Job Description Precision

THE QUESTION COMES IN MANY FORMS, AND WE EITHER ASK IT OR ANSWER IT ALL

THE TIME:

 

What do you do for a living?

What do you do for work?

Or the simplest version: What do you do?

The answers tend to vary. For some of us, our title is enough to adequately explain what we do

to a stranger. We’re not all that lucky, though, and some of us have to be creative to explain

what we do in a 30-second sound bite.

Job descriptions are an unpleasant, yet necessary evil in most organizations. I’ve never met

anyone who enjoys job descriptions in any way. They aren’t enjoyable to read. They are less

enjoyable to write. Yet so many critical activities in organizations rely on good job descriptions.

The Role Job Descriptions Play

We’ll come back to what we mean by a “good” job description later. For now, let’s discuss what

makes job descriptions important in the fi rst place.

Recruiting. Job descriptions are frequently used in job postings, and rightfully so. Outsiders

need to get an understanding of a job in order to know if they should apply for it.

Job leveling. In large organizations, jobs are often grouped into various levels. Generally, these

levels correspond to many factors that help group jobs not by function, but by rarity and

authority, among other things.

Performance reviews. For a performance review, it can be hard to judge whether a person has

done a good job if you haven’t adequately described what the job is. The job description is the

starting point for this, along with goals that can be updated as needed.

Professional development. As an organization plans how performance in different roles may

evolve as employees grow — hopefully into other potential roles — clearly defined jobs are

needed. Descriptions of each role that adequately explain key differences are necessary for

both leadership and individual employees for making professional development decisions.

Compensation benchmarking. Leading organizations benchmark their jobs regularly, but job

titles aren’t enough to do it since companies can be inconsistent in how they use job titles.

(Have you ever benchmarked the term “Account Executive?”) Job descriptions help better

define jobs in order to compare to similar jobs in other organizations for accurate benchmarking.

Incentive compensation design. Incentive compensation by its very nature requires

understanding what a job does, since the incentive compensation must be built to motivate the

appropriate behaviors desired within that job.

Missing the Mark

Poor quality job descriptions cause a cascade of problems in the above areas. But to decipher

what makes a job description “good,” let’s start by discussing the characteristics of a “bad” job

description.

1. A bad job description is overly specific. Being too detailed in a job description can create

many problems:

The job description can be too time-intensive to maintain, as the more detailed it is, the more

likely it is to need continuous adjustments. Not keeping up with the adjustments makes the job

descriptions out-of-date, and once they are out-of-date, people stop trusting them.

The more specific you are, the more you risk describing every individual person as being in their

own job, and therefore having more job descriptions than you really need. Including details such

as the accounts a person may manage or the specific number of people that report to them

risks too narrowly defining the job.

An overly specific job description risks being too long, and therefore causing the reader to lose

interest. This can affect job postings among other things. The reader doesn’t need to know how

many calls per day or emails per day the job may require, or the average length of meetings.

2. A bad job description is written with the wrong audience in mind. A job description

needs to assume the reader is not already familiar with the position. As such, it needs to include

enough detail for the person to understand what the job entails, without using industry jargon or

lingo that may not be understandable to outside job candidates or internal users of the job

description.

3. A bad job description can be too ornate. A job description needs to be accurate. It should

not focus only on the exciting parts of a job, nor should it exaggerate a job’s role in the exciting

activities. If there are less exciting parts of the job, the job description needs to be upfront in

describing them (but not in too much detail).

4. A bad job description can be too short. Being concise is, of course, a good thing. But

the job description still needs to capture the relevant functions of the job. Let’s discuss that in

greater detail, as functions represent the core concept that needs to be explained accurately for

all of these elements to come together.

Fashionable Functions

Focus on the job’s function to avoid the above problems. This is a key principle to recruiting the

right people, properly leveling a job, accurately benchmarking it and creating optimized, relevant

incentive compensation, if appropriate. None of these things happen without getting the

functions right. Function doesn’t necessarily refer to what tasks the job entails. A job may

include setting up meetings, traveling to customers and participating in conference calls. These

all describe tasks associated with a job, but they don’t describe the functions. Functions refer to

the actual things a job is responsible for completing. This may mean a job is overseeing a

variety of processes that are all in the spirit of accomplishing a higher-level responsibility. If so,

that’s a function.

Example One: Account Manager

Account Manager is one of the most common, generic titles out there. A common use of this

title is to describe a job that is the key point of contact for a customer. In that capacity, the

following may be key functions of such a job:

Negotiating and securing annual renewals from assigned customers.

Cross-selling additional products to assigned customers.

Acting as the key facilitator in ensuring that any problems the customer experiences get solved

adequately.

Notice these bullet points do not go into unnecessary details, nor do they waste time on subtasks

that are part of the key functions of the job.

Example Two: Account Servicing Associate

Imagine that the Account Servicing Associate position is a more junior role that works alongside

the above-described Account Manager as part of the account management process. Functions

of that role may include:

Acting as the first-line customer service contact for assigned customers.

Executing basic tasks as needed as part of servicing assigned customers.

Creating quote packages for additional products the customer may be considering purchasing.

Assisting in analysis as needed for use in the negotiation of customer renewals.

Notice these functions remain fairly high level, without getting into too much detail. Now

compare those functions to the following:

Job descriptions are frequently used in job postings, and rightfully so.

Outsiders need to get an understanding of a job in order to know if they

should apply for it.

Participates in the account management process.

Is a key member of the renewal negotiation process.

Helps cross-sell to customers.

Participates in high-level strategic conference calls with executives.

See the problem in the second set of bullet points? They neglect to describe what the job’s role

is in all these things that are described. Functions don’t merely describe what a job participates

in, they also describe the responsibilities associated with the job. Describing things a job may

participate in can lead to employee dissatisfaction as they may feel misled as to what the job’s

responsibilities may or may not be.

Functions, as described above, should be written to describe key differentiators between

different jobs. Multiple jobs may participate in the same processes, but functions need to help

tease out what is different about the roles the jobs play in those processes. These functions are

the key element to help in grouping/leveling jobs, accurately benchmarking (because

benchmarking against a similar functional job is more important than benchmarking against a

Figuring out the right multiplier and qualifiers is different for every business. If the goal is to keep up-front buy sales equal to subscription sales, then equivalent deals need to be modeled to decide what example deals would look like that are of roughly equal size but in two structures. Then the multiplier would need to be set to make sure that commissions will be roughly equal regardless of which type of sale occurs. If the goal is to emphasize subscription sales, then simply increase that multiplier. We used 12x as the multiplier in the earlier example, but going to 15x would clearly send the signal that subscriptions are preferred. Going in the other direction, an 8x multiplier would push the sales reps to sell more up-front buys, while still compensating them for the subscription sales that do occur.  If subscriptions are annual, as many are for SaaS products, then the multipliers will be much lower (between 2x and 5x).

 

 

As sales compensation professionals, it is our job to translate the organization’s overall sales strategy into a coherent sales compensation model that appropriately pushes the right kind of sale.