Using Job Descriptions

Traditional JDs for employment and recruitment is counterproductive. Hiring skilled people for the job is a traditional recruitment method. However, with market liberalization, need for increased productivity and efficiency, there is the need for company boards to strive to hiring top talents. A traditional job description is a document that does not contribute much in the performance of companies. A Job Description (JD) is a document used to describe the duties and responsibilities of the job. Some companies use job descriptions to evaluate and rank their jobs. Recruitment offices may employ JDs for the purpose of recruitment. This is not particularly common during the last decade, because the way duties and responsibilities performed have changed significantly, as a result of development in technology, process automation and business solutions, such as SAP and Oracle (Miles & Snow, 1992).

In other words, applying Job descriptions in today's work environment is outdated.  Following the job description documents to the letter is a time consuming practice. This makes the company run the risk of losing critical talent from the moment backward. For companies to be a notch higher in terms of productivity, tapping the talents is the systematic way for growth, transformation and image development. Take for instance the music industry; if they decide to hire the best trained and professional dancer and leave the person who can dance practically, that music industry is ended for an eventual downfall. This sounds the red light to the managers who still stick to the JD tradition if structural adjustment programs are anything to go by (Grey & Garsten, 2001).

To start with, the traditional JDs rarely describe the jobs. To the contrary, they describe the person for the job. Therefore, the best-described person goes for the job rather than personality for the job. Here, the employee gets to the job taken, and it has to fit in the person instead of the person fitting in the job. Further noting that the best person has gone for the job, he will go to the best company. Then what happens to the middle level and low-level companies?  They have to struggle for the best persons who in turn come in for routine processes. Nevertheless, if they hired the talents, smooth flow of the companies’ processes would be achievable (Miles et al., 1992).

Many executives, managers, and employees misuse the presence of the job description for more promotions, which causes unnecessary costs and confusion in the organizational structure, and interrupts reporting lines of companies. Inflating job descriptions for higher grades can have dramatic effects on the flow of processes. Departments and divisions within organizations will have overlapping duties and responsibilities (Grey et al., 2001).

It is also imperative that sometimes the requirements of the JDs are non-existences. The descriptions of attributes, skills, levels of experience and character are imaginary. If all the traits are attained sometimes, they are mechanical in the potential employee and not inherent in one. This makes future potential employees achieve skills, which may be of little or no essence at all just to fit in the job market. However, if time wasted to obtain these ‘stray skills’ for best jobs, is invested in production, better achievements in various sectors would have been realized. 

That most of the companies have divided themselves into functions and productivity is increased, this is a sure way that traditional JDs have to take a back seat for increased productivity. Companies have divided into processes and not tasks. Talents best placed for processes. This is a better customer-oriented-service meaning horizontal views of the business cutting across management and not the traditional vertical and bureaucratic form of management procedures. This re-invention of changes has brought overhaul of business processes into various teams and has brought about efficiency in business (Miles et al., 1992).

Today, most organizations are moving from the functional-based organization to a process-based organization. While process-based organization uses simple and brief description of the job, a functional-based organization uses lengthy and detailed job description. Here, a job is the focal point clustering the organization into specialized employees. This creates clusters, ‘eddy loops’, which are an obstacle to business. The final authority controls all levels of production hampering service delivery.

The external business environment is dynamic and complex. With business, processes at the centre of an organization’s functions, departments in various companies have restructured in the division-oriented way. These have no way in traditional JDs. That these changes are imminent, managers sticking to them may find it hard to re-engineer them and fit in the modern business world. It would be a daunting task for them, and this would cost resources to the organization, which would have been otherwise used in better ways (Miles et al., 1992).

Process-based organizations are usually tailored to fit the movement of the process, while functional-based organizations are created based on workloads of responsibilities, which will also be printed on job descriptions. Process-based organizations involve a small amount of JDs, because duties of similar jobs may be described with one standard Job description. In such organizations, functional oriented skills are paramount to the adoption of a flexible approach towards maximum productivity of labor. Responsibility is the key element in such organizations, and consequently a process-based company has the advantage to the possibility of cross process integration (Repenning, 2002).

In addition, the process-based organization will limit long communication channels and will introduce flattened structure. On the other hand, functional-based organization may permit the creation of unnecessary responsibilities and additional positions. Of course, detailed JDs are the main cause superfluous work. Detailed JDs are also the main causes of insufficient delegation, lack of coordination, long communication channels, one-to-one reporting relationships and failure to describe authority. Healthy organizations are the product of clearly defined objectives, healthy org design and structure, and clearly defined processes and procedures. The organization processes must help the firm reach its objectives and goals. Organizational structure ought to be tailored to suit the workflow of the processes (Grey et al., 2001).

Most companies today hire employees who do not know the jobs. They have the skills, but they do not know what to do with them. Simply because, they fit in the ‘job character’ described, most recruiting managers have to retrain recruits and keep on reminding them how to make appropriate moves for the job. However, if talent had been hired, no reminders for the job since they already have the required gusto for the job (Repenning, 2002).

Recommendations

Considering the above reasons, it is of essence to note that the traditional JDs for interviewing, recruiting, and hiring people is a counterproductive move. A Job manager opening new jobs needs to consider job raking for the real job and not describing the character for the job.  A strong person for the job would need the best rank rather than the best description of attributes, competencies and decorum for the job.

That sometimes candidates hired for jobs through the traditional JDs do not know their jobs well, it is of the essence that hiring managers ranked the jobs. They need to know what brings success-on-the-job.  This ability regrouped in the organization, the entire organization becomes an efficient and a true success story (Repenning, 2002).

Apart from Job evaluation and recruitment, job descriptions have no real role in the performance of a company. Today, for the purpose of recruitment and job advertisement, recruitment services use brief job specifications instead of the traditional detailed JDs. Writing JDs can be very costly and time consuming. Job descriptions require maintenance, updating continuously, which can create more costs, and effort and time waste. Some managers present very lengthy and detailed job descriptions not based on objectives but based on duties performed. The application of Job descriptions today causes the business to incur unnecessary costs (Grey et al., 2001).

Further noting that traditional JDs take the organization to the function-based mode, which takes the organization to the bureaucracy, clusters of specialized employees other than the process, based which is driven by classifications, and fosters customer-based services; therefore, adopting job ranking and classification would be the gateway to growth in business.

In conclusion, it is hereby strongly recommended to discontinue using job descriptions, and instead, use brief job specification for the purpose of recruitment. Job evaluators must also avoid using job descriptions; and instead, they can apply ranking or classification. Job specification would draw talents and increase an organization’s diversity, save on resources, time and bring efficiency in integrating the organization to the modern technology (Miles et al., 1992).