Getting the Job Description Right
Posted February 21st, 2013
When companies have a position available, they usually post a job description. The traditional job description generally contains an outline of the duties of the job, the skills, job experience, and educational background required.
The emphasis usually is on the skills that are needed. But according to expert recruiter Lou Adler, this is the wrong way to put together a job description. These kinds of descriptions actually get in the way of companies hiring the best people for the job. They even screen out top-notch people because they don’t have just the right mix of skills and experience.
What companies need to do instead, Adler says, is to make their job descriptions performance based, to focus not on the skills the person has, but what the person has done and can do.
For example, one IT company began its search for a vice president of marketing by focusing on the kind of background the candidate needed. The president of the company said he was looking for a person with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from a top university, preferably a master’s in the same area. He wanted the person to have five to ten years’ experience in the IT industry, as well as an MBA from a top university.
But the error here was that this is a description of a person, not a job. The president was asked to think about the most important thing the person he was hiring needed to do, to define what success on the job was.
And then he described it: The person would need to be able to assemble a three-year product road map that included all the product opportunities the company had in detail. The person should understand the industry trends, especially what the leading in the company does, and take the company into a position where it is not continually following that leading firm. The product map needs to focus on what the company can develop most efficiently without a big investment in new people and new technologies. An outline of the plan needed to be ready within four to six months.
The president was asked if he would talk to someone who does this kind of thing very well and has done something similar to this, even though the person may not have exactly the background the president was looking for. The president responded that, of course, he would.
This example shows that the focus needs to be on what people need to do, not what they need to have, and that is what the job description should detail.
If your company has jobs to fill in the Bay Area, call Bayside Solutions. We can find the IT professionals you need quickly and affordably. Contact us today.
