Jay Wren

How to Write an Effective Job Description

How to Write an Effective Job Description

Job descriptions have multiple purposes.

Job descriptions are essential when posting a job. For job posting purposes, a job description is promotional material used to attract people to apply for a job.
The job description should enable hiring managers as well as the applicants understand the requirements and expectations of the available jobs.
Job descriptions are effective guidelines to help all employees understand what a company to does to fulfill its goals. If all the job descriptions within a company were pinned on a corkboard, the documents should create the pyramid that describes the role and relationship of each person within an organization and list every duty required for a company to achieve its goals.
Managers and the people they manage should be able to use the job description to understand and evaluate a person’s performance
As companies change with changing circumstances, requirements in employment levels and roles will change as well. By monitoring and revising job descriptions for existing positions and by creating jobs descriptions for new positions, a company’s management can become focused on what will be necessary for each employee to meet new requirements placed on the company.

There are six elements to a job description.

COMPANY DESCRIPTION
The company description has useful and positive information about the industry, goods and services, and accomplishments of the hiring company. This description is in a block paragraph, which means simply that the first word in the paragraph is not indented. The paragraph you are currently reading is a block paragraph.

ORGANIZATION SECTION
The organization section of the job description includes the following information:

Title of position
Department
Location
Supervisor’s Title (reports to)
Supervisory Responsibilities
Job status: full-time, part-time
Status under the Fair Labor Standards Act
Pay grade

PURPOSE SUMMARY
The statement of the position purpose should be a summary of the broad job requirements and responsibilities. This section spells out in a block paragraph what will be expected of a person who takes on the responsibilities of a position.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The list of duties and responsibilities should provide company-established guidelines for performing the duties of a position.

A specific line-by-line statement of each duty
A statement of the frequency with which the duties will be performed
A statement the departments, employee titles, and outside parties involved in performing the duties
A statement of flexibility in terms of helping with special tasks as these tasks may become necessary for the company to reach its goals

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Education
Licenses
Certifications
Credentials
Skills and abilities
Training
Knowledge
Professional training
Equipment or technical skills
Experience

PHYSICAL/LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

Lifting
Standing
Walking
Hearing
Near and color vision
Fingering (computer keyboard)
Travel
Work environment
Authorization to Work in the United Status

I am not a lawyer. This information is based on my experience in recruiting for dozens of major consumer products companies for over thirty years.

How to Conduct an Interview

The purpose of conducting an interview is to decide whether an applicant is a fit for the job (1) from the company’s point of view and (2) from the point of view of the applicant.

The best way to get to know an applicant in a short amount of time is to hold the interview in a comfortable setting for a conversation.

Early in my recruiting career, my partner and I recruited for E & J Gallo Winery. At the time, Joe Gallo, son of co-founder Ernest Gallo, was effectively the chief executive officer.

The staffing director at the Winery invited my partner and me to join him, the senior vice president of human resources, and Joe Gallo for dinner in Gallo’s home in Modesto. There was a member of the Gallo staff who worked in the kitchen. We ate salmon. I remember, because Gallo, not the kitchen staff, cooked the fish.

At the dinner that night, I got first-hand experience of how to ask a think-on-your feet question. The conversation had flowed from one comfortable, general discussion to another as my partner and I got to know Gallo, his staffing director, and his senior vice president of human resources. Then, in a tone of general curiosity and as I recall somewhat out of the blue, Joe Gallo asked me, “Jay, what is the leading political party in Texas?”

I do not recall my answer, but I do recall how thought-provoking the discussion had become. The question was about politics, but it was not political. The question was simply thought-provoking.

I later learned in working with E & J Gallo Winery that this type of question was common for Joe Gallo and was a practice he had learned from his father, Ernest Gallo. What interviewers learn from this type of question is the conceptual thinking of the people they put on the company’s payroll. Although it is probably safer to avoid politics in an interview process, asking a typically subjective question from an objective point of view enables an interviewer to learn whether an applicant can analyze and discuss situations objectively and intelligently and stick to the facts.

Many companies make it a practice for the hiring manager to take a management applicant and perhaps the applicant’s wife to dinner as one of the last steps in the recruiting process. The dinner in Gallo’s home fits in with the common and recommended practice for final stage interviews for making management hires.

How well does that recruiting method work? The people who work at E & J Gallo Winery come from the best schools in the country. Many of the managers who work for the company have had earlier experience and advanced quickly through the ranks at competitive, major consumer packaged goods companies. The Gallo method of sourcing and interviewing top management talent has enabled it to stay the world’s largest family-owned winery and the largest exporter of California wine.

The approach that each company takes to conduct its interviews can vary with a number of factors.

Culture of the company
Stage of development of the company
Resources of the company
Stage of the interview in the process
Level of the position being staffed

The purpose, however, remains the same: to decide whether an applicant is a fit for the position (1) from the company’s point of view and (2) the point of view of the applicant.

25 Questions to Help You Find and Land a Job

These 25 questions to help you find and land a job will put you in front of hiring managers and prepare you to answer their questions.

Before the Internet, employers and recruiters had a more difficult time listing jobs and finding applicants. Today, employers list jobs on the Internet and find applicants through Internet profiles and applications.

Now that the job opportunities are online, job seekers need to know how to use the Internet to attract employers and to find jobs on the Internet.

Additionally, many of the things that a job applicant needed to do are still necessary today: writing a resume and cover letter, contacting companies and making applications, preparing for the interview, and so forth.

To get started building your Internet profile, finding job openings, getting job interviews that lead to job offers, ask yourself these questions.

1. Who is hiring?
2. What kinds of jobs are available?
3. How do I apply for the jobs?
4. How do I contact hiring companies?
5. Do I complete applications online? Do I contact hiring companies directly?
6. Should I work with a recruiter?
7. How do I write a resume?
8. Do I use a cover letter with a resume?
9. How do I write a cover letter?
10. Do I send a cover letter as an attachment to an email or is the email a cover letter?
11. Should I pay someone to write my résumé?
12. What do I wear to the interview?
13. What do I need to know before going to the interview?
14. What do I discuss during the interview?
15. How do I follow-up after the interview?
16. Do I discuss salary during the interview?
17. How do I find references?
18. What type of person is a good reference?
19. Do I use membership sites to get a job?
20. How do I create a profile on membership sites?
21. How do I use groups on membership sites for my job search?
22. How do I build a network for my job search?
23. When should I start looking for a job?
24. How do I protect my privacy when I am looking for a job?
25. What information should I share about compensation?
The answers to these questions are part of what I discuss in the articles on this website

4 Interview Basics

Dress in business attire. Standard business attire includes a dark-gray or navy-blue suit or skirt and jacket, a white shirt or blouse, and black shoes. Wear those things to your interviews. If you are interviewing with people who wear casual clothes to work, they will not fault you on your attire. However, if you go into an office where everyone wears business attire, and you are wearing jeans, you will probably have eliminated yourself from consideration for the job.

Interact and observe. Whenever you enter a place where you are interviewing, you are under everyone’s eye, whether by design or incidentally. Be patient, thoughtful, courteous, and personable with the people you meet. Be confident and natural. Breathe in the ambience of the environment. What do you see on the walls and around the offices? Is this a place where you want to be each day? Putting yourself in this frame of mind will help you be alert and learn and be proactive in your meetings.

Move forward. As you meet people and as you make your way through offices, face the direction you are doing. Move towards people as you meet them and extend your hand. There only one handshake. Firmly, briefly grasp the other person’s hand as you look them in the eye, and remembering to say the person’s name, say “Betty/Bill, very nice to meet you. Thank you for meeting with me.”

Be prepared. Prepare your agenda and use it. Give each interviewer a copy of the material you would like to cover: an outline of your questions, accomplishments, and what you can do for the company.

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

10 Nifty Search Engine Tools for Business, Career, and College

The following search wording should work on most search engines. Also, except for the math phrases, the job search engine at JayWren.com and most other job search engines are enabled to use these search phrases.

The source for these phrases comes from Google.com. What that fact means is that if you are looking for a job or a company and any other career information, Google encourages you to use these types of search elements along with Google Advanced Search.

Multiplication
*
25 * 25 = 625 (Google.com displays a calculator)

Fill in the blank
*
Example: “career * manager” will return career development manager, career services manager, etc.

Exclude words and websites with a minus sign:
–
Example: career OR planning -manager -site:linkedin.com

Only these words in any order
AND
Example: career AND planning AND manager

Exact phrase
” ”
Example: “career planning manager”

Any of these words
OR
Example: career OR planning OR manager

Ranging from-to
..
Example: 77009..77015

Specific website
site:jaywrencom
Example: resume site:jaywren.com

Specific URL
link: jaywren.com
Example: resume link:jaywren.com

URLs that are similar
related: jaywren.com
Example: resume link:jaywren.com

“The World’s Most Headhunter!”

The Principles of Business and Career

The principles of business and career are the same.

I once had a Polaroid national sales manager say tell me that the only way to measure a company’s success were sales and earnings.

His statement is true up to the point that sales and earnings are why the company is in business. However, if a company’s reason for being in business is to feed, clothe, and shelter the needy, the company’s success may be measured on how well the company feeds, clothes, and shelters the needy.

The one common element of a successful business is excellence in meeting expectations based on the business plan.

Once a company has defined its mission, the company can determine and implement all the other elements of operating a business according to plan:

Who they are (executive team, management team, total payroll)?
What do they do (services and products)?
What they do plan to accomplish and by what methods in one year, two years, three years, and forward?
Who are their competitors?
What are their finances?
What financing do they need to add from investors?
What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats?
What products, equipment, or skills do they plan to add to support their expansion?
What is their marketing plan?
What is their sales vehicle (field sales, telemarketing, e-commerce)?

The same principles apply to having a career. First ask yourself what you want to do. If you want to make more money than most other people and do not want to spend years in a classroom, you might start looking for sales jobs. I got my first job as a door-to-door salesperson when I was seven. I found an ad for a Christmas card company. They shipped me the samples for free. I walked around the neighborhood and knocked on doors and sold Christmas cards. The people who placed orders helped me with the order forms.

The value of having a career plan works in your interest as well as the interest of your company. Even if the company where you are working is not where you want to be, you can use your career plan to see ways that you can best contribute to the success of the company and perhaps place yourself in roles you most enjoy.

When I graduated from high school, my career goal included two parts: I wanted to work in an office where I could learn some interesting things and I wanted to stay in college. At the time, I was working at Weingarten’s Grocery Stores as a clerk.

I got a new job working in the print shop at Shell Oil Company in downtown Houston. I was not crazy about operating a printing press, but I was learning new skills, and I was working in an office near a downtown college campus.

Every business and career plan must be flexible to stimulate vision and creativity. I began to adjust my career plan to look for things that would allow me to contribute to the business at Shell Oil Company and do things I found more interesting.

The print shop had a photo shop for making printing plates. The photographer walked passed the printers and printing presses on his way to get to his camera and the darkroom. Now his job was interesting. During breaks, I chatted with the guy about his job, and he took an interest in showing me what he was doing. Before long, I was chipping in for his gas, and he would pick me up on his way to work. I learned his job through our chats, and I became his relief when he went on vacation. As the print operations grew, I became his assistant. I loved the job. I worked for Shell Oil Company until I needed to transfer to another college campus that was too far from the Shell office.

To go from the business plan above to the career plan:

Who are you (education, places you have worked, accomplishments in your career and education, patents, copyrights, publications)?
What you do (sales, marketing, analysis, skills)?
What do you plan to accomplish and by what methods in one year, two years, three years, and forward?
What new resources will you need to add to support your career growth?
Who are their competitors?
What are your finances?
What financing do they need to add from investors?
What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats?
What is your marketing plan?
What is your sales plan (field sales, telemarketing, e-commerce)?

How do you create a career plan? Start writing. Just write what comes to mind. Write what you would like people to say about you in twenty years. Create your vision. Use what you can of the information from this post and research other resources. You will do a great job.

Social Media and Your Career: Do These Things.

Social Media and Your Career: Do These Things

There are some simple suggestions that can make you social media career campaign easy to manage and very effective.

Post one profile photo on all social media sites. That photo is your brand packaging.

Attire for your profile photo: A suit and tie are okay. An open-collared shirt is okay. However, unless you name is Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, you probably should wear a shirt with a collar.

Write full sentences on your web posts. Use complete words. Use simple sentences and easy to understand words everyone knows.

Say nice things on all web posts. Do you remember what Thumper told Bambi? “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Everybody loves Thumper.

The best boss I ever had told me those exact words. He retired as a four-star Navy Admiral and went to become CEO of two corporations and in his last capacity was head of the United States Nuclear Research Program. I absolutely love Thumper and absolutely respect and admire Admiral S.R. Foley, Jr., who gave me that advice.

Say nice things about yourself on the Internet. List your accomplishments the way you would on your resume.

Be 100% honest in the things you say about yourself. If you are accurate and 100% honest in your Internet postings, you will be 100% consistent in your web postings.

Join groups and participate in those groups. People go to groups on membership to do a lot of different things. If you want people to respect you, offer suggestions to people who are asking for help.

Interact on membership sites. Registering with a membership site and interacting with people will help you build your professional network quickly.

On membership sites, tell people when they have done a good job and congratulate them when they get a new employer or a promotion.

Have fun. Make friends. Enrich your life and the lives of others. Use social media every day.

Desk Jockeys and Exercise

It can be very challenging for people who work long hours at a desk to get enough exercise to stay trim, condition their heart, vessels, arteries, and lungs, maintain muscularity, and avoid spinal deterioration.

The effects of daily sitting at a desk over prolonged periods of time can be debilitating.

Beyond a regular exercise program and a healthy program of diet and exercise, I try to do a number of things that help me build my career and still get exercise.

I stand up every thirty minutes and walk around for five or ten minutes to get loose, reduce the pressure on my vertebrae, and increase my blood flow.
I use dynamic tension (simple muscle flexing) when standing around or sitting at my desk.
I go for walks as work breaks.
Outside of my work day, I do yard work, car washing, and household chores at a brisk pace.

There are some excellent motivational gems that help me remember how little I have to do to get benefits from exercise:

A 30-minute workout is only 2% of your day.
The hardest movement of any workout is walking out the front door.
If I had started exercising when I first thought about exercising, I would be done now.

Here’s to your health!

Webcast Your Updates and Discussions from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook/Facebook Page.

There are third-party applications that will post your online updates to your accounts at membership sites.

However, you can easily connect your membership accounts without sharing your information with third party applications. Using just the three largest sites will give you a great deal of exposure.

To navigate through these steps, open a second browser page.

The order of connecting these sites is important. Twitter will not post to your LinkedIn profile.

LINKEDIN TO TWITTER
Sign in to LinkedIn.
In the top right-hand corner of the page, you will see your picture or a blank avatar.
Put your mouse pointer over this picture.
You will see a dropdown menu.
Click on the link “Privacy and Settings.”
Click on the link “Manage Your Twitter Settings.” (Right-side, bottom-half of the page)
Add your Twitter account, select option to show on you account, click “Save changes.”

THE OPTION TO TWEET
When you post updates to your profile and when you make comments in group discussion, you can select whether you want the updates to post to Twitter. A word of caution: in Group discussions, if you select to have the discussion posted on Twitter and the discussion is very popular, you may be getting a torrent of discussion going from LinkedIn through Twitter to Facebook, and what people say in discussions may not necessarily be what you want posted on Facebook.

TWITTER TO FACEBOOK/FACEBOOK PAGE
Sign in to Twitter.
Click on the gear icon in the top right of the page.
Click on “Profile.”
Scroll to the bottom and click “Sign into Facebook.”
You will be given these options:

Allow Twitter to:
post retweets to Facebook
post to my Facebook profile
post to my Facebook page

Select the options you prefer.

Now you have connected your updates on the three most popular membership sites on the web.

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

Be the Difference Maker in Your Workplace.

Have five things laid out for the day that you can do that will help your team, supervisor, and company be more effective. You can be the difference maker in your office.

Each morning before you walk in the office door, stand up straight, put your shoulders back, and walk with your head up. Put a pleasant look on your face. Use open, welcoming gestures, and say good morning to each person you see.

Set the tone in the office that everyone is important. Offer solutions wherever possible. Offer to assist in anyway you can.

THERE IS A REASON THAT THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS HAS MORE THAN ONE MEMBER.

I have read a lot about lately about not asking for the opinions of other people. That advice runs counter to every common sense business practice I have ever heard. Google prides itself on team mentality and respect for the opinion of everyone on the team. If you believe that your thinking alone makes you smarter than the combined intelligence of everyone in the room on everyone occasion, you are deluding yourself. It is easy for all of us to believe our own bologna, because we have always heard it. Ask for the opinion of other people and incorporate their thinking into your own thinking.

Get to know your boss. Learn these things about your boss:

What is the name of your boss spouse and your bosses’ children?
What hobbies does your boss have?
What interests your boss?
What are your boss’s ideas about priorities in the company?
See yourself as an asset to your supervisor and your company and look for ways that you can contribute to the creation of solutions.

From my basic training at Procter and Gamble, I learned that I was the expert in my industry. To be the expert, I needed to read the trade journals, internal company publications, and look for news about my industry. You can do the same thing in your job. You are the expert at your workplace. Being the expert means that you will need to know everything useful about your industry, your company, and how you can play a role in your company’s success.

Become solution-minded. Recognize the problem. Develop strategies to turn those problems into money-making ideas for your company.