HRIS

Overview

The job specification is made up of the job description and person specification. Its purpose is to help the employer communicate to prospective employees what the job is about and what a person must be able to bring to the role in order to do it successfully.

Heading	Advice on how to use
Title	This is the formal name by which the job is known within the organisation. There is no need to use such expressions as Part-Time..., Fixed-Term... or Temporary in a title. This is because the job is normally the same irrespective of the employment duration or hours per week.
Department	This is normally the area of the organisation that is responsible for the job. We looked at the concept of organisation structures earlier.
Reports To	This is the role that the job holder will report to. That is the person's manager. To avoid confusion for staff try to have jobs report into one manager.
Staff Responsibility	Details of the staff that this role is responsible for. It could be individual roles or a team. If there is no managerial responsibility then this section could read 'No direct reports. May on occasions be asked to provide guidance on own area of work to new staff.'
Grade	Every job in an organisation will normally have a pay range attached to it, this is called the grade. This is achieved by carrying out a job evaluation excercise.
Hours	This is the full time hours for the job. The full time hours are derived automatically from the Job Type when the form is saved. Knowing this information is useful if anyone works part-time as it enables them to be certain what fraction of the job they are doing.
Purpose of the Job	The purpose sets out why the role exists and how it will fit in to what the employing department needs to achieve. This will normally be a few sentences that summarise with words such as 'The service is responsible for...', 'This role is part of a team who ...', 'The role holder will help the team to achieve...', 'The role holder will support ...'
Main duties and responsibilities	A review of the job should allow the writer to list six to ten key duties or responsibiities that make up the role. The duties will start with or contain a verb, a word that expresses action. Examples are 'Leads...', 'Provides...', 'Prepares...', 'Handles...', 'Updates...', 'Controls...', 'Manages...', 'Establish...', 'Maintain...', 'Advise...', 'Research...', 'Writes...', 'Tests...', 'Builds...', 'Participates...', 'Operates...'
Experience	Here we set out what a successful role holder will be expected to have experienced. The experience will normally be substantial enough for the person to explain their involvement and to relate that to the job that they are applying for. It is very important to ensure that experience is focused on those things that people in wider society can have access to. Some organisations make the error of assuming that something they have developed in-house or is only used by a certain team is widely known about by everyone else and then ask for specific experience in using it. Caution should be taken to avoid doing this and to look at what transferable experience would be required. For example if a team create filing system that only they use and call it 'Rabbit', it would be wrong to write in a person specification that experience of using the filing system 'Rabbit' is essential. What is actually essential is experience of using structured filing systems which would then give an applicant the ability to learn the local systems quickly.
Skills and Abilities	A person applying for a role may be expected to have certain skills and abilities. Even if the role is an entry level job after school the person specification will still expect skills and abilities that would have been learned at school. Skills and abilities could include numeracy, literacy, customer care, using computer systems, handling difficult situations, prioritising, typing at a certain number of words per minute.
Education	Some jobs require certain qualifications or certifications in order for the role holders to do them. The education level serves as a way of helping satisfy the employer that they have learned and had their knowledge independently verified and certified. For example where a job involves a certain level of writing or calculations the employer may ask for school leaving level qualifications in a relevant language or mathematics or the equivalent. Quite a number of employers will take on board the fact that there are a variety of ways to learn things so they will accept overseas qualification or in some cases relevant experience. Clearly some jobs can only be done by persons who have met their professional body's standards. Examples of such are medical, legal and engineering professionals.
Publish	This box is ticked when the job specification has been signed off and the author wants it to be made available for general use on the organisation's website.