Ideal Job Specification

Once you have decided that you need to hire for a role, the next steps are to create a:

·        job description (what are outcomes and processes in role), and

·        job specification (what knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are you seeking in a job incumbent).

But a job specification doesn't end with only listing out what KSAs you are seeking in a job incumbent.

 

As HR Recruiter or Hiring Manager, take into consideration following factors:

·        Most things are teachable and learnable given adequate time, effort and cost. But different organizations have different capacities/appetite for time, effort, and cost. Hence what is trainable and what is non-trainable is an organization specific decision.

o   Ability is most difficult to teach and learn, followed by skill and then knowledge.

·        Ask yourself 'What is trainable/non-trainable for this role?".

o   List out Non-trainable K,S, and As. These should be criterion against which you will make a hire/no-hire decision for a candidate

What is advantage of following a procedure like this?

By following above mentioned procedure, you increase size of candidate pool you are looking at. Hence possibility of hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation increases.

 

You may also want to keep the following in mind when formulating job specification:

·        If you are being particular about an educational qualification and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Is this qualification really required? Can someone who has relevant work experience but not this educational qualification perform this job effectively?

·        If you are being particular about a certain type of work experience and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Can someone with high learnability but having a different kind of work experience/no work-experience do this job with an accelerated induction program?;

These are some tips to ensure that you are hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation.

 

Your next question might be - so how do we ensure high performance? Well! I will post about this soon.

 

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Sourav

 

An Individual Salary Scale

'We are good paymasters. We have provided x% salary increases every year for last y years.'

'We are competitive paymasters. Our salaries are at x percentile of the market.'

These are some usual statements I have heard companies make to showcase to employees/prospective employees the external parity of their salaries.

I often felt these statistics revealed necessary but not sufficient data for a ‘particular employee’. On second thoughts, that’s obvious given that statistics are calculated on basis of a ‘representative employee’.

Hence a particular employee might still be left with a question – ‘so how competitive is my salary wrt market? Is external parity of my salary high, medium, or low?’.

Managers usually respond to such questions by sharing ‘representative employee’ data. But employees also compare their particular situation to anecdotal evidence e.g. – what their friends are earning in other companies, what exiting employees are being offered.

Manager may well counter anecdotal evidence by sharing compensation benchmarking data. Frankly, that’s the best a manager can possibly do.  But compensation benchmarking data is still for a ‘representative employee’.

Can an employee find some compensation comparison data point which is more specific/particular to his/her situation?

A few years back I formulated a relevant methodology specific/particular to an employee. I must share that this makes more sense from an Indian market perspective – given the consistently high salary growth rate in India over last decade.

An employee could look at ' his salary grows y times in how many years’.

For e.g - let's take y as 2. Hence metric is ' your salary doubles in how many years'.

If your salary is doubling every 5 years, your salary is growing annually at 15% (calculate it for yourself J)  That’s a little higher than annual salary growth rate in India for last decade. So you probably are doing well for yourself.

If it’s doubling every 4 years, your salary is growing annually at 19%. If that’s the case, you are doing really good for yourself.

If it’s doubling every 3 years, your salary is growing annually at 26%. If that’s the case, you possibly are doing damn good for yourself.

Do a quick math and check for yourself what rate your salary has been growing at. L

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Sourav

Intentions!

Some time back I was watching webcast about launch of Annual Performance Review process.

Head of HR was addressing Managers. She took a lot of time to explain the ´intention´ - single line message - behind the shape of curve and review process.

 

Like many others, I was struck by power of her words.

I have been wondering what happened. What did she do that left it´s mark?

 

I have heard many a times objective or metrics of a process but I´ve never found an objective/metric/goal so powerful.

 

First, I think word ´intention´ has more elements of a verb than words objective/metric/goal. It makes me realize that I am the executioner of the intent.

 

Second we associate a value judgment with intentions. ´If my intention isn´t in place, then either something´s wrong with me or I’m at wrong place!´ We mayn´t associate such judgments with other 3 words.

 

I´m sold on figuring out the intention behind the HR processes we manage. Let me illustrate. What´s intention behind:

·         recruitment/selection processes? Some options are – to make any participant a brand ambassador, to reinforce uniqueness of working here, to find a role/culture fit, etc.

·         compensation processes? Some options are – we´re best paymasters & we´ll do everything to retain you; you´re best judge of your money (take it in whatever way you want), etc.

·         learning processes? Some options are – you´re a ´talent´, it´s your responsibility to identity and drive learning needs; we value role based learning & personal development is your concern, etc.

·         role designs? Some options are- we value specialization/generalization; empowerment/centralization, etc.

I´m not sure if, in this post, I´ve chanced upon anything new. But I do feel I´ve found a way to see existing processes more powerfully.

 

What do you think?

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Sourav