By Chantel Schirmer

Over the years I have had a variety of jobs where job descriptions were written out clearly while others were vague and sometimes even created upon my leaving to train my replacement. Jobs were there was a clear understanding of the task and roles allowed for clear expectations and performance to be equally attained while vague roles or jobs hired as “an assistant” could mean anything and everything leaving for a burned-out employee and lacking boundaries to a lack of motivation for the employee to know what their job really is. Job performance has been one of many ways that job description allowed for growth and excellence for me as an employee to obtain or was too vague and too frustrating to know what was in my scope of job or ability to define what tasks were my responsibility or another’s creating more confusion and led to not being efficient. Not only is the job description essential in knowing your job and role from an interview to the performance review but as Janet Flewelling shares in HR Magazine that “job descriptions can have so much value if used regularly and appropriately. If you have an up-to-date job description you can use it for recruiting, performance management and compensation (Tyler, 2013).  (Swift, Lecture 2: Job Design)

Back several years ago I will never forget a job I interviewed for and later took. For one, I was asked to apply and thought of for the position, I updated my resume and came in for a professional interview, but I was surprised to find that the CFO, and manager were not only interviewing me but laying out the job analysis of the characteristics of the job, the tasks needed and not afraid to ask me questions of my own expertise and experience for the position being offered (Lecture 1 Job Analysis). In fact, if they saw there was a question of a task, they would discuss it, update the job description, and lay out exactly what was needed. At one point I thought it was unnecessary the amount of depth and what appeared to be “silly: questions were very important to not only hiring me to efficiently be able to do the tasks the company needed but also ended up launching them into being able to redefine and offer me a job and job description best on what fit me and their tasks and roles.

However, the next few months I was offered a job that offered me job rotation of two specific departments of running a brand new “shipping” role while also attending to accounting and then spread to job enrichment as I was able to tackle accounting and accounts manageably that led into empowering me to take on the non-profit sector (Swift, Lecture 2: Job Design). It continued to grow until I needed to leave where I was then asked to take my role and redefine my job into two new positions to hire someone to now handle all shipping and the new systems I was able to create. Thinking back I can still recall how fulfilling and pleasant that job and having a well-defined job description was for my overall joy and the company’s productivity they received.

References:

Photo 1 by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Photo 2 by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Swift, M. (n.d.). W4 Lecture 1 – Job Analysis. HRM. MGMT 453×400

Swift, M. (n.d.). W4 Lecture 2 – Job Design. HRM. MGMT 453×400

Tyler, K. (2013, January 1). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-magazine/job-worth-update-descriptions