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Three Things to Remember When Writing a Job Description

6 August 2013

Allison read the Allison Partners Employment Ad in the Classifieds Section of today’s C-VILLE Weekly and reflected on the three most important things to keep in mind when you’re writing a job description.

Tags: allison read, human resources, performance management

It’s an exciting time at Allison Partners. Our Office Manager, Elizabeth Doyle-Propst, started in May. We just hired a Senior Consultant who will join the team on 1 September, and we’re in the midst of searching for a Learning Program Manager. Today you’ll find the ad on p.43 of the C-VILLE Weekly.

There are three things we recommend our clients keep in mind when they’re at this stage of the hiring process. First, it’s important to make the ad and description sound like a job somebody might actually want. This may sound obvious, but too often we see job descriptions that jump to the details of the role rather than making it clear that the job matters and would be rewarding for the right person.

What makes the job meaningful? Why does the role matter? How does the role fit into the bigger picture of the organization? In our Learning Program Manager ad above, we like to think both the job title and this statement, “coordinate all aspects of a six-month blended learning course for a global consumer goods company,” begin to meet the requirements of this first step. However, it’s in the detailed job description that you’ll see statements like, “plays a central role in a transformational leadership development program offered to 300+ senior leaders,” and “partnering with client and Allison Partners team members to ensure an exceptional learning experience for each participant.”

It’s also important to make sure the job itself sounds meaningful rather than just advertising what’s great about the organization. People want to work for good organizations, but they need to feel like their specific job within the organization is uniquely meaningful as well. For example, I think our Office Manager gets a great deal of satisfaction from supporting an organizational development consulting firm that helps clients with the messy people stuff. But it’s this sentence in her job description that speaks to the day-to-day significance of her role, “ensure the comfort and productivity of team members and clients.”

Second, organizations need to tell it like it is! It’s essential to be very specific about the person’s responsibilities including the parts of the job that you don’t find all that appealing. For example, Rachel and I are both pretty good planners and have strong attention to detail, but we find the level of detailed planning our Learning Program Manager will need to handle every day to be, well, yucky.

He or she will “manage 12-month planning calendars of multiple concurrent course deliveries, serve as primary point of contact for 300+ participants throughout their six-month blended learning program experience, and coordinate global training logistics for 8-12 week-long classroom learning sessions per year.” (It makes me exhausted to just copy and paste these items from the job description let alone consider being responsible for all of those things.) However, I know that there are lots of people who find those tasks to be rewarding and energizing. I also know that these are the things the job requires and we want to make sure the person knows what we’ll expect. For example, part of how our Office Manager ensures our comfort and productivity is to, “wash office dishes (as needed).” It wouldn’t have been right to hire her and then tell her about a task like that after she started. (And here’s the lovely thing… she takes care of that job with grace and cheerfulness and we are so grateful.)

While you’re telling it like it is, you also need to make disciplined choices about what the person won’t need to do. For example, you won’t find responsibilities like business development and public speaking or skills like strategic agility and delegating in our Learning Program Manager job description. A job description should explain what you reasonably expect rather than becoming a wish list for a magical employee who could do any job in your organization. (If you’re not sure what competencies matter most to you in a role or are struggling with giving an existing employee specific, descriptive, behavior-oriented feedback, check out my blog post on FYI: For Your Improvement. There’s a reason it makes our reading list of our seven all-time favorite books.)

Third, as you’re writing the job description you want to keep your selection process in mind. Make sure the position “sounds” like your organization and provides a way for people to learn about you. Additionally, you want candidates to be able to speak specifically to their skills in the context of the job description and your organization as a whole in their cover letters and during interviews. There need to be enough specifics for them to respond meaningfully and possibly even self-select out of the interview process once they realize the job might not be a good fit. Keep in mind that while you are trying to find the best candidates, you also want to make it easy for them to interview you so that they make a good decision as well. Finally, you might want to do something like include important acronyms without spelling them out as a way to see which candidates know what LMS and ESOL stand for or at least show enough initiative to search for two very common terms in the executive education field.

Establishing clear expectations through detailed job descriptions is an essential part of a successful hiring process and then ongoing development of employees. It sets the foundation for how supervisors should approach the art of being a great boss and is the starting point for all meaningful positive and negative feedback. By the way, if you know of someone who would like to be a Learning Program Manager in Charlottesville, Virginia, please send him or her our way.

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