The Perfect Job Description

This question is for triple the points, top four answers on the board. Here is the question: What are the essential things; the critical tools you MUST have prepared if you’re on a job hunt? “Well, Russ, I’m going to have to say: Resume.” (good answer, good answer.)




Most would probably say Resume first, but I don’t think it would be the number one first thing. My answer there is a personal plan or a goal in mind. So there are two answers, what else does a candidate need to have ready?

Another answer I think would come up is an elevator speech or “two-minute drill” to give someone a verbal overview of who they are, where they’ve been and what specifically they offer to a prospective employer.

1. Personal plan / goal. You want to land a specific kind of job, not just any job. Before you write a resume, you have to have the goal in mind.
2. Resume. The brightest star in the cosmos of the job search. Of course you must have a resume.
3. Perfect Job description. Often overlooked, this can be a useful tool – both to have and to go through the process of developing. Drafting this really helped me in my search and has been a useful exercise for many friends too. I would rank it right behind the resume among the critical tools for a job search.
4. Elevator Speech, a/k/a “Two Minute Drill” – I wrote about that in a previous post. You must be able to communicate – even to those close to you – what kind of job you seek and would do well before they can begin to help you.

My belief is that most job seekers would have gotten 1, 2 & 4 but may have missed #3, which is why I wanted to write about it. The first tool would be a personal plan or to go through a personal assessment to clearly identify the things you are good at and that you like. If you don’t have this clear in your mind and on paper, it will make your resume much more difficult to draft. That’s why this element is first in the process ahead of resumes. Personal assessments are a critical component of a job search and something I’ll hammer on later. Let’s assume you already have a good sense for who you are and what you offer a prospective employer.

Unless you are in HR, you may not have ever written a job description. Drafting what you believe to be YOUR perfect job description will help you identify and communicate what you’re good at, what you enjoy, whether you like change, structure, independence, teamwork, etc. A polished document outlining your perfect job description is also something that you can share with friends or at networking meetings to help clearly communicate what you offer and what sets you apart from others.

Where do you start? Let me tell you my experience.

I’m a sales guy with strong experience in transaction-based electronic payments, projects and account management. I have a strong desire to serve, have a creative bent, have grown up using computers and had some experience using social media and helping others make sense of that. After a careful search, no such job with all those elements exists. However, if I am hired in a primary capacity in sales, I can add value with my other experience and communicate my strong desire to serve and be a team player. What I’m really communicating by listing additional responsibilities is how I’ll fit and my willingness to serve.

To start, I took my resume header and cut out everything below my name and address. My goal was for this document to look like my resume. One page should be enough especially since it’s hypothetical. Some exceptions I can think of where you’d make it longer would be if you had a very specific or technical job in mind where you needed to go into great detail about exactly what you would do.

Next, start searching on your favorite job boards for positions that you would like. No doubt you have seen several that you liked, at least in part. Here is your opportunity to start taking the best elements from those job descriptions and adding them to your perfect job description. Whether you do this initially or after you’ve drafted something is up to you and probably depends on your comfort level with this process and the role you envision. Using published/existing job descriptions to come up with the building blocks for your document will ensure you stay grounded in reality and use the right terms to describe what you can bring or add to your next job.

In my first pass I wrote eight different numbered responsibilities and added a % number for the amount of time in a given month I would spend on that area. After further review, I removed those %’s because this is hypothetical and I wanted to communicate what I could do for a prospective employer knowing full well that they would modify my role at least in part.

How do you know if an item should be included in your job description?

Make a list of all the job responsibilities you have:
1. Performed in the past
2. Enjoyed AND
3. Did well – if you aren’t sure about this, think back about any feedback you received from managers or others.

List the things that energize you; your drivers. Being on a job search is like the beginning of a new semester at school. You have a clean slate and an opportunity to clearly identify the things that make you tick and get you out of bed in the mornings.

Having a clear direction about what your next job looks like enables you to clearly communicate your value proposition to friends, contacts and prospective employers. Don’t be the one to get the [X] (buzzer sound!) Best of all, you can do this without having to kiss Richard Dawson, Mr. Peterman or whomever is hosting Family Feud these days.

Have you written a perfect job description? How did you use it? What did the process do for you? I would welcome your coments.