All-4-HR Blog Spot: Recruiting: I’ll Have One of Those!

We are discussing Recruiting which is our topic for the Month of March at All-4-HR & Business Solutions. We talked about job descriptions – their importance. We also discussed while job descriptions vary from company to company, there are components are essential for all job descriptions. Again, best practices and successful employee engagement in all organizations does not begin once you have hired an employee but well before then. I express the importance of acquiring top talent lies in owning the recruiting process and/or system.

If you are not prepared to attract and acquire top talent, you will also find it hard to retain top talent. You want to let candidates know coming in your Organization’s door that you are an engaged Organization and you are prepared to attract, grow and retain top talent. These are thoughts and ideas that are transferred throughout your industry if you are effectuating a truly successful recruiting process in your organization.

In addition to job descriptions weighing in as a significant variable to a successful recruiting process are job analysis. Yes, Job Analysis! If you want an effective recruiting process, you may need to conduct a job analysis or 2 or 3. Job analysis are primarily conducted for newly created jobs. Job analysis is a tool that is used when positions are vacated or merged with another job and there are significant changes in duties.

Job analysis are usually conducted by HR supervisors and/or consultants. The person(s) who perform the job analysis must be unbiased and be able to concentrate all their efforts on the job analysis task. Job analysis can be done in three methods: observation, interviewing, and questionnaire. The observation method includes an HR supervisor or manager actually a job being performed. Interviewing includes the employee that performs the job and the supervisor gathering a lot of information. Finally, the questionnaire method is an inexpensive method where the employee describes the job related duties.

When analyzing a job, it is critical, both from a good practice standpoint and from a legal standpoint, to clearly and thoroughly determine the essential functions of the job (basic job duties an employee must be able to perform, with or without accommodation.

A job function is considered essential for many reasons. Some reasons are:

The reason the position exists sis to perform the function,
The number of other employees available to perform the function or among whom the performance of the function can be distributed is limited, and
There is a high degree of expertise or skill required to perform the function.

Some other factors to consider when determining essential job function of a job:

The actual work experience of present or past employees in the job,
The time spent performing a function,
The consequences of not requiring that an employee perform the function, and
The terms of a collective bargaining agreement.

While skills and essential function of the job are perhaps the most critical parts of the job analysis, there are other variables to be considered in a job analysis: