What is the relationship between a job specification and selection
Learn how to prepare a job description and choose selection criteria in order to improve the hiring process and hire the right person. Show
Job descriptions and selection criteria help organizations and job applicants understand what is expected from a person in a specific position, and help to determine whether an applicant is a good fit for that position. This section provides a guide for preparing job descriptions and selection criteria that accurately reflect what your organization needs in a position and that will attract the right person to fill it. Why it's important to carefully develop a job description and selection criteria before you advertise a positionThere are a number of reasons why having clear job descriptions and selection criteria are necessary.
Preparing a job descriptionWhile job descriptions and selection criteria are closely linked, it may make sense to work on the job description first, since that will help you decide what at least some of your selection criteria should be. A job description that includes administering medical treatment is unlikely to suggest hiring someone with a background only in heavy construction, for instance. On the other hand, there may be criteria that are important for any position you hire -- sense of humor, respect for the target population, commitment to social change -- which, stated or unstated, may be as important to you as the particular skills the staff person will need. We'll discuss this issue further later in the section. There are really three parts to the task of preparing a job description:
Choosing a job titleIt may sound like a small thing, but, in fact, the title you pick for the position can be very important in several ways. First, it can serve to define the job clearly, both for the staff member and for others who deal with him. The choice of title may also have a lot to do with the way the person in the position is regarded in the community.
A better title -- one that implies more responsibility or authority -- can attract better candidates, even though the pay may be no different from that of a position with a "lesser" title. One of the reasons for this is that a job title can not only boost self-esteem, but it can also be helpful when a person applies for his next job, making it easier to get a more responsible position. A job title, then, serves to define the position and to define the place of its holder, both in the organization and in the community. As a result, its choice demands some serious thought. For the sake of example, let's go through the process of developing a job description for a position that we've decided to call Community Health Educator. Developing a list of specific duties and responsibilitiesThere are really two steps to generating a list of specific duties and responsibilities. The first is to define the basic elements of the position (i.e., what it is you actually want the person to be able to do, or know, or be good at in order to do her job well. The second is to then identify the specific activities -- all the specific activities -- that the job requires. Let's take our hypothetical job, Community Health Educator, and look at the development of a list of duties and responsibilities for it. Basic elements of the position What do you want this person to do and know and be good at? Some of these things are skills related to the job title, which may be learned through education and training or through experience (perhaps in previous positions, perhaps otherwise). Others are skills required by the job which may not be implied in the job title, and some -- personality traits and characteristics -- may not be learned at all. For a Community Health Educator, the specific skills learned from education and training might be:
(Obviously, not all of these would be necessary for every position, and some might need skills not on this list.) The skills acquired by experience that you might want a Community Health Educator to have include:
Finally, there are the non-specific skills, traits, and abilities, some learned and some innate, that are required by the job:
Specific activities required for the position Now it's time to come up with everything the person in this position will be expected to do. Remember that the list should include absolutely everything, whether it relates directly to the job title or not. For our Community Health Educator, the list might look like this:
This is a long list, but remember that these are all the activities you think this person will need to perform in this position. She may not do all of them at any one time. A year may go by without some of them being done, depending on the needs of the community and of the organization, but they're all part of her job, and she may need to practice any or all of them at a given time. Some of these duties -- staff meetings, supervision, answering office phones, perhaps committee service -- are not unique to this position, but are required of everyone in the organization. Others -- outreach, maintaining contacts in the community, distributing health literature, paperwork -- are ongoing, and happen in the daily course of the job. And notice the last one: that's a catch-all, in case anything comes up that no one thought of, or in case the organization somehow changes before job descriptions can be readjusted. Writing the capsule descriptionNow that we have a job title and have come up with a list of activities and responsibilities to go with it, it's time to tackle the capsule description. This will be a two-or -three sentence description of the job and its purpose, as well as any other major responsibilities it entails. The capsule description also includes some of the nitty-gritty information about the position (hours per week, schedule requirements, flexibility or lack thereof, salary or hourly wage, benefits, etc.), and specifies who supervises it. The capsule description thus gives an overview of the position and makes clear where it falls in the organization and what its logistics are. Here's a try at a capsule description of our Community Health Educator position. The Community Health Educator acts as the bridge between the organization and the community on issues relating to public and individual health. He or she, in addition to presenting health issues and education to the public in a variety of ways, counsels and makes referrals in matters of individual health care, and also recruits and trains members of the community to act as resources for health information. The Community Health Educator reports to the Program Director. This is a full-time position (40 hours per week), and includes some evening and weekend hours. Scheduling is flexible within limits. Competitive salary and benefit package.
The job description is complete, but there are still some important questions left to ask:
If you can comfortably answer "yes" to all of these questions, you've done a great job, and you can use your job description with confidence, both for recruiting applicants and for defining the position once you've hired someone. If some of your answers are "no" or "I'm not sure," then go back and deal with those issues right now, before you start the hiring process. The amount of time you spend now will only be a tiny fraction of the time those "no's" will cost you later, and won't even be in the same universe when it comes to the amount of hassle you'll save. Work with it until you know it's right -- you won't be sorry. Developing selection criteriaSelection criteria for a position will generally fall under four headings: education and other formal credentials; job-specific skills and knowledge; non-job-specific skills and knowledge; and personal attributes and traits. And once you have a job description to work from, it should be a piece of cake to develop selection criteria, right? Well...yes and no. First of all, selection criteria aren't exactly the same as qualifications. Qualifications are the credentials and experience that are stated as preferred or required for whomever you hire for the position. Generally, they'll go into your advertising, so that potential applicants will know whether they're eligible for the job or not, and they're the standard you'll use in screening applications. To some extent, especially if you have public funding, you're legally bound to them, and you could be challenged, or even sued for discrimination if you hire someone who doesn't have them over someone who does. (A lot of this depends on circumstance, and you're reasonably safe if you're not discriminating and can defend your choice. A lawsuit, however, even one you win, costs an organization time and money, both of which might be in short supply.) But selection criteria might not be limited to qualifications. Your organization might want a particular kind of person as a staff member -- someone who's warm and engaging, for instance, or who will treat participants and everyone else with respect, or who just seems astute in certain ways. Or you might prefer someone who comes out of a particular background, or whose politics mesh with those of the organization and its staff members, or whose personal style fits in with those of the rest of the staff. These criteria aren't even always conscious...but they should be. It's important to analyze and understand what your unspoken criteria are as well as your spoken ones, so that you can be clear about why you're hiring who you're hiring, rather than talking about "hunches" or "feelings" when you're arguing for your choice. In developing qualifications, there are two ways to go: you can be as specific as possible, because you feel you know exactly what a person will need to do the job well; or you can be as general as possible, hoping to attract someone who may not look exactly right on paper, but who will in fact be exactly right once they get into the position. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, and there's also a way to hedge your bets. Qualifications can be either "required" or "preferred." If they're required, then no one without them will apply, and you're legally bound to them if you're operating under those kinds of restrictions (public education, many government agencies, and other publicly funded organizations are usually subject to such regulations). If they're preferred, then you have a lot of discretion about whether someone actually needs them or not. You can require some qualifications and prefer others. If you use "preferred" for at least some qualifications, you may have to read through more applications, but you may also find a gem where you least expect it. Education and other formal credentialsHow important are educational and other formal credentials to performing the duties in this job description or to the standing of the position? Do you simply require all your staff to have college or advanced degrees? For some positions, these kinds of questions have obvious answers: if you're looking for a doctor or a nurse or a lawyer, she'll need not only specific degrees but other certifications -- such as passing the Bar Exam -- in order to legally do the job at all. A psychologist or social worker needs certain academic and other credentials in order to be reimbursed for his work by insurance companies. But how about a teacher in a community-run school or an adult education program? Or a job counselor in an employment training agency? What does the person actually need, and are you possibly depriving your organization of someone really wonderful by requiring certain degrees? (Here's where "preferred" can be really useful.) On the other hand, how will this person be viewed in the community? Who will she have to deal with as a colleague, as an advisor or consultant, or as a supervisor? Is it important for her credibility that she have academic credentials that match or exceed those of others in the community or in her field? If so, then those credentials must be required. Our Community Health Educator, for instance, probably needs a degree in Education, Counseling, Public Health, Social Work, or something similar. Why does she need it? She's being asked to testify before legislative committees, to network with colleagues in the community, to make community and other presentations. She may not need the degree in order to do these things well, but she definitely needs it for credibility in these and other situations. Hiring someone without a degree in an appropriate area would be doing that person a disservice in this case, because it would put her at an immediate disadvantage in a number of situations. Job-specific skills and knowledgeThese are the skills and knowledge directly related to the performance of the job you're hiring for. A doctor needs to know about various diseases and medical conditions, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, etc., and to be able to stitch up a wound, take blood pressure accurately, and give an injection in order to treat patients; a mason has to know the proportions of sand, water, and lime in different mixtures of mortar used for different purposes, and to be able to lay a straight and level line of brick or stone in order to build a wall. The fact that they both need to be able to do some basic math is not specific to either of their jobs, even though they couldn't do those jobs without it. If you've done your job, you have a job description that should tell you just what the skills and knowledge are that the person you're hiring will need. Let's look at our Community Health Educator again, and determine what job-specific skills and knowledge she needs. According to the list of duties and responsibilities we developed for the position, the major part of the job revolves around teaching and counseling skills, particularly on health issues. The ideal candidate, then, would probably have some teaching experience, some counseling experience, and a knowledge of health issues, in addition to her degree in a related area, if you've decided upon that. So which of these criteria will you require, which will you prefer, and which will you ignore? Unfortunately, you usually have to deal with the difference between "ideal" and "actual." If you can find a person with all these qualifications, and that person is who you want, that's great. But, in reality, it's more likely that you'll find a person you really like who has only some of these particular credentials. The question you have to resolve here is what's most important to you. If the person you want has no health experience, for instance, are you willing to train her or get her trained in that area in return for the other assets -- perhaps personality traits, perhaps exemplary teaching skills -- she brings to the job? What skills or experience would you absolutely require regardless of how much you liked her in every other way? Teaching expertise? A welcoming personality? Knowledge of the workings of the health care system? It depends on the perspective of your organization, on what you believe can be easily learned in a relatively short time, and on what you regard as most important for this person to accomplish.
Non-job-specific skills and knowledgeJust as both the doctor and the mason need basic math skills, everyone needs skills and knowledge that aren't intrinsically related to his job title, but are required to do the job. Some examples of these include...
The Community Health Educator, for instance, would have to have good communication skills (for public presentations, testimony, networking, and outreach), clerical skills, a high degree of organization (paperwork, record-keeping, juggling a lot of different responsibilities), and computer literacy (maintaining a database). She would also need an understanding of the state and/or local health bureaucracy, familiarity with the target or similar communities, and, according to her job description, fluency in Spanish. Some of these skills may not be included in job descriptions or selection criteria, because it's assumed that anyone of a certain educational or occupational level will have them. It's dangerous to make that kind of assumption, however; if you don't ask for what you want, there's a good chance you won't get it. Be direct about what the position demands, and you're more likely to hire someone who can handle it. Personal attributes and traitsThere are a number of characteristics which are neither learned nor acquired by experience, but are nonetheless important for success in particular positions. There are others you might expect from anyone in your organization, which reflect your organizational character and the things you believe in. Some of these may not fall in the area of qualifications, but many do. These could include...
Our Community Health Educator's qualifications would probably include initiative -- especially if she's expected to start the program from scratch -- and the ability to get along with people. But it's in this category of criteria that those unspoken standards come into play. The applicant's personality may have a lot to do with whether she gets hired or not, even though that's not directly stated. How she dresses may be important -- not messily, but not too well, either, so that she doesn't put off or intimidate the low-income people with whom she's working. And there's that intuitive flash that individuals or hiring committees sometimes get that says "hire this person" or "don't touch this applicant with a ten-foot pole." That's why it's important to be conscious of all your criteria. What criteria you should use -- both publicly and privately -- depends on what's most important to you. If a sense of humor is essential, then say so. If it would be nice, but there's already a long list ahead of it, let it go. What are the real preferences of the organization?
The answers to all of these questions will affect how selection criteria are chosen and applied and how job applicants are rated in an organization's hiring process. Ultimately, the selection criteria should...
In SummaryPreparing a job description and choosing selection criteria -- both spoken and unspoken -- carefully and consciously are important elements in hiring, especially for a new position. The work you do on these preliminary tasks will help you define the position clearly and make the whole hiring process easier. But most important, it will make it far more likely that you'll hire exactly the right person for the job; and that's the whole point of the hiring process. Why is job description and job specification needed in selection?Purpose of Job Description
It clarifies what employees are supposed to do if selected for that particular job opening. It gives recruiting staff a clear view what kind of candidate is required by a particular department or division to perform a specific task or job. It also clarifies who will report to whom.
What is the relationship between job description and job analysis?Job description is a document indicating what a job covers, i.e. tasks, responsibilities, duties, powers and authorities, attached to a job. In finer terms, Job Analysis means an in-depth examination and evaluation of a particular Job. Conversely, Job Description is a statement that characterizes of a particular job.
What is the relationship between job analysis and recruitment?A job analysis is an in-depth study of the tasks, responsibilities and skills needed to perform a job role successfully. As such, it should be viewed as the first step in the recruiting process.
What is related to job specification?A job specification is the list of recommended qualities for a person to qualify for and succeed in a position. While the job description includes the title position, responsibilities and summary, the specification identifies the skills, traits, education and experience a candidate might need to qualify for that job.
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