If there’s one task that HR Professionals and Hiring Manages alike hate, it’s writing job descriptions.
If you are an HR Professional, getting the input you need from the Hiring Manager to craft a solid job description, representing the full scope of work for the particular job, often gets clouded by whatever problem is top of mind for the Hiring Manager.
And if you are the Hiring Manager, it can often feel like crafting an effective job description gets dumped on your lap with minimal support from HR or Corporate Services.
So regardless of which side of the table you sit on, most people write job descriptions the same way, and it just plain sucks.
By the end of this post, you will learn:
- How to save time writing job descriptions
- How Big Data can help you write up-to-date job descriptions
- The importance of having a standardized structure for your job descriptions
Over the past few years here at HRSG, we’ve worked with a lot of organizations to help get their job descriptions in order. Time and time again, we’ve run into the same problems and here’s our top reasons why writing job descriptions suck.
Top Reasons Why Writing Job Descriptions Suck
1. Writing good job descriptions is a tedious task
You’re already busy enough as it is.
Yet you still need to create that stellar job description to attract the right candidate. This involves describing the role and responsibilities of the job, and the qualifications that you are looking for.
Not only can this be both tedious and time-consuming, it often results in inconsistent language and style. But what if there was another way?
>> The solution: HRSG has taken the ‘job’ out of job descriptions with our first release of over 500 AI-generated and expert reviewed job descriptions. Combined with our software, our clients now have the consistently formatted, styled, and defined job descriptions they deserve.
And we’ve done the heavy lifting by leveraging our AI to do the research for you. Now, hiring managers can create a job description for a role in under 30 minutes that will ensure they hire the best person for the job.
2. Once you write them, they’re out of date
Because job descriptions are typically drafted to support hiring, they usually aren’t maintained to reflect the changing nature of jobs. As technology and the world we work in is evolving at such a rapid pace, job requirements are changing equally as fast.
This means every time you want to hire for the same position, you need to go back and do your research into what the leading trends are for that job, and capture the latest skill sets in your requirements. But what if you could leverage Big Data to do this for you?
>> The solution: Our AI-driven solution reaches out and scrapes over 30 million data points from job sites like Indeed, Monster and Workopolis. We analyze that information to produce job descriptions based on the latest labor market trends and the skills and qualifications that employers are looking to hire for.
Our job descriptions and competency mappings are refreshed on a regular basis to make sure that our clients have access to the latest data in order to build the workforce of tomorrow, today.
3. They are stored in Word docs on a shared drive that no one looks at…ever
Can’t find that old job description you made years ago? You’re not alone.
Most companies we talk to don’t have systems to properly manage their job descriptions, resulting in saving them in Microsoft Word docs buried somewhere in their file directories.
This also means that an organization’s job descriptions typically won’t have a standardized structure, nor do they allow for any strategic applications for those job descriptions.
>> The solution: We are bringing job descriptions to life with job description software that allows you to standardize, manage and maintain them with easy to use tools. Software tools like ours enable you to take your job descriptions and apply them beyond your hiring needs.
These job descriptions now become living records to communicate job expectations to employees, they become the basis for objective employee assessment, and can be used by employees to map their career path and understand how their skills and competencies match against those of the target jobs along that path.
Want to learn how your job description process compares to other HR professionals? Check out our 2019 State of Job Descriptions report:
Download the 2019 State of Job Descriptions report using the form below.
Post last updated: July 2, 2019.
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