Writing Great Job Descriptions

The job description is a valuable tool in the recruiting process. A well-written job description gives an overview of the duties and responsibilities of the position and highlights the required skills and experience that are needed for this role. It provides specific guidelines for your recruiters so they can select candidates that have the exact skills you need. It also provides an outline for evaluating candidates as you go through the interview process thereby helping you select and hire candidates that have the all the skills, experience and qualities it takes to succeed in the position.

Let’s take a closer look at each section of the Job Description:

Job Title – A specific, descriptive job title is more helpful than a generic or internal title. “Senior Windows 2000 Design Engineer” is more useful than “Network Engineer III”.

Job Description – Give a general overview of the main duties and responsibilities of the position in simple, straightforward language. Include information about the specific technologies and tools that the employee would use in this role. Include information about the size of the environment.

Job Requirements – This is the most important section of the job description for recruiting purposes. Decide what experience and specific skills are required for this role. Distinguish between the skills that are absolutely required and those that would be great, but you could live without. It may be helpful to look at the experience of employees currently in similar roles or think ahead to what you would want to see on resumes for this position. Try to answer the following questions:

§ What specific technologies are needed regarding hardware, software applications, operating systems (desktop and/or network), platforms, tools, etc.? Be as specific as possible about versions needed.

§ How many years of experience are needed for the various skills and what level of experience is needed? For example, rather than saying Win 2000 experience is needed, indicate if you need desktop and /or server experience and also indicate if you need a network administrator or someone to design and manage a Win 2000 migration?

§ Are undergraduate or advanced degrees needed?

§ Do you require technical certifications?

§ Do you require specific industry experience?

§ Is it important that candidates have experience working in a specific size of environment?

§ How important are communication skills? Will they only be interacting with other techies or will they have direct contact with users, managers, clients, etc.?

§ Do they need management skills? How many years? How many direct reports?

§ Do they need Project Management experience? What types of projects?

§ Would someone with primarily consulting experience be a good fit for this role or would you prefer someone with primarily corporate experience?

§ Do you require any special skills or personality traits for this position?

Compensation/Hours/Other –

§ What is the salary range? Is the position exempt or non-exempt? Are there any benefits specific to this position?

§ What are the regular hours of the job? What are the expectations in terms of overtime, nights, weekends, on call, etc.?

§ If the position is for contract or consulting position, how long do you expect assignment to last?

§ Will travel be required for this position? Describe the percentage of time spent traveling, duration of trips, location etc.

The job description doesn’t need to be lengthy to be an effective recruiting tool. Taking the time to put together a thorough, detailed job description before you begin your search can save you countless hours of weeding through resumes of unqualified candidates down the road.