CHAPTER 1

A Well-Defined Job Description

The first and foremost use of the job description will be to locate qualifiedcandidates for an open position. By creating your ideal candidatedescription you will stand a much better chance of finding the person whom youare seeking.

Ask yourself: "What would be my ideal situation to be solved by finding theright person?"

Begin to think of this description as your wish list.

Let's start with some basic questions to ask yourself:

"Why is it necessary to fill this position—at this time?"

"Could the responsibilities of this job be assigned to another employee?"

"What do I hope to accomplish by hiring a new person?"

This line of thinking and these questions should be your first step to be surethat you can justify the hiring of this person. Once you have justified the needfor the hire, you can progress to the next step: to determine the experiences,qualifications, and skills that are necessary for a person to succeed in thisposition.

Notice the phrase "to succeed" is used rather than "to fill" this position. Oneof the biggest mistakes in hiring is to choose someone who can "fill" theposition without the thought of long-term success. Depending on the job marketand the economy, you will sometimes have few candidates to choose from andtherefore settle for 80 percent of your "wish list."

In a "buyer's market" when you have numerous candidates to choose between, youcan not only search for 100 percent of your desired qualities and experiencesbut also seek "added value."

Added value are skills or abilities that are above and beyond what isessential or even nonessential for the job. They are skills, traits, andexperiences that would be a plus in this position. An example would be a personwho is able to communicate in sign language or who is bilingual. These are notrequired skills to perform the job but would be something added that you couldoffer your customers who have special needs if someone brought those skills tothe position.

The next set of questions to ask yourself is about the value of importance:

When weighing the value of what is important to the success of the business,what extra services could I offer if the person I hired had more than therequired skills?

What could this person bring in addition to the basic requirements that wouldadd value to the position?

How can these skills or abilities add value to the business or give additionalservice to our customers?

What new service could be added as a result of hiring a person with extraskills?

When all candidates appear equal in terms of experience and knowledge, it issometimes the added value that will be the tiebreaker and determine the bestcandidate for the job. In other words, this would be a bargain or good deal toget more than you wished for in a candidate.

Here are some examples of added-value statements on a job description:

Excellent English language skills required—both written and spoken.Any knowledge of other Asian languages will be a big plus.

Financial services industry experiences a plus.

Call center experience preferred.

Proficient in Microsoft Office and Internet technologies. Excel and MS Projectexperience a plus.

Passion for assisting disadvantaged persons would be a great asset.

Second language skills and international business experience are desired.

Depending on the conditions of the employment market, you may be able to findsomeone who surpasses your needs and adds a special service. Doing so will takesome creative thinking on your part as well as being open-minded about theperson you hire. Just because there has been a certain type of person in the jobbefore does not mean that you cannot reach out and make a paradigm shift inthinking about how the job could change. Change can be threatening when you aretrying things that are not the "norm." But you will always get the same resultsif you continue to do things in the same manner.

Management and Executives

The qualifications and experiences you require will be affected by not onlysupply and demand but also the level of responsibility the new hire will have orneed to have. Your qualifying questions will be dramatically different if youare writing a job description for a manager or executive versus writing adescription for the position of, say, a mail clerk.

Writing a job description for managers and executives will require more detailsabout the responsibilities of the job and the impact the decisions make on thebigger picture. The achievements, or the lack of achievement, of an executivemay play a significant role on the success or failure of a department or acompany.

Descriptions for these positions will require a definition of the culture andgoals of the company as well as the expectations of the organization. A well-written job description at this level will define how this position will fitinto the bigger picture. The job description will serve as a tool to setmeasurable goals to determine success.

Executive or management job descriptions will have more detail about the bottomline or impact of their decisions:

* Manage multimillion-dollar glazing projects for Florida Glass. Manage allproject managers as well as oversee all of production.

* Work with the Analytics and Product Marketing teams to define the right targetsegments based on the capacity and performance of the Telesales group.

* Communicate with regional staff about comparative shopping analyses, fast andslow selling classifications and styles, planning and adjusting stock levels,and customer requests.

* As a member of the Technology Outside Sales team, the regional sales managerfor the Northeastern region executes the company sales strategy throughout anidentified geographical region.

* Works with minimal supervision and is responsible to make an established rangeof decisions, escalating to manager when...