Job Descriptions for the 21st Century
by Irving H. Buchen
Job descriptions are often a weak link in the talent-management chain. The challenge for HR is to make job descriptions more dynamic and reflective of job change on the one hand and to create a more rigorous and accurate process of job qualification on the other.
Job descriptions are generally the monopoly of HR and have been a staple of that division for generations. Created as part of the scientific-management movement of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and others, it applied to workers the same process of analyzing stages of work and making production more manageable.
At about the same time, it also added what is so prized today -- metrics -- or job descriptions structured by evaluation time tables and scope, built-in anniversary dates and job range.
In more recent times, it has met compliance needs for affirmative action, becoming the official means of ensuring equity of recruitment access, just as a set number and kinds of questions from which no deviation was permitted was developed to ensure equality of interview.
Throughout, it has remained the province and jurisdiction of HR to the point where a job search no matter how urgent has to await the sanctioned appearance of an officially approved job description as a precondition for going ahead.
But, of late, that old war horse has been challenged.
First, job descriptions are often dated. Typically the files have not been reviewed for years. In one Silicon Valley company I visited as an HR consultant, I pointed out that the job had been eliminated; on another occasion, that the job title had been changed to such an extent that it defied even being alphabetically found.
Minimally, then, the first lesson for HR is to clean up its act -- compliance requires currency.
Second, even if updated, many hiring managers have complained to me that, as currently composed, most descriptions are guilty of serious sins of omission and thus compromise finding the right fit.
The checklist of what is left out is generic and includes stretch goals, cross-overs, multi-tasking, telecommunicating -- all have rendered many job descriptions more a work in progress or an operational draft than a final official version.
But perhaps the most serious objection of all is that job descriptions as presently constituted and delivered may be a basic obstacle to effective recruitment and retention of talent. So much so that Tom Peters has recommended destroying them all!
Although a radical remedy, the value of his condemnation is that it forces re-examination of this basic mainstay and takes us back to square one. What is the basic nature of the job description, what does it do well and what are its limits?
1. A job description is an information document.
2. Its focus is to inform and screen.
3. It seeks to accomplish that double task by accurately defining the job and profiling its qualifications.
4. But traditional job descriptions are static and one dimensional.
5. Current jobs are evolving and multi-dimensional.
6. Minimally two serious failings thus emerge: lack of job fidelity and inadequate process of job qualifying.
The challenge then is two-fold: how to make job descriptions more dynamic and reflective of dynamic job change on the one hand and how to create a more rigorous and accurate process of job qualification on the other?
Oh, yes, and ideally, how to do both so that it does not have to be done again and again? Taking an experimental approach, a number of tentative changes come to mind:
1. Render the job description as both a descriptive and evaluation PDF document, ideally posted on the company Web site.
2. Tie it from the outset to performance-evaluation criteria and timetables to ensure currency of updating and upgrading.
3. Design it as an interactive and responsive form available to applicant inquiry.
4. Build in a series of gatekeeper qualifications for each major area of responsibility and skill set.
5. Create prompts to guide access to, and optimum use by, prospective applicants.
But, as simple and basic as that sounds, it is perhaps more complicated than it appears.
An interactive job description requires a lot more information and background than the standard version.
For example, many manufacturing companies compete intensely for plant managers. They are hard to get and even harder to keep. Why? Because plant managers are know-it-alls.
Nothing to them is too small, trivial or distant to be ignored. They want to know everything about the job. A typical flat, familiar and predictable job description turns them off. They are aggressive.
For example, they particularly push to know the extent to which their decisions may be checked by marketing or finance. If there are multiple sites, they want to know whether multi-disciplinary or virtual teams provide cross-lateral functions.
In short, what I have found is that if HR is going to attract the best-of-the-best plant managers, it has to offer them steak not pablum.
That means that HR has to put together and preside over an intense internal collaborative team that miniaturizes the whole of that job and that is typically way beyond the limited and often self-serving input of a single hiring authority.
Moreover, to be truly 360, the job profile has to pair description and qualification up and down the whole line if it is also to function as a screening device.
But what may finally may be the most difficult hurdle of all is the willingness to accept and develop a job description that replaces or becomes the first interview -- that requires turning over exclusively to prospective applicants three basic initial fact-finding questions: 'Is this the kind of job I am looking for?' 'Do I have the qualifications to do it?' and 'Where does it take me?'
Unless a job description offers honest and thorough answers to these driving informational needs, it is more an obstacle than an avenue to effective recruitment and retention.
As a consolation, all this extra up-front work may generate a number of offsets.
The first and most obvious is to collectively raise the knowledge level of the culture, not only about jobs but also their operational dynamics. Then, too, by becoming smarter about the job's interoperability, what needs to be built into the applicant self-qualifying process becomes known. Most important, a key trade-off is accepted: greater access to more information is accompanied by self-assessment of whether or not minimum qualifications are met to justify applicant going ahead or withdrawing.
In other words, gate-keeping criteria are built-in at key decision points to facilitate a do-it-yourself job-screening process. In the process, all or most unqualified applicants would be weeded out; optimally a relatively short list of prospects would emerge primed for the kind of more in-depth exchange characteristic of later face-to-face or phone interviews.
Does it work? I have adapted it with success to a number of competitive situations and even to executive-level searches that have been hard to fill. One basic change for the latter is to have the interactive job description behave and perform more like an executive coach, prompting dialogue rather than unilateral input.
Why? Because outstanding candidates love to tell war stories about their successes and because they pride themselves on their due diligence. This is thus particularly welcomed by candidates who do their homework.
The process reflects the kind of digging and research good candidates routinely do anyway. As to candidates claiming they are qualified when they are not, that turns out to be the ultimate disqualification -- and usually can be forestalled by indicating that such accurate self-judgments determine whether one, in fact, is really qualified for the position.
What are the downsides? HR has to take on the initiative of more collaborative and interactive internal job definition than typically is involved in just updating a job description.
In the process, HR may have to oversee and manage internal negotiations and conflicts especially about qualifications.
Above all, HR has to champion job knowledge access and transparency over control and imprecision, and move up the entire process so that it engages applicants early on in direct exchange.
But the gains are substantial: better understanding by all -- hiring personnel and applicants -- of what the job is really about and all that is required to get it done, and the rare focusing of the collective knowledge of the culture.
Above all, it reaches HR's goals of raising the level of engagement to the next step, not losing or turning off good candidates, upping the ante of finding the best fit and challenging candidates from the start.
Should this be done across the board? For many companies involved in number of hirings per year, it may appear too much to undertake especially for run-of-the mill-vacancies.
My basic advice has been to limit it initially to highly competitive hard-to-fill jobs and see whether it makes a difference -- measured both by the level of applicants attracted and the degree to which they self-qualify.
But two factors need to be remembered. First, weeding out takes time and often involves costs. Eliminating the unqualified or underqualified at the outset thus saves both and should not be minimized.
But, second and more important in the final analysis, this has to become an HR strategy because it alone is the keeper of the job-description repository, represents the only companywide across-the-board spokesperson of the work culture and can exercise leadership change to a total talent-management system.
Even a relatively few well-chosen and well-placed new hires speaks volumes about a culture that values talent and is willing to devote its time and intelligence to their acquisition, retention and promotion.
[About the Author: Irving H. Buchen, Phd., is a member of the doctoral business faculty at Capella University and associate vice president for IMPAC University. An active HR researcher and consultant, his most recent book is Partnership HR (Davies-Black, 2007). He has served as a management consultant, trainer, and executive coach here and abroad for numerous corporations. He secured his doctorate from Johns Hopkins and has been a professor and an academic administrator at Cal State, University of Wisconsin, and Penn State.]
by Irving H. Buchen
Job descriptions are often a weak link in the talent-management chain. The challenge for HR is to make job descriptions more dynamic and reflective of job change on the one hand and to create a more rigorous and accurate process of job qualification on the other.
Job descriptions are generally the monopoly of HR and have been a staple of that division for generations. Created as part of the scientific-management movement of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and others, it applied to workers the same process of analyzing stages of work and making production more manageable.
At about the same time, it also added what is so prized today -- metrics -- or job descriptions structured by evaluation time tables and scope, built-in anniversary dates and job range.
In more recent times, it has met compliance needs for affirmative action, becoming the official means of ensuring equity of recruitment access, just as a set number and kinds of questions from which no deviation was permitted was developed to ensure equality of interview.
Throughout, it has remained the province and jurisdiction of HR to the point where a job search no matter how urgent has to await the sanctioned appearance of an officially approved job description as a precondition for going ahead.
But, of late, that old war horse has been challenged.
First, job descriptions are often dated. Typically the files have not been reviewed for years. In one Silicon Valley company I visited as an HR consultant, I pointed out that the job had been eliminated; on another occasion, that the job title had been changed to such an extent that it defied even being alphabetically found.
Minimally, then, the first lesson for HR is to clean up its act -- compliance requires currency.
Second, even if updated, many hiring managers have complained to me that, as currently composed, most descriptions are guilty of serious sins of omission and thus compromise finding the right fit.
The checklist of what is left out is generic and includes stretch goals, cross-overs, multi-tasking, telecommunicating -- all have rendered many job descriptions more a work in progress or an operational draft than a final official version.
But perhaps the most serious objection of all is that job descriptions as presently constituted and delivered may be a basic obstacle to effective recruitment and retention of talent. So much so that Tom Peters has recommended destroying them all!
Although a radical remedy, the value of his condemnation is that it forces re-examination of this basic mainstay and takes us back to square one. What is the basic nature of the job description, what does it do well and what are its limits?
1. A job description is an information document.
2. Its focus is to inform and screen.
3. It seeks to accomplish that double task by accurately defining the job and profiling its qualifications.
4. But traditional job descriptions are static and one dimensional.
5. Current jobs are evolving and multi-dimensional.
6. Minimally two serious failings thus emerge: lack of job fidelity and inadequate process of job qualifying.
The challenge then is two-fold: how to make job descriptions more dynamic and reflective of dynamic job change on the one hand and how to create a more rigorous and accurate process of job qualification on the other?
Oh, yes, and ideally, how to do both so that it does not have to be done again and again? Taking an experimental approach, a number of tentative changes come to mind:
1. Render the job description as both a descriptive and evaluation PDF document, ideally posted on the company Web site.
2. Tie it from the outset to performance-evaluation criteria and timetables to ensure currency of updating and upgrading.
3. Design it as an interactive and responsive form available to applicant inquiry.
4. Build in a series of gatekeeper qualifications for each major area of responsibility and skill set.
5. Create prompts to guide access to, and optimum use by, prospective applicants.
But, as simple and basic as that sounds, it is perhaps more complicated than it appears.
An interactive job description requires a lot more information and background than the standard version.
For example, many manufacturing companies compete intensely for plant managers. They are hard to get and even harder to keep. Why? Because plant managers are know-it-alls.
Nothing to them is too small, trivial or distant to be ignored. They want to know everything about the job. A typical flat, familiar and predictable job description turns them off. They are aggressive.
For example, they particularly push to know the extent to which their decisions may be checked by marketing or finance. If there are multiple sites, they want to know whether multi-disciplinary or virtual teams provide cross-lateral functions.
In short, what I have found is that if HR is going to attract the best-of-the-best plant managers, it has to offer them steak not pablum.
That means that HR has to put together and preside over an intense internal collaborative team that miniaturizes the whole of that job and that is typically way beyond the limited and often self-serving input of a single hiring authority.
Moreover, to be truly 360, the job profile has to pair description and qualification up and down the whole line if it is also to function as a screening device.
But what may finally may be the most difficult hurdle of all is the willingness to accept and develop a job description that replaces or becomes the first interview -- that requires turning over exclusively to prospective applicants three basic initial fact-finding questions: 'Is this the kind of job I am looking for?' 'Do I have the qualifications to do it?' and 'Where does it take me?'
Unless a job description offers honest and thorough answers to these driving informational needs, it is more an obstacle than an avenue to effective recruitment and retention.
As a consolation, all this extra up-front work may generate a number of offsets.
The first and most obvious is to collectively raise the knowledge level of the culture, not only about jobs but also their operational dynamics. Then, too, by becoming smarter about the job's interoperability, what needs to be built into the applicant self-qualifying process becomes known. Most important, a key trade-off is accepted: greater access to more information is accompanied by self-assessment of whether or not minimum qualifications are met to justify applicant going ahead or withdrawing.
In other words, gate-keeping criteria are built-in at key decision points to facilitate a do-it-yourself job-screening process. In the process, all or most unqualified applicants would be weeded out; optimally a relatively short list of prospects would emerge primed for the kind of more in-depth exchange characteristic of later face-to-face or phone interviews.
Does it work? I have adapted it with success to a number of competitive situations and even to executive-level searches that have been hard to fill. One basic change for the latter is to have the interactive job description behave and perform more like an executive coach, prompting dialogue rather than unilateral input.
Why? Because outstanding candidates love to tell war stories about their successes and because they pride themselves on their due diligence. This is thus particularly welcomed by candidates who do their homework.
The process reflects the kind of digging and research good candidates routinely do anyway. As to candidates claiming they are qualified when they are not, that turns out to be the ultimate disqualification -- and usually can be forestalled by indicating that such accurate self-judgments determine whether one, in fact, is really qualified for the position.
What are the downsides? HR has to take on the initiative of more collaborative and interactive internal job definition than typically is involved in just updating a job description.
In the process, HR may have to oversee and manage internal negotiations and conflicts especially about qualifications.
Above all, HR has to champion job knowledge access and transparency over control and imprecision, and move up the entire process so that it engages applicants early on in direct exchange.
But the gains are substantial: better understanding by all -- hiring personnel and applicants -- of what the job is really about and all that is required to get it done, and the rare focusing of the collective knowledge of the culture.
Above all, it reaches HR's goals of raising the level of engagement to the next step, not losing or turning off good candidates, upping the ante of finding the best fit and challenging candidates from the start.
Should this be done across the board? For many companies involved in number of hirings per year, it may appear too much to undertake especially for run-of-the mill-vacancies.
My basic advice has been to limit it initially to highly competitive hard-to-fill jobs and see whether it makes a difference -- measured both by the level of applicants attracted and the degree to which they self-qualify.
But two factors need to be remembered. First, weeding out takes time and often involves costs. Eliminating the unqualified or underqualified at the outset thus saves both and should not be minimized.
But, second and more important in the final analysis, this has to become an HR strategy because it alone is the keeper of the job-description repository, represents the only companywide across-the-board spokesperson of the work culture and can exercise leadership change to a total talent-management system.
Even a relatively few well-chosen and well-placed new hires speaks volumes about a culture that values talent and is willing to devote its time and intelligence to their acquisition, retention and promotion.
[About the Author: Irving H. Buchen, Phd., is a member of the doctoral business faculty at Capella University and associate vice president for IMPAC University. An active HR researcher and consultant, his most recent book is Partnership HR (Davies-Black, 2007). He has served as a management consultant, trainer, and executive coach here and abroad for numerous corporations. He secured his doctorate from Johns Hopkins and has been a professor and an academic administrator at Cal State, University of Wisconsin, and Penn State.]
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