Dear Consultant,

I work in the Operations Department of a company that doesn’t usually have a lot of turn-over.  This week a long time technical staff member left the company and I need to write a job description to back-fill for her position.  I know what she did, but not the technical details.  How should I go about writing a good job description to bring in the right candidate?

Writing a job description can be a very involved process depending on how thorough you would like to be.  There are many ways to go about this, but the following suggestion is based on industry best practices and partly on the work done by Catano, Weisner and Hackett (2013).  The following steps can be used or adapted to your situation to help you write a job description.

Step 1:

Determine the job tasks and competencies Don’t focus immediately on the education and experience related requirements for the position.  A good starting point is to do some research about what tasks and competencies are associated with the position.  That is, what do people in the job do and how should they behave in situations that they are likely to encounter when working in the position? These are some of the pieces of information that are necessary to be able to write a job description:

1. A list of tasks that an employee will do in this position.
2. A list of the competencies, or the types of behaviours that you’d like to see the person working in this position exhibit.  These could be things like “build rapport quickly”, “defuse tension in a high conflict situation”, “exhibits leadership in team situations”, etc.

If you don’t already know much about the job, then there are many ways to gather this information, but the most common ways are to work with the subject matter experts (SME) who either currently occupy the position or are in the same department/team.  Some of these methods include:

1. Interviews with the SMEs.  Schedule some time with someone who knows the role that you’re trying fill, perhaps the hiring manager.  Ideally speak with someone who is in a similar role to the one you’re hiring for.
2. You can learn about the tasks and the competencies necessary for the job by creating a questionnaire and sending it out to multiple people on the team.  This is less resource intensive for all parties and allows you to aggregate opinions from multiple people in a relatively short time period.
3. Observation of other people who are doing the job currently.  This is time consuming, but it can be useful in situations when the SMEs don’t have the time or inclination to help.  It can also help to draw out some of the tacit, or unspoken, aspects of the job.

Step 2:

Determine what Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other Attributes (KSAO) are necessary Once you have collected all of the tasks and competencies that are associated with the job, list the KSAOs necessary to successfully do each task and fulfill all of the competencies.  As an example, if a job task is to “maintain a close relationship with a broad client base”, then the skills necessary to accomplish this could be “knowledge of customer relationship management software” and “good communication skills.”  By actually listing each KSAO, and linking it to a job task or competency, you have a strong and transparent justification for the items listed in your job description.  This is helpful in cases where hiring decisions are disputed internally or in human rights litigation.

Step 3:

Determine the proficiency level of each KSAO How proficient will an applicant need to be in each KSAO for them to be able to successfully do each job task or competency?  You can keep this as simple as “fair”, “good” or “excellent”, or provide a scale of one to ten, or some other way of ranking proficiency.  Once you understand the proficiency necessary for each KSAO you can start to talk with SMEs about what actual requirements such as degrees, professional designations or years of experience in particular roles, etc.

Step 4:

Understand what requirements are “must-haves” and what are “would-be-nice” The perfect candidate isn’t always going to present themselves.  It is important to recognize that and be clear in your mind about which requirements are necessary and which ones are not entirely necessary.  Being explicit about which requirements are absolute “must-haves” in the job description helps potential applicants to self-screen, so that they won’t bother applying if they don’t have the “must-have” requirements.  This saves everyone a lot of time and effort.

Step 5:

Determine how you would like to “sell” the position to outstanding candidates Realize that you’re trying to sell a “product” to a “customer”, that is you’re trying to convince qualified applicants to apply to your job rather than the jobs posted by your competitor.  Get into the head of candidates who would excel in the position that you’re hiring for, and list out a few points that you can include in your job description to attract those outstanding candidates.  These  points could include things like the image your organization, non-monetary compensation (benefits), office location, job title, flexible hours, opportunities for growth, organizational culture, etc.

Step 6:

Write the description Keep it reasonably short, but still descriptive.  The more specificity you provide, the more self-selecting will occur with unsuitable candidates.  Start with information about the organization, then provide information about the team, then finally the position itself.  Explicitly list the “must-have” requirements for the position as well as the “desired” or “would-be-nice” requirements.  It is also helpful to describe the immediacy of when the position needs to be filled.  If there is flexibility in starting, that may encourage good candidates who are currently employed and need some time to end their current obligations.  Remember that frequently the best candidates are already in a job!

I hope this helps you write your job description.