A good job description helps the company develop a criteria and fit for the organization within a certain discipline. That is, the job description is where the company decides what knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies are needed to successfully perform a certain job.
A job description is a document that is helpful to recruiters, hiring, managers and new hires from the perspective of ensuring that:
1) Recruiters understand the full scope of what the person is required to do.
2) The hiring manager is clear on what is essential to the performance of the position as well as identifying key performance indicators by which the employee will be evaluated.
3) New hires and employees are aware of the full scope of their duties and responsibilities.
In essence, the job description is a great internal document for many reasons. However, your internal job descriptions are not and should not be the job posting. Some will further argue that it isn’t even a basis for your job postings.
Your job posting needs to be attractive and it should be designed to be read in under one minute; especially since, recruiters spend even less time on a candidate resumes. In addition, we should be focused on telling the real story of day-to-day life at ‘Company X’ not boring candidates with a lot of text.
To be successful in attracting the talent you seek, employers will have to think like candidates and less like themselves to be successful in their recruitment efforts. This may even include taking the leap of faith into social media to give your positions greater visibility.
How can you learn more about this?
Join me and David Clark, Senior Manager, Product & Operations for CareerBuilder on Wednesday, June 5th at 12pm EST/11am CDT for our “High Performance Postings” webinar. We will be sharing our best practices and ideas for how you can revolutionize your employment brand through leaner, candidate-targeted job postings.
Click here to register now.
For those of you that love a good hashtag like I do and want to follow on Twitter, please use #HiPerfPost.
I hope to see you there!