Job descriptions are crucial for hiring qualified employees. By having accurate and up to date job descriptions companies can articulate exactly what they require and expect out of their employees when they apply for a job. In my experience these need to be accurate. This also helps with turnover. One time when I was in high school, I applied for a job at an Ice Rink. The job description was very vague and just stated “general labor” after a lot of consideration I was going to resend my application and not pursue working for a place where I had no idea what I would be doing. General labor could mean anything, and I wasn’t trying to take on a job where all I would be doing is mopping floors. They hadn’t had really anyone apply, so against my gut I went in for the interview hoping I could find a little more about the job. The lady that interviewed me couldn’t give me a set description of the work I would be doing so I was about to turn down the job. However during the last 5 minutes of the interview the owner of the Rink came in and told me what they needed. It turned out they needed help in the pro shop sharpening skates and more importantly they needed a new Zamboni Driver. This was all I needed to hear. I was stoked. I got trained and now was a Zamboni driver. I ended up absolutely loving this job and remains as one of my favorite jobs I have ever held. The thing about this is because of their poor job description, I was about to turn down the offer and I would have never been able to drive a Zamboni! As a company they would have also lost out on a individual who is excited to work. Its my belief that if they had a better description of what they needed, they would have had all kinds of applications. Because who wouldn’t want to drive a Zamboni? Jill Bidwell states in Kathryn Tylers article, “I do have a passion for them,” she admits. “I preach to all our managers and HR staff that the job description is the mother of all HR processes. Everything from recruitment and training to performance evaluations and compensation all stems from that document.” The whole reason people apply for jobs is to take employment doing a specific kind of work. Along with this, if there is no standard to what work an employee will be doing, there will be no way to determine productivity or set performance goals. Tying this in to the online lecture its easy to determine that this is all apart of Job Analysis. Job analysis is the qualifications, type of work needed, and the conditions with witch the work is preformed. These are a crucial part of Human Resource Management and without it hiring and maintaining employees would be an absolute nightmare.

References:

Swift, M. (2022, October). Job Analysis and Job Design. [PowerPoint slides]. 

Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx