Managing Job Descriptions and Job Postings

If your organization is like most, you have an abundance of job descriptions in lots of places used by various people for different purposes.

There are job descriptions of duties and responsibilities for compensation strategy, performance assessment, and succession planning, job descriptions of physical requirements for workers' compensation, and job descriptions used for job postings to attract new people. While there may be some overlap, the information is often not consistent in the terminology used or what aspects of the job are included.

Then there's the problem of who can find and access job descriptions because they’re stored in different places, which aren't always shared and accessible to the people who should be using them.

And that's before you try to keep all that information up to date, which rarely happens because it's so time consuming and chaotic.

Why Managing Job Descriptions Matters

Having consistent, comprehensive, and up to date job descriptions makes many things easier and offers important information for:

• Recruiting: easy to find job descriptions for job posts can reduce time to fill, reduce bias in the wording of job ads, increase the diversity of applicants, and target the right candidates, both internally and externally.
• Compensation Strategy: using the same words to describe the same work, skills, and requirements makes it easy to compare jobs and responsibilities and to set the total compensation package and stay competitive in the market.
• Compliance: having consistent job descriptions allows pay equity analysis so you know where there are issues and can address them to avoid gender pay gaps or other discrimination claims related to pay. Having all the information in one place also allows easy categorization for workers' compensation and state and federal EEO reporting.
• Data Maintenance and Governance: Having job description information in one place allows you to keep descriptions up to date and change things more easily. It also allows you to have control over who can access or change information, so things stay consistent.

Best Practices for Managing Job Descriptions and Postings

Deciding to manage your job descriptions and postings can feel overwhelming. But there are great tools to help you get it right. Once you've done the initial work, it can save you time and resources going forward.

Here are some of the best ways to get a handle on job descriptions and stay on top of changes.

1. Get the language right. Look at how knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA's) are described in your current job descriptions. Then decide whether you need to make any adjustments. Are the words dated or do they no longer apply? Are there more accurate descriptions that make sense? Once you decide on how to describe something, use that language consistently.
2. Get the complete information. Job descriptions should include the essential job responsibilities, tasks, and duties as well as physical requirements and qualifications. Assess each of the parts of the job description to make sure they are accurate, complete, and match the language you are using. For job postings, consider whether to include information on employee benefits and compensation.
3. Make sure KSA's apply to the specific job. It's easy to copy and paste from older job descriptions. But you don't want to include requirements that will exclude people who would be great for the role. And you want to make sure that every part of the job description accurately reflects the work and position in the organization.
4. Use Templates. Once you have decided on the right language and requirements, create or find a template that can be used for all job descriptions so that you make sure you get all the information you need and want for each job.
5. Create a Job Description Library. Decide where job descriptions will live on your organization's system or the cloud so that everyone who needs to use it can easily access the information and everything lives in one place. Consider how you want your job description library organized and tagged so it's easy to find and use the job descriptions and create new ones.
6. Use Job Description Management Software. There are software tools that can help you do some or all of these best practices. Salary.com's JobArchitect can help you easily design, build, and standardize your job descriptions. There is an extensive library of templates and tools to help you get started and keep things up to date. It integrates with Salary.com's CompAnalyst to price jobs and stay on top of the market and compliance issues.

   Managing your job descriptions is worth the effort because it will save you time, money, resources, and risk in the long run. If you would like some help getting started, let us know and we can set up a free consultation with one of our experts.