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Each month Recruitmentresources.com will publish some helpful recruiting tips for the HR professional. This month's focus is on Job Descriptions.

Recognizing the growing importance of job descriptions, the Recruitmentresources.com team have set about formulating an easy to follow plan of attack to breach the defences of the toughest recruitment campaign.

The key to writing job descriptions...
what to put in job descriptions?

Job descriptions form a cornerstone of the recruitment process, a clear and concise description of the vacant or soon to be vacant position at the outset, from duties and responsibilities, skills, to information about the working environment, will paint a clear picture of the opening in your mind and form a foundation upon which a recruitment campaign can be built.

Despite their importance, job descriptions are all too often neglected by employers anxious to either fill a recently vacated position or create a new opening.

For those who fall into the trap of failing to create a detailed job description prior to embarking on a recruitment campaign the long term prognosis is not good. Either you will discover to your cost that you have recruited an unsuitable candidate or you will realize that there was no real need to add to the ever growing payroll in the first place, as duties of the departing member of staff could have been undertaken by existing staff members.

So what's the prescription for success?

Well we would suggest that at the earliest stage you take time to accurately describe the role you envisage will be played by the new employee. This will help you to decide how to divide the work between you and your employee as well as evaluating whether you need a full-timer or a part-timer. In addition the job description can be used to present a clear picture of the job to applicants, and can play a part in evaluating whether an employee has met the expectations you have set.

What to Put in Job Descriptions?

There are as many different formats for job descriptions as there are jobs, but there are some basic pieces of information that most job descriptions have. Include them in yours, if you feel they are appropriate.

STAGE 1: The date the job description was written
The job description should always be up to date. Rewrite it to reflect changes as often as needed. Good times to check the descriptions are when hiring someone new for the job or at an existing employee's performance appraisal or salary increase time.

STAGE 2: Job status. Salaried or hourly? Full-time or part-time?

Temporary or permanent? Position title

Make sure your position titles reasonably and accurately reflect the actual title of the job. A job title shouldn't be inflated or pretentious if the job doesn't warrant it. For example, don't call a maintenance worker a "custodial consultant!"

STAGE 3: Job summary
This section should contain a brief summary of the information found in more detail elsewhere in the description. A summary shouldn't be more than a few sentences long and should explain the main purposes and functions of the job.

STAGE 4: Detailed duties and responsibilities
This is a more detailed description of the duties involved and separates the essential functions of the job from the incidental job functions.

STAGE 5: Skills required to perform the job
This can include compensatory factors such as education, experience, and abilities.

STAGE 6: Importance of job duties and tasks
Ranking the duties from most important to least important is a good way to convey this information since the task that consumes the most time is not necessarily the most important task. You can rank on a scale of one to 10, for example. When and how often the tasks are performed. You might want to mention that certain tasks are only done once a month, quarter, year etc.

STAGE 7: Job environment
Job environments can impact significantly on workers' motivation and job satisfaction. For example, it's a good idea to include in job a description factors like the fact that the work is done off-premises, or mention the existence of hazards, noises, physical proximity of other employees, and opportunities to communicate with other employees. Including these factors in the job description helps job applicants better understand the requirements of the job and helps you select the best candidate for the position.

HOT TIP:
If you will be allowing your employees to see written job descriptions, make sure that the last item in the list of job duties is something like "and any other task assigned by the supervisor." This gives you the freedom to change duties over time, and prevents employees from complaining "that task is not in my job description."