Employers – Ensuring your job vacancy requirements are accurate for a recruitment campaign – A guide on measures to achieve this including, surveying employees currently doing similar roles, assessing competition for equivalent positions and interviewing peers to understand their view of the function.
At times, role profiles (also known as job descriptions) become out of touch, created at the point of first being required for a recruitment campaign, they sit quietly in a drive/folder until a leaver occurs and then they are whisked back into action when someone needs to be recruited for in that same role/position.
Question is, does that same role profile still reflect the job? How long did the last job holder hold the position? What has changed in that time? Do you know? Who else knows? How do you find out? This article discusses these issues.
Out of Date Job Adverts
If businesses and their HR departments are savvy then perhaps these documents are strategically reviewed and made sure that they remain in line with business changes/updates and developments to industry or updates to technology advancements. This is not always the case though, so what typical things can you do to counter this issue?
Discuss the role with someone else carrying out the same function, compare the document you have, does it reflect the same key criteria?.
Ask employees carrying out the same functions to create a job profile for themselves, see what tasks and topics are captured, again compare this to your document. Talk to business units that interface with the role holder, what do they say, hear and feel as a result of this person carrying out that function, is it a match for your description?
Job Surveys
Perhaps you can conduct a job market survey – collate adverts/job descriptions for similar roles from competing businesses or aligned business units. By doing this you are able to commonly identify the skills and qualities most likely required for the role.
If your leaver is on good terms, ask them to review the role profile they once were attracted to. What would they change about the original document compared to the present? You might also consider why the leaver is exiting, it may be that the role has negatively changed since the original purpose was mapped, it could give you some clues to what it should depict.
Map the role processes, do they align to the key tasks and measures originally identified? Much can change in time and processes can look quite different from how they were first captured once reviewed at a later date. Advancements in technologies and faster services often mean a basic process can be labelled the same, yet be quite different in volume handling, expectations for service levels or output options when reviewed.
Reconsider the changes to the marketplace, has that demand changed too, again the role might be the same title but does the customer or user expect something different? What environmental changes have taken place too, has the 9-5 office now gone remote/flexible working, how might this impact the expectations of the role.
These are but a few of the possible options, as part of the service at Brellis we can help employers construct and review job descriptions helping employers ensure their job descriptions remain relevant and reflective of reality.
Keep Job Adverts Fresh
The more you align your current role to your role profile or job description the more productive your new employee should be, dust off the old profile and you are likely to attract the wrong skills or capture the wrong attention. Perhaps recruit someone who experiences a reality on the job that is different from the image you presented. As an employer you will most likely find yourself re-recruiting again soon enough as this becomes a realisation to your new employee, meaning lost time, productivity and expense to rehire.
At Brellis, we want to work with employers to make their recruiting matters easier, please speak to us today if you feel you could do with some support before embarking on your next recruitment campaign.
that are most important to your organisation and better target your recruitment efforts. In this guide, we will outline the steps you need to take to achieve this. We will also provide insights into how you can interview employees who currently hold similar roles to the one you are looking for, in order to get a better idea of their skills and experience.
Successful Hiring
Finding the right employees for your business is essential for success. But, it can be difficult to determine what jobs should be offered and what hiring criteria should be used. In this blog post, we will provide a guide on how to identify your job need/vacancy requirements so that you can successfully fill your vacancy.
Using a job market survey is a great way to get a better understanding of the skills, qualities and experience that are needed for your organisation. While conducting this survey, it is important to keep in mind the job needs for your business. This will help you identify and target candidates who have similar skill sets or experience as those that you currently need. To help you with this, you can use the following sample questions for current employees to answer: What areas have you had exposure to during your time at this company? What skills do you think are necessary for someone to effectively perform in a similar position? What would you like to see in somebody who would be in a similar position at our company?