Top 10 factors to consider when creating your next job brief
Are you looking to hire someone new for your team?
Whether you are doing it yourself, utilising your HR or Talent team or engaging a specialist recruiter, take a moment to work through these 10 questions to ensure you are setting yourself and the individual up for success:
- Don’t just fish out the old Job Description - go through and really consider the overall objectives of this role. How will you know this person will be successful in 3 months, 6 months and 12 months? Be specific!
- Now you can start thinking about the skills and level of competence required to achieve those objectives. Break it down to be clear on what is truly needed. This helps you stay focused on the outcomes you want. Don’t just focus on the years of experience but the real level of competence required for this role. This ensures unnecessary barriers are put up.
- As a next step, you should be clear on what a day in the life of this role looks like, warts and all - it’s important to be honest about the aspects that might frustrate, challenge or provide levels of pressure - no job, no employee and no employer are perfect.
- Think about the next steps - career advancement is important, what could that look like? And if there isn't any room to grow the role, how could you grow the person - what would working for your company do to help them on their career journey? What L&D do you have available internally or externally?
- If this person will report to you - think about your leadership style, what can they expect from you, what would a good working relationship look like? How do you like to receive feedback? How often would you catch up with them? What is the team like, how would they add value to that team?
- Think about how you will position the company, you are the brand ambassador in this situation - what story will you tell to get this person interested? This is what you need to be conveying from the outset - through your advertising, your JD and your pitch be it internally or to a specialist recruiter. Ask yourself why you are still there or why you joined in the first place?
- What does flexibility look like in this role? And no, I don’t just mean can the role WFH - can it be a compressed working week, early starts, later finishes, part-time, job share, and of course remote work. It’s good to consider all the possible options and ask yourself why and/or why not. This allows you to be open to wider talent pool.
- Think through carefully whether industry experience is required and if so why? If your business is going through substantial change or transformation, it may not be the right pathway to choose people from the same industry that have seen that kind o change. And being open to diverse industries also broadens your talent pool.
- Values - what are your company values and what do these look like on a day-to-day basis? This is critical for you and the potential employee - are we aligned with our values? It is easy to say yes when you don’t know what behaviours reflect those values, so spell it out.
- Budget - think about what you are comfortable paying, get expert guidance on whether this will reflect the market. Understand where you can flex, or not, if that’s the case. You don’t need to be paying the most to attract the best, but you do need to be fair and you need to alter your expectations on skills and competence if you cannot meet the market.
This list is not excusive but if you take the time to really consider these factors, before you begin your recruitment process, you will certainly help your internal team, yourself and of course your expert recruiter to identify your new team member.