I Hate Everything About Job Descriptions...

I hate Job Descriptions!  I hate writing them.  I hate that they’re obsolete two seconds after they’re written.  I hate everything about them…well almost everything.

I know that as an HR professional, it’s my job to tell you that Job Descriptions are necessary documents and that you must create them in order to hire the right people.  But what I’ve failed to tell you is that if done right, your Job Description can be the single most utilized item that you ever spend time sweating over.

I have a wonderful client who hates job descriptions almost more than I do.  When we first started working together, she was having a horrible time with turn-over. 

Now, the last thing she wanted to hear…and the last thing I wanted to say was… “If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you know you found them? Because right now, it doesn’t seem like you do. You need to create accurate job descriptions.”

Well after saying a few bad words she finally agreed. Then, I muttered a few of my own bad words, because I was on the journey with her.

She would go sit at the pub after work, write out what she thought the job description should be, and then I’d pull it apart as we talked about it in the morning. Frankly, it was like going to get a root canal over and over again.

Then came the moment of truth…she used it as her roadmap to find and hire an employee.

Then, she used it to train that new employee.

Then, she used it to evaluate the new employee’s performance. 

And then, when the employee’s performance started to wobble, she used it as part of her counseling process and got the employee back on track, rather than booting them out the door. 

That was three years ago.

Since that time, she’s created job descriptions, training checklists, performance evaluations, and just about anything else she could think of to repurpose that job description…and she did it for all of the jobs in her business. Her turn over has dropped so much that she’s been able to open a second location with great long-term employees, and she is now looking to open the third. (Way to go MaryBeth!)

Moral of this story is that we may never, ever love job descriptions - all the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to create an accurate one - but at the end of day, if it’s done right, it could just save you tons of pain in long run…just like that root canal.

If you’d like a sample template of the job description that changed my client’s life send an email to Elizabeth@pssworks.com and we’ll get a copy out to you!