Thought Leadership Articles
Kenexa HR Thought Leadership™ articles are experience-driven pieces that discuss best practices in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space. These articles are written by skilled HR practitioners or technologists who initiate or provide new thinking on a specific component of HR. Kenexa HR Thought Leadership articles discuss strategies on new or existing HR topics and educate readers about future possibilities and considerations on those topics. The overall purpose of these thought leadership articles is to engage readers through original, innovative ideas that are supported by the knowledge and experience of the author.
Best Practices for Job Description Writing
Critical to the function of an organization is, of course, its people. Job descriptions give hiring managers a powerful tool to help ensure that individuals with the right background and skill set are matched to the appropriate role within the organizational hierarchy and aligned to the needs and goals of the organization. They provide compensation professionals the necessary framework for benchmarking the organization’s jobs against the external market, and they also create a baseline set of expectations that can guide performance reviews. In addition, they give prospective candidates a role description that enables them to self-identify their interest and the ability to perform the responsibilities expected.
Writing an effective job description requires good source material. The first step in the writing process is to gather all existing documentation on each job. You can look within your own company for some of this as existing job descriptions and job analysis information may be readily available to you. External sources, such as descriptions used in HR-reported salary surveys, job postings in newspapers, job websites and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles, should all be examined, though none of these sources alone is a sufficient model for a complete job description. It is important to note that job descriptions should reflect what the job is today, not the future state.