Accurate job descriptions are foundational to effective compensation, hiring, retention, and compliance efforts. Yet many organizations struggle to maintain up-to-date, accurate job information—undermining role clarity and decision-making. Why is that?
It’s not because writing the job description itself is all that hard.
It’s because as organizations grew, they failed to implement a structured, technology-enabled process to effectively manage and maintain hundreds of accurate job descriptions. Documents were created in a silo whenever needed – without collaboration across departments or reference to procedures & formats.
The result? These companies now have hundreds of inaccurate and outdated job documents scattered across multiple systems.
They don’t know which versions are the most recent.
They don’t know if the job descriptions accurately describe the role.
They don’t know if they have duplicate titles for the same job.
Now, job descriptions are time consuming and chaotic. But they don’t have to be.
Here are 5 steps you can take to create a process supported by technology that will simplify & modernize your job description process so you can maintain hundreds of accurate job descriptions without thousands of hours of work.
Step 1: Create a Centralized Job Description Inventory
Without a centralized system, there’s no clear consensus on where the most accurate and up-to-date job descriptions live. This leads to duplicate documents, version confusion, and inconsistent standards. To fix this, organizations need a centralized job description inventory.
Mosh JD makes that possible by digitizing your job descriptions, centralizing your catalog, and establishing governance—bringing your team together to work on the most accurate and current version.
By establishing a centralized job description inventory with a tool like Mosh JD, you’ll save hours on writing, updating, and managing job information. Our platform replaces manual processes and scattered systems with built-in efficiencies that streamline your workflows while improving job accuracy, consistency, and compliance.
Tools to Accomplish Step 1
- Job Description Software – Job description software is designed to help organizations create and maintain hundreds of accurate job descriptions. If you are in the market for job description software or are interested in learning more – we did an honest review of the top 5 job description software’s for comp & HR teams by use case.
- SharePoint Or G-Suite: While challenging to maintain, SharePoint and G-Suite do provide the capabilities needed to create a centralized job description inventory. The challenge here is it is time consuming to manage folders and permissions. Check out our guide on how to do it.
Step 2: Define the Job Description Process & Ownership
Many organizations struggle with job descriptions because managing them has long been deprioritized.
As companies grow, new jobs are often created ad hoc—by whoever needs them, whenever they’re needed. Over time, this leads to a bloated job inventory filled with duplicates, inconsistent formats, and no clear ownership of the process.
Now that you have a centralized job description system, it’s time to establish a clear process around that system so everyone knows how and where to create, update, and manage job descriptions.
Start by working with your HR team to define each phase of the process and assign ownership over each phase. Then, communicate the workflow internally and ensure administrative users have the right access permissions they need to manage their part of the process.
Tips to Accomplish Step 2
- Choose a JD ownership leader – Someone has to own the job description process and hold stakeholders accountable to following it. Choose a leader who will follow through – whether in comp, HR, or talent.
- Keep admin users tight – If you use a system like Mosh JD – you can configure permissions per admin user, but keep the list of administrators tight. This will make it easier for you to monitor and control adherence to the job process.
- Assign responsibility to key stakeholders – Make sure HR partners and colleagues have incentive to follow the process by having skin in the game. This will help ensure job accuracy and quality.
- Communicate the process internally – Ensure everyone knows where to go when they need to access or update a job description so they don’t “go rogue” and just create one.
Step 3: Eliminate Friction in the Job Feedback Process
Subject matter expert feedback is critical to job description accuracy. But let’s face it—most frontline employees and managers have little incentive to provide it. It’s not tied to performance evaluations or compensation, so it falls to the bottom of their priority list.
So how do you ensure timely, high-quality feedback?
By making the process effortless.
With Mosh JD, administrators can request feedback through a simple workflow that sends an email directly to the subject matter expert. The recipient is taken to a clean, no-login-required landing page where they can quickly review and submit feedback—often in just seconds.
Once submitted, the feedback is instantly available for administrators to review, accept, or reject—removing the friction and delays that typically bog down the feedback loop.
Tips to Accomplish Step 3
- Use a simple/fast tool – Use tools like Mosh JD or Google docs’ suggesting feature that makes providing feedback quick and easy. This will boost your participation rates.
- Minimize the need to login credentials – If you can eliminate the need for SMEs to have to login to something – it will make the process easier, also boosting participation.
- Track changes/log versions – Utilize a system or method that logs versions for compliance and to track changes over time.
Step 4: Establish Version Control & Templates
Most legacy systems lack the governance controls needed to ensure consistency and compliance. And when they do offer those controls, managing permissions can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Mosh JD simplifies governance with built-in version history, standardized job templates, and flexible permissions.
Administrators can lock down required sections in each job description, ensuring all jobs follow a consistent format and no critical content is missed—helping your organization stay compliant.
Only the current, published version of each job is available in the job catalog, and administrators can restrict draft exports—ensuring that only approved, finalized job descriptions are shared internally or posted externally.
Whether you use Mosh JD or another system, version control and templates will allow you to ensure version confusion is eliminated and job standardization is achieved. Make sure to select a system that allows for these capabilities.
Step 5: Digitize Your Job Description Inventory
If you want to save hundreds of hours on job descriptions while creating more accurate and reliable jobs you need to digitize your job description inventory.
Job description software enables you to do things in seconds that previously would have taken hours to do – something as simple as keyword searching an inventory of 100 jobs for a specific skill or phrase can happen in seconds. Sifting through folders and files to find all jobs containing a skill could take hours.
The return on investment is so significant; we believe at some point all organizations will be using job description software.
If you are still doing job descriptions manually – we encourage you to evaluate the use of job description software. Not sure which provider is the best fit for you? Take a look at our honest review of the top 5 players in the space – and if you feel Mosh JD could be a fit – reach out to us for a demo. We’d be happy to chat.
We know we’re not the right fit for everyone. But if you’re looking for enterprise software that’s easy to use and helps you manage hundreds of accurate job descriptions—without spending thousands of hours—Mosh JD might be exactly what you need.
Visit MoshJD.com to learn more and book a demo with us today.
Want to see how much job description software can save your organization? Customize our ROI calculator to find out.
