When It Comes To Job Descriptions, Companies Still Struggle

Despite the high unemployment rate, jobs are still going unfilled. The national fill rate in September was 91 percent. Without a doubt, organizations are looking to hire, and people are looking for jobs. Yet, we still hear from HR and managers that they can’t find the right person for their unfilled roles. Many factors contribute to this situation. Inaccurate job descriptions are frequently one of the issues, but they are also among the most fixable.

A job posting is the first thing applicants see when applying for a role at your company. From there, the applicant decides whether or not to move forward, based on what they learn about the job from your job posting. As an HR manager, you need to ask yourself if your company’s job descriptions, the resource your job postings derive from, are attracting the right person for the position.

You might already know your company’s job descriptions need a lot of improvement. Managers might be writing their own JDs with little to no guidance. It might even be challenging to locate past job postings to reference. When these problems go unaddressed, they could cost your organization in terms of talent, time, and revenue.

What’s at Stake

Not only are organizations struggling to fill new positions, but they are losing employees, too. The average turnover rate in 2019 was also at 36 percent. Even worse, since 2010, the turnover rate has increased a shocking 88 percent. (Bureau of Labor Statistics). There is no doubt about it; organizations are losing people faster than ever.

Talent Retention

At JDXpert, we know you’ve seen terrible job descriptions, or worse, you’ve applied for, interviewed, or even taken a job based on a job description only to find out later the job does not resemble the description. For HR and other managers, you’ve probably sorted through many job applicants and even interviewed potential employees who have been utterly wrong for the job. Sometimes these candidates end up getting hired only to leave for another company months later. This problem contributes to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover. A Harvard Business Review study determined that as much as 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions.

Having an accurate JD is essential to recruiting good employees. It outlines the position, duties, and responsibilities, along with the behaviors, values, and goals expected from a future employee. They also help recruiters evaluate job applicants and give applicants a sense of the future they can expect with your organization. Using the JD to guide the interview process, you and the new employee can make sure they are the right fit for the job.

Compensation

Compensation is another issue that comes up when job postings are inaccurate. It is also one of the biggest reasons an employee will leave an organization to go to a new company. Managers need to make sure the job description and compensation are aligned. In this way, JDs are a useful guide for determining appropriate compensation as well. When the JD and the compensation are out of synch, you could have trouble attracting the right job applicants, nor will you be able to retain talent once you’ve hired them.

Compliance

Most importantly, your organization must stay compliant. A poor job description can cause even bigger problems for you by putting your organization at risk for discrimination suits or other forms of litigation from the EEOC and the Department of Labor. Lawsuits could cost your organization millions of dollars. A clear and accurate job description will help your organization stay compliant.

Companies Are Behind The Times

It comes down to the fact that a poor job description can cost you up to five times an employee’s annual pay. The costs are really that high! We know a job description strategy can prevent these issues before they even start. Yet, many organizations are still in the dark ages when it comes to their job descriptions. They may not even know poor job descriptions are the root cause of their talent shortage.

Recently, on a call, the HR department of a large global firm told managers they would be responsible for writing all job postings when recruiting new employees. One manager asked if they could access past job descriptions to pull from to create new job postings. Managers are often running blind when trying to recruit. Even if they have access to job descriptions, they may be so out of date as to render them unusable. Your organization will never be able to hire the right employee without the right job description.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

HR and managers want to hire and retain the best people possible. Collaborating on job descriptions makes this so much easier. The rub is that many organizations still don’t have an efficient system for doing this. Many either have no job description strategy or a disorganized one. When roughly 75% of companies still use Word and shared drives to maintain job descriptions, it’s almost impossible to enable the much-needed connection between a job description and recruitment efforts that result in finding and hiring the best talent for the job.

Companies of all sizes need to provide managers and recruiters with the tools to recruit the right person for the job. One of those tools is a job description. The right person for your organization is out there, but if the JD doesn’t adequately convey the position, responsibilities, expectations, and potential for growth, you may never find them. Remember, they don’t just power effective recruitment. JDs also lead to better, more informed compensation decisions, provide an interview guide, help evaluate employees fairly, and mitigate risk.

At JDXpert, we cannot overstate the need for a job description strategy at your company. Our tool allows you to do just that by helping you create clear and concise job descriptions, keep them organized, allow for collaboration, and give easy access to existing JDs. It also provides integration to most applicant tracking systems (ATS) and an all-important interview guide. A clear, concise job description is one of HRs most powerful tools. There has never been a better time to harness the power of job descriptions with an effective job description strategy.

Watch our video below to see how a job description solution like JDXpert can help you attract the right people and more!