Hiring is one of the most important parts of managing a business. It’s more efficient to delegate crucial tasks and roles to your employees rather than doing it yourself, and finding the right people who can do these things better than you can help your company get off the ground faster.
But finding the right employee can be tricky. You have to go through hundreds of applications, review different documents, and conduct a lot of interviews. And of course, let’s not forget the skill tests and background checks to narrow them all down.
Do it wrong, and you end up attracting the wrong people. To avoid this, you’ll need to get things right from the very beginning, and it all starts with writing the job description.
The Dangers of Poorly-Written Job Descriptions
Having a well-written job description is the first step in hiring the best employees. When it’s clear and straightforward, it’s more likely to attract the right candidates.
Conversely, poorly written job descriptions can give root to several problems:
Hinders Employee Evaluation
Job descriptions aren’t just useful for hiring new employees. Managers can also base their feedback on them and use them as a benchmark for evaluating if their team members are performing as they should.
Without a clear job description, new hires will feel lost as to what’s expected from them. Hence, the resulting lack of standard metrics or guidelines will make it tricky for managers to evaluate their performance fairly.
This could lead to a very arbitrary assessment based on the evaluating officer’s personal opinion of the employee, which is neither accurate nor just. Worse, it could result in a wrongful termination or even a lawsuit rooted in such.
Makes for Poor Boundaries
A well-written job description doesn’t have to be perfect at all. It just needs to be clear, particularly about the duties and deliverables expected of anyone occupying the role.
For example, most of the job descriptions often include the phrase “other duties assigned.” Now, this means that the employee might have to carry out tasks that aren’t necessarily part of the original job description. Every now and then, that’s okay.
It becomes problematic when the staff finds themselves having to do a completely different task almost every day. For how can you master a job that changes all the time?
Discourages Growth and Career Development
Nobody likes to feel stagnant. Employees, especially the skilled and talented ones, benefit from challenges that can help them grow.
So, where do job descriptions come in? With a well-written job description in place, your employees are better-equipped to know what skills they should possess and develop in order to succeed.
In other words, they have a benchmark for furthering their careers. And in the event that they want to aspire for leadership positions, the clear job descriptions for upper management roles will also guide them on what skills they need to improve on to get them.
What A Well-Written Job Description Should Contain
So, what does a well-written job description look like?
Ideally, it should answer the following questions:
- What is the job title?
- What is the purpose of the job?
- What daily tasks and job responsibilities does it require?
- Who is qualified to apply?
- Is it a part-time or a full-time role?
- Who is your ideal candidate?
- What is the work environment like?
- How much is the salary? What other benefits will be provided? (And no, the words “competitive salary” don’t count.)
- Is it an office-based or a remote work position?
Bear in mind that a well-written job description is NOT a wish list (i.e., a laundry list of tasks that take an entire team to accomplish, but are listed for just one role). But that’s for another article.
All things considered, a well-written job description should make it easier for you and your recruiter to filter applicants and hire the right candidates.
Have trouble putting things into writing? Don’t know where to start when it comes to enumerating job responsibilities? No problem.
Remote Staff has been matching Aussie SMEs and entrepreneurs like you with top Filipino remote talent for the past 15 years and counting. If you’re looking for a writer or a recruiter (or both), we’ve got you covered.
Call us today or schedule a call back and let’s get started.
Serena has been working remotely and writing content for the better part of the last decade. To date, she's written for Pepper.ph and Mabuhay Magazine, among others, and has churned out more than a thousand articles on everything from The Basics of Stock Market Investing to How to Make Milk Tea-Flavored Taho at home. Hermits, aspiring hermits, and non-hermits with interesting project propositions may email her at serena.estrella10@gmail.com.
