A 21st Century Workforce requires 21st Century performance expectations. What is traditionally referred to as a job description is, in the KeenAlignment training, referred to as the CPR. The Comprehensive Position Requirements document focuses on the reason the role exists, what the employee needs to do, who they need to be and how performance is measured in the role. When first establishing and building an internal hiring process, consider your corporate mission, vision and values as well as your philosophy, culture and business strategy. Define the purpose of the positions that exist. Debate with peers and come to a resolution on the specific measurements of success in the role. Clarify how those measurements are achieved. Determine the right values, behaviors and competencies the ideal employee needs to possess for this role. Ensure you can articulate what these look like in the workplace for effective performance, and translate them to descriptive Key Performance Indicators.
Next, list the tasks and core functions necessary to accomplish your desired outcomes, and how long those tasks should take in an ideal situation. Lastly, brainstorm with the key stakeholders surrounding that role about what behaviors, attributes, strengths, competencies and values, as well as intellectual, character and emotional quotients the ideal person needs to show up with. Remember to list attributes that are mandatory for success, yet not scope the job so high that Superman himself wouldn’t qualify. Once you think you know what it takes to be successful in the role, benchmark your existing team of solid performers who hold that type of role.
Understanding your current top players is an excellent way to establish the core elements of what makes a person a successful employee in that type of role with your company. Additionally, benchmarking your existing staff allows you to see the overall winning traits of your team and to see what is missing—the presence of which would make a difference. When you know what you want and what you need, and you have the ability to measure and compare or contrast candidates to those measurements, hiring becomes much easier and much more effective.
With an in-depth hiring process, you need many more candidates than you did when you were hiring based on gut feeling. Spend the time and money to diversify the search. Utilize as many resources as you can to populate the top of the funnel and give you plenty of choices. It is important to consider alternative talent mining resources as well; you might look at completely different industries housing similar types of roles. Opening the search to new industries increases the likelihood of generating a multitude of candidates.
A conscious hiring process considers experience to the degree that the person can perform the job, but it does not ignore the core of who a person is for words that fit on a resume.
In your advertisement, consider not listing exact experience required. It is a given that all roles need some level of experience walking in the door. But companies that employ conscious hiring report that behaviors, competencies and values, as well as philosophical alignment, trump exact experience when it comes to hiring the right fit. All of these and more make it imperative to implement a well-established and structured conscious hiring process.
Any additional tips on your recruiting strategy regarding job descriptions can be learned in this video:
Do you have any struggles when creating job descriptions? Let us know in the comments below!