Creating a job description may be an overlooked task in much of HR, however I feel that it goes much beyond that. The job description is often the first impression that you make on a potential employee and is supposed to set the tone for what they are to expect working at your company. It should be a collaborative effort between employees, managers and HR to put together this job description in order to accurately define all of the aspects the job covers.
One of the main challenges around job descriptions is that it can be difficult for HR to stay on top them. Making sure that the descriptions are updated as often as they should because there may be more pressing issues that they feel warrants priority is a difficult task to manage. Another challenge is that it can also be hard to understand these changes in job descriptions and knowing when they may need an update requires a line of communication with the employees actively working these jobs.
In my personal job searches, I have been much more likely to apply to companies that posted detailed job descriptions that seemed to be managed well. I have been in multiple positions where I have applied to jobs with descriptions and titles that did not match what was actually asked to where after the interview I had withdrawn my application. Sometimes these differences in position would be something that I would have been interested in however after being misled already in the hiring process, I would no longer wish to work with the company.
References:
Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx
