Creating a Job Specification

Where to Start?

Effective recruitment starts with knowing what you and the business requires, not just now but for the future. You can significantly decrease the cost and risk associated with recruitment by spending time upfront. Performing a needs analysis is a task best performed not only on your own but with the help of others within or outside your organisation.

What are you Looking For?

Every role within an organisation has key skills required to perform. For someone to excel they may also need additional skills that cannot be found currently within the organisation.

Therefore to capture the essential elements of what you are looking for you, you will need more than just the job title, educational background, experience or statutory qualification.

Consider the cultural characteristics of your organisation should inform on the person you are looking for, such as communication skills, business development, negotiation, customer facing experience and ability to work within a team. These "soft" skills can be an even bigger factor for employment success. You know your own organisation best, so consider the attributes of the most successful members within your current organisation as the starting point.

What Will Your Business Need for the Future?

You want to ensure that the individual recruited today will be able to grow with your business in the future. Therefore you will need to look at your business direction and be able to offer a career path clearly identified for the new recruit.

Questions to ask yourself are what are the current and long term goals? what new markets may you go into? What new services or products are you introducing? Will this person have the drive and capabilities to go from a non managerial role into management once they have mastered their initial role?

How to Write a Job Specification Correctly?

There are lots of questions to ask yourself or the recruiting manager to perform this task correctly. Writing a job specification to a level where you are looking for the right candidate limits the costs and time taken for advertising, searching and interviewing. It also reduces the risk of hiring the wrong candidate for the future.

Follow our Job Specification Template >>

Or contact Recruitment Specialist >>