<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=520757221678604&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Tom Morley

By: Tom Morley on September 21st, 2015

Print/Save as PDF

Job Descriptions: Don’t seek Superman. You wouldn't know how to use him anyway

Association Industry Commentary | Workforce & Human Capital

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

Hiring managers often jump right into job descriptions when they have needs. Rather than starting new, they’ll take something that exists and tack on a slew of added responsibilities. This is certainly convenient, but it’s also problematic, especially when the new roles involve emerging fields such as digital marketing.

Division leaders get that they have to engage dynamic markets differently, but in many cases they haven’t defined exactly how they’ll do it. Absent this guidance, and with only limited knowledge of the relevant fields, hiring managers can’t scope or narrow requirements, so they’re forced to cast a wide net. Moreover, they may fail to appreciate how new approaches relate to, and often impact, current practices and distributions of functions, so what’s already on template position descriptions is retained. What results are “laundry lists” that combine all of the old with too much of the new—“super-roles” that are likely unworkable in practice, and also impossible to fill according to the associated standards.

When recruiting for these “revised” positions, the following often transpires:

  • Organizations don’t attract a volume of qualified candidates, since few people want to take on the breadth of responsibilities described
  • Candidates they do attract don’t meet all of the requirements, and some may even overstate their qualifications to fit the position
  • Hiring managers have difficulty evaluating candidates, since they don’t know how to prioritize requirements and can’t recognize “inflators”
  • Organizations effectively “settle” in hopes of hiring people who turn out okay, but taking on a significant risk of making “bad hires”
  • New hires’ specific skills may actually end up dictating strategies, as the organization must live with their strengths and weaknesses

For every person who works out, there are countless others who don’t, and this puts associations in difficult spots. The market, as we have stated before, isn’t waiting around, and these missteps cause major setbacks that are at best costly to fix, and may lead associations irreversibly down the wrong strategic paths. Put bluntly, it is essential to avoid them.

Tomorrow: Five things you can do to get the right resources to meet modern market demands, and use them to their full effect

If you don’t want to wait, don’t! Send us an e-mail at Snowflake LLC. We'll talk you through what you need to do!

Additional Resources

Get the People You Need

Association: Modernization

About Tom Morley

Tom Morley is Founder and President of Snowflake LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations to work smarter, consistently deliver on their “essential outcomes”, and unleash their full potential. Tom has over 17 years of experience integrating business and market strategy, organization, workforce, workflows, and infrastructure to optimize contributions and costs across the enterprise and ensure sustainably cost-effective results. He has advised and supporting more than 40 non-profits, government agencies, and businesses in the US and abroad, including OPEC, Pan American Health Organization, Cascade Healthcare Community, US Forest Service, New York City Housing Authority, Federal Housing Administration, Moody’s Investor Services, Loudoun Habitat for Humanity, and many others. Prior to launching Snowflake LLC, Tom spent 13 years at BearingPoint, Inc. and Deloitte Consulting, LLP, and also worked as an organizational and human capital expert in the Federal government. Tom has an M. A. from the University of Maryland at College Park, and a B. A. with Distinction from the University of Delaware.