark. Once the Subject Matter Experts agree on the Key Accountabilities, they complete a questionnaire about the job—behaviors, motivators, acumen, and competencies/skills. Additionally, the Job Benchmark tool will produce interview questions based on the ideal role—you can use a gap report to focus your questioning around strengths, gaps and other insightful factors. Gap Report: Finally, once you have candidates in mind for the position, they complete a similar questionnaire. This is used to compare each candidate against the Key Accountabilities and Job Benchmarks to identify which candidates best meet the criteria. As you measure this, consider: ● Which candidates possess the necessary skills? ● Where are the gaps? ● What can be coached or trained? ● What qualities cannot be coached or trained? It’s important to note that this shouldn’t be the only thing you do to interview and measure candidates. This process should be used in conjunction with a solid interviewing process, led by your HR/Talent Acquisition partners. Clarify Expectations Upfront Once a job description has been created and key accountabilities have been defined, it can be used to help clarify expectations with your partners in the recruiting and hiring process. Establishing and maintaining open communication with these partners will help you clarify expectations for a new employee, including: ● The need for the role itself ● Job Title ● Desired education and experience level ● Salary Range ● Key Responsibilities ● Work schedule and arrangements—office hours, working from home, flexible schedule, etc. ● Travel requirements ● Desired start-date According to a 2013 survey by CareerBuilder, more than half of those who responded said they have “felt the effects of hiring someone who turned out to be a poor fit for the job or did not perform it well.” 41% of those surveyed said that a bad hire has cost them at least $25,000. Ouch. Other business factors impacted by a bad hiring decision could include: lower productivity, cost of time spent recruiting and training a replacement, reduced employee morale, or even a negative impact on the customer experience. However, the same CareerBuilder survey asked why bad hiring decisions happen. The results may surprise you: ● 38% said the company needed to fill the position quickly. ● 34% said, “It just didn’t work out.” ● 21% said the company didn’t test or research the employee’s skills well enough. ● 11% said the company didn’t perform adequate reference checks. The lesson here, dear manager? Take full responsibility for the outcome of every hiring decision—it will only strengthen your influence as a leader and help you learn for future hiring endeavors.