How to write a good Job description(JD)

How to write a good Job description(JD)

or

Characteristics of a good JD

Whenever there is an open position or a requirement is identified in a company, 1st thing technical people have to do is to understand the requirement properly and make a  job description(JD). Job description becomes all the more important because it is used by recruiters as a reference point while sourcing. Again JD is sent to candidates , so that they can understand the requirement properly. a good JD can play a crucial role in closing a position quickly.

So, What should be the components of an ideal JD?

1) Designation: Designation he is going to get eg: Software Engineer/ Marketing executive/ Business analyst etc.

2)  Experience range: How many years of total experience and how many years of relevant experience the job requires? eg: 3-6 yrs

3)  Educational qualification: BE,MBA(according to the requirement)

4)  Reporting to : Position of the person whom the candidate is going to report after joining.

5)  Required Skills: Mandatory and desired : Every requirement needs some mandatory skills. Other than this there are some good-to-have skills which if possessed give a candidate edge over other candidates but that is not mandatory. So in JD mandatory and desired skills should be mentioned separately.

          

6)  Roles and responsibilities: Here we have to mention the kind of role he is expected to perform in the current job.

7)  Working environment: Some requirements demand shift work. In such cases it should be made explicitly clear in the JD so that it doesn't create any confusion in future.

So these are the basic components of a good JD.

Many times technical people are not in sync with the talent availability in the market. Suppose they are looking for combination of some specific skills, but there are extremely few profiles with such skills in market. In such cases in stead of searching for something unrealistic, I suggest you to  go back to the technical panel and inform them about the market trends and availabilities. Most of the times after getting understanding of the market availability technical panel give a more feasible list of skill sets. But before approaching panel , please have a detailed look at the market.

I hope the information is helpful to you.

Happy recruiting!

Compensation trends in Indian recruitment industry - An Analysis

I am sure many of us recruiters have sometime or other put a search on portals  for some recruitment profiles just to have an idea how much other recruiter friends are earning in the market.

Few days back I came to know about a tool in Naukri.com called Naukri Paycheck  which helps you to know about salary trends in the market.You just have to put the industry name, location, experience in specific field and it will show you the lowest, median and highest salary obtained by professional in the same domain. Please note that Naukri has got a huge database of resume from all fields and such a tool can give you a fairly accurate data.

I tried to check the tool on Indian recruitment industry....

....and here is what I found:

Details:

I have used different educational qualifications with different years of experiences and tried to find out median salary for each combination ie: BE/MBA- 1 yr, BE/MBA - 2 yrs etc. Finally I have taken average salary irrespective of education for each year of experience. Location is Bangalore in all of them.

* Salary in Lacs per annum.

 Observations:

• As you can see avarage salary for any year of experience in recruitment sector is less as  when compared to other domains such as software engineers or marketing guys(we don't require data to compare it) despite the fact that all the samples taken here are equally or more qualified (BE or MBA) .
• Recruiters with BE+MBA degree command highest salary followed by BE, then by BSC+ MBA and B COM+ MBA.
• All the profiles can be divided into two types: people who work in recruitment consulting firms taking care of other client's requirements and recruiters who work for company's internal recruitment. In earlier case though it is the recruiter's who are the revenue generators, still as the industry is not very organized till now, salary ranges are very low. Where as on the other case recruiters are not the billing items for companies, so they can't demand more salary.
• One factor which may not be visible in the data is the incentive structure in recruitment industry. In most of the staffing consulting firms fix components are generally low and incentive structure is good. So many candidates would have mentioned their fixed salary here which may  be significantly low when compared to what they take home each month.

I know the data can never give 100% correct picture, still I feel that the above data fairly portrays the compensation trends in recruitment industry.

Doy you think that recruitment is not a very skillful job ???

Note:

#Believe me I have no idea why salaries for 4yr and 5 yr employees are coming as same!

#I really liked the tool(Naukri Paycheck) and will give a detailed analysis on it  some other post.

How to do sourcing for volume requirements (part-2)

Contd from here...

Sourcing approach for volume requirements:

-    Understand the JD- This is the 1st step in any requirement. Only here you don’t have much time. By the time you do a research about the technologies mentioned, strings of resumes would have started flowing into the client’s inbox. So understand the JD really fast. If you haven’t worked on such requirement earlier ask and get clarification from some colleague who has worked on it.

-    Use of Technology- Use different tools like mass mailing and job posting on job boards, social networking sites. 
             # These will help a lot because by the time you are doing manual candidate finding from different sources, you will also get responses from interested candidates who have received your mass mail or job post. This will ease your  pressure. 
             #  Again there is a limit to the number of candidates you can talk. But mass mail and job posting has wider reach.
            #  Another advantage is,  if you talk to a candidate and he has already seen your mail or post, it wont take much time to explain the req to him.
            #  When you put a search, you put it for max 3 months, but you can do a mass mail for 1 yr to 2 yrs. This way you can reach the candidates otherwise unreachable. Again given the average time a candidate sticks to a company now a days, you actually have real  chances of getting some good responses.

-    Fast and furious sourcing – After the entire pre sourcing work jump into the sources of resumes like job boards, own database etc. Put a good search and start calling candidates. Act fast and send good resume in large numbers. Here proper utilization of time is very important as other consultants are also working on the same req simultaneously. Don’t waste much time. If you feel you are not getting much good profiles , change the search. In such requirements initial days are very important, as you won’t get many duplicates in that time. Later with more effort, you will get less result. So you know which time is best to put your best effort!

-    Reference – When you talk to a candidate don’t forget to send a corresponding mail immediately. For this you can make a template mail earlier. Many candidates forward requisition mails to their needy friends who in turn reply to the consultant. Always ask the candidate for reference. Anyhow you are already talking to the candidate, right. It will take 10 more seconds and can give you some good resumes. Not bad deal actually.

-    Scheduling and follow up- Remember you don’t get paid for the amount of resume you send, rather for the number offers you make. So your job doesn’t end once you send the resume. You have to schedule all the shortlisted candidates and send confirmation mail and follow up with them through phone or SMS before the interviews. The more the turn out ratio, the more are the chances of offers!

-    Joining- Similar to other reqs you have to follow up with the candidate through out the offer release phase to joining stage.

Volume reqs are definitely demanding, but when you make 4 offers in one day, it all seems sweet!

How to do sourcing for volume requirements (part-1)

By volume requirements I mean when the client has large number of openings for similar skill set.

Here generally the skills are generic, no of positions more , client wants to close it ASAP and in process they pass the requirement to many consultants thus creating more competition. Most of the times clients organize weekend drives to close such positions, where large number of shortlisted candidates come in a specific day and attended all rounds of interviews there.

E.g.:                     Required- Software engineer for a service-based company

                           Exp: 3-5

                           Skills: Java, J2ee

                           Number of position: 10

As Java, J2ee is a widely used programming language and projects are more or less similar in all service-based companies, finding candidate for this requirement will not be that difficult. Just put a simple search for java, J2ee, 3-5 yrs in any job board and you will get plenty of similar resumes.

Challenges in volume requirements:

Volume- As the number of positions are more, client expects us to send more profiles. More decent profiles mean more short listings, which in turn means more scheduling and more follow ups!

Time – As it is open to other consultants you don’t have more time to understand the JD. You have to act quickly.

Duplicity – More or less, all the consultants are dependent on Job boards for resumes for such reqs. So as the source is same for all, same candidate is likely to get calls from many consultants. If the candidate doesn’t inform you that his profile has already been processed and you also process it - It will come as a duplicate for you. And it is a waste of time and effort. Duplicity is a major issue in such kind of requirements. Two minutes delay to process a resume can cause a duplicate.

Competition – More number of vendors means increased competition.

Note--In the next post we will discuss about how to approach such positions.

Recruitment Process Explained

Recruitment process explained(from a third party consultant point of view):

1. Requirement gathering
2. Receive the JD
3. Sourcing and sending the resume
4. HR screening
5. Technical screening
6. 1st and 2nd level interview
7. HR round
8. Offer
9. Joining

1. Requirement gathering:

In this phase managers talk to the client hiring managers and gather requirement, i.e, no of open position, basic skill sets , target date of closure etc.

2. Receive the JD:

Here recruiter gets Job Description(here after JD) from the client. The JD explains roles and responsibilities, required skill sets, experience range etc. Before sourcing thorough understanding of the JD is required. If recruiter has any doubt he should contact the client and get clarity.

3. Sourcing:

Sourcing here means finding suitable resume from different sources and talk to the candidates and open them for the requirement.For a recruiter sourcing is a very integral part of their job. Sources of resume can be job portals, database, own network, reference from other candidates, social and professional networking sites etc. Then recruiter has to talk to the candidate, explain them about the requirement properly and tell them why they think his profile can be fitting for the position. If they are looking out, they are interested for the position and their salary expectation is matching to the client benchmark recruiters share there profile with the client.

4.HR screening:

Generally in most of the companies before going to the technical panel the resume goes through the HR coordinators. They screen the resume as per the filters given to them. Whichever resume they find suitable, they send them to technical panel for further screening.

5.Technical screening:

After passing through the HR , resume comes to the technical panel. They also screen the resume to verify if the resume is fitting as per skills required.

6. 1st and 2nd level interview:

All the technical screening shortlisted resume are scheduled for technical interview. It can be telephonic or Face-to-Face according to convenience of both parties. Generally there are two technical interviews. Here technical panel talks to the candidate and try to gaze out the knowledge level of the candidate on required skill sets and if he can fit into scheme of things in the project.

7. HR round:

Once the candidate clears the technical round he faces HR round. Here candidate and HR have salary negotiations, discuss about the notice period and joining date. Again HR checks the candidate on personality front and try to find out if the candidate can be a cultural fit to the organisation.

8. Offer:

If every thing falls into place, candidate is offered by the client. The send a proposed offer letter containing new CTC(cost to company). If candidate accepts the offer then he is officially offered.

Then HR collects different required documents like previous company offer letter, educational certificate copies etc from the candidate. They also do the background verification of the candidate.

9. Joining:

In the mean while the candidate resigns from his company and after serving the notice period joins the new company.

Note:

# Although the above explanation talks about technical requirements , process is more or less same in other types also.

# It was a brief explanation about different aspects of recruitment process and in further posts I will discuss about them in detail.

Fundoo Recruiter