Conducting a quality job analysis is a critical component to maintaining job description accuracy over time. Job description accuracy is essential for effective hiring outcomes and sound compensation planning because it helps to provide clarity and accuracy around the required skills and qualifications needed in a role.
As business environments continue to evolve, keeping job descriptions up-to-date is crucial to ensuring long-term organizational success. This blog will give you a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a job analysis so you can maintain job description accuracy over time.
What is a Job Analysis?
A job analysis is a structured, multi-step process that helps define job roles and the skills needed for jobs within an organization. By following a job analysis methodology, you can accurately advertise open positions, accurately benchmark jobs vs survey data, align the best-fit candidates, and enhance productivity throughout the talent management lifecycle.
How to Conduct a Job Analysis
Follow this 6 step process to successfully conduct a job analysis and update your job descriptions
Step 1: Define the goals and purpose of the project
For any job analysis process to run smoothly, it is necessary to define the purpose of the project so you can gain consensus across the organization. Why are you conducting the analysis? What is the result you are looking for?
There will likely be several key outcomes, including:
- Defining skills and qualifications to support recruitment and selection effectiveness; helping to ensure the right person will be selected for the role.
- Establishing a basis for talent management, including defined expectations for performance appraisals and employee development plans.
- Determining the appropriate compensation levels for the role.
- Ensuring compliance with labor laws and a basis for defending employment decisions such as hiring, promotion and termination.
- Workforce planning, training and development to align business needs to fill skill gaps through product and market change events.
Step 2: Select a job analysis method
There are a few common methods to conduct a job analysis. Depending on your purpose, you can select one or more of the following methods:
Interviews: You can interview the people working in the position you are looking to analyze. They can give you a hands-on approach to the work that is required for the job. It is important to conduct multiple interviews to gain a sense of how the job is done by different people, and it is often best to interview both supervisors and individual contributors.
Observation: For jobs that are structured and repetitive, it is better to use observation. When you observe the work in real-time it will help you identify the amount of time and patience required to perform the job along with every minor detail that you can miss in an interview.
Questionnaire: When you are looking to gather data for a large organization and several jobs, it is better to distribute a standardized questionnaire. A questionnaire will help with targeting the right audience and differentiating them into categories along with the roles they perform at the company. Each person will have a different view of the same job and you will be able to deduce the common answers among all.
Resources & Samples:
- Click here for a sample job analysis template
- Click here for a sample job analysis questionnaire
- Click here for a sample job analysis example
Step 3: Gather information
Once you have selected the method, it’s time to implement it. Whichever method you use, the requirement is to collect all the facts and figures that will eventually help you build a strong base for your analysis.
Tip: To ensure a successful job analysis, encourage open communication and collaboration among all participants. Since job analysis can be subjective, involving a diverse group of stakeholders helps balance different perspectives and reduces inconsistencies. Additionally, be sure to engage employees AND supervisors in the process to gather comprehensive input. Supervisor involvement is key to producing an accurate and complete job analysis that reflects the role’s requirements.
Step 4: Analyze the information
Once all the facts and figures are collected, start analyzing your information. By the end of this step, you will be able to identify things like job pay range, skill set required to perform a specific job, and the outcome of the job. You will also be able to determine which jobs need to be broken down into other categories.
Tip: The ADA requires employers not to discriminate against qualified individuals with disabilities. Be careful not to include unnecessary or overly specific physical demands (e.g. “must lift 35 lbs”) when it’s not truly essential. This may discourage or disqualify individuals with disabilities from applying and/or violate ADA requirements. Your analysis should clearly differentiate between “essential” and “non-essential” job functions.
Step 5: Develop and validate the job description
Developing and validating a job description begins with choosing a clear and straightforward job title that accurately reflects the role’s function within the organization. From there, outline the key responsibilities and tasks, ensuring they are tied to specific, measurable outcomes. Defining the required skills, qualifications, and experience should focus on competencies that directly contribute to job performance and organizational success. Once you have drafted the job description, it is essential to engage stakeholders for a review—such as managers and employees— to assist in validating the accuracy and relevance of the job description through interviews and observational analysis.
Tip: For efficiency, consider using tools like ChatGPT to draft the initial job description, leveraging insights from your research and interviews to ensure clarity and completeness. Additionally, you may consider job description management software such as Mosh JD to write, organize and maintain your job description catalog.
Step 6: Maintain the information in your job inventory
It is important to regulate the collected information timely as job analysis should be an ongoing process. Every day there is an innovation in the way people perform their job which may lead to either excess or reduction of work. Once you have created a system that works for you, make sure to collect and evaluate the data at regular intervals to keep up to date with the job requirements and market pay for the title.
Conclusion
The best way to determine the nature of the work required for a specific task is to perform a job analysis. Job analysis can be performed by HR, managers, supervisors or subject experts. You may face different hurdles while performing a large-scale analysis, but in the end, it is worth the effort as it can help you with effective selection and hiring of a new employee, reduction in unplanned turnover, and improve overall hiring effectiveness.
If you make job analysis an ongoing process, it will position you ahead of your competitors, as you will be more informed about your workforce, your job requirements, and any new job title that needs to be introduced.
Do you need help updating your job descriptions and running a job analysis? We can help. Mosh JD offers a job description update service so you can get your jobs updated fast.
Book a call with us to learn more.
