It may surprise you to learn that when it comes to recruiting new staff, candidate quality depends on having effective job descriptions – even if you are filling an existing role.
That’s right. Great candidates come from effective job descriptions and it all begins with thinking about the skills and attributes of your ideal candidate.
How do you prepare an effective job description?
To prepare an effective job description, you need to begin with the key tasks you want the successful candidate to perform that will benefit your business. For example, attention to detail and accuracy might be essential skills if you are looking for a data entry clerk or bookkeeper. Other key requirements might be data analysis skills and good communication skills for explaining what the data reveals.
At this point, you should also consider what, if any, prior experience you would like the successful candidate to have.
Next, you need to identify how you will know if a successful candidate is achieving the delivery standards you are looking for. In other words, the outputs. If we use the above example, you might expect a data entry clerk to achieve a 93% accuracy average.
Finally, you need to consider your workplace culture and the ability for the new candidate to fit in with your team. These are things like their attitude, their approach to work, their demeanour when speaking with clients.
At the end of this process, an effective job description should include 3-4 headings with several bullet points under each heading. It doesn’t need to be an enormous document but each job description must capture the key characteristics and experience your business requires.
Once completed, the job ad should be written according to the specified criteria of your ideal candidate.
Does preparing an effective job description sound hard to do?
Don’t worry. We can take the pain away using our Job Analysis Tool and by partnering with you to define your ideal candidate profile before you begin the recruitment process. It’s a considered and systemised approach to recruitment that has greatly benefitted our clients by taking away a lot of the risk associated with recruitment.
There’s another bonus to using this process. It allows you to identify whether an existing staff member may be suitable for the role. This provides career paths, opportunities and variety which helps retain your best people.
For more information on our Job Analysis Tool or for assistance in preparing an effective job description for your vacancy, get in touch with the team from End2end Business Solutions.