Job Descriptions Key Terms
Build effective job descriptions around essential key terms
HR professionals know that companies run more smoothly when employees know the main activities they are required to perform and the methods the company expects them to use in order to achieve clearly stated results. One way of communicating this essential message to your staff is to provide them with a job description that identifies their principal duties and relates each duty to a specific enterprise goal. Writing job descriptions that achieve this end requires you to know some essential terms:
Results-oriented job descriptions
When you write results-oriented job descriptions, you use special text formatting and styles to draw attention to specific actions that are expected to produce desired results.
Try: The Jobs Results Management Institute discusses how results-oriented job descriptions can be effective communicators to personnel. These kinds of descriptions focus an employee's attention on specific goals that the company expects an employee filling that position to achieve.
Categories
Categories are the building blocks of job descriptions. You must know the key elements that make up an effective job description.
Try: Check out "How To Write A Job Description" on Business Know How and scroll down to the second paragraph where you'll find a list of the main categories around which job descriptions are created. It also explains the categories that should be eliminated from job descriptions in order to avoid any suggestion of discrimination.
Administrative information
Another nuts and bolts category frequently seen in job descriptions discusses administrative information, the section where HR staffers set forth the company's expectations for the position.
Try: Grand Roads recommends the key elements that will define the administrative information in your job description.
Principal duties
Most HR professionals focus on the principal duties when they describe individual jobs. It is wise to focuse on these main activities an individual is likely to perform.
Try: Stony Brook University not only puts a discussion of principal duties within the context of the whole job description, it also explains the order in which you should list principal duties and how to phrase them in job descriptions.
Job analysis
Perform a job analysis at the point that you realize that principal duties and requirements of certain positions are outdated or are worded so vaguely it's hard to differentiate responsibilities of different positions.
Try: At HR Council, you'll learn about the aim of a job analysis, the kinds of information you should be collecting and suggested procedures for doing so.
Online job descriptions
Online job descriptions refer to job descriptions that contain special information and are written in a certain way that is geared to internet viewers.
Try: Go Freelance puts online job descriptions into perspective by defining their audience. You'll also get practical tips on writing strategies and the optimal information an online job description should include.
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