Looking for a valuable employee: How to create a job profile

Definition of the concept

Job profiles represent a set of professional and personal competencies that an applicant for a particular position must meet. At the moment, there is no formalized description of the characteristics that a representative of a particular profession should have, and therefore managers draw up these documents independently.

We can say that the job profile is a kind of standard in accordance with which the employee must perform his duties. The description should be detailed and, most importantly, realistic. The document must display the following main positions:

• the place and significance of the position in the organizational structure of a particular enterprise;
• functional responsibilities that must be performed by an employee hired for this position;
• profile, which lists the main competencies that an applicant for the position must have;
• personal qualities that are necessary to perform certain duties;
• the minimum list of requirements that the organization puts forward for its employees.

Thus, we can say that job profiles represent a set of characteristics that an employee must meet. This is a specific standard that describes the responsibilities, as well as the qualifications and personal parameters of the applicant.

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Why are job profiles needed?

HR managers regularly face the question of filling one or another vacant position. Without drawing up a comprehensive job profile, you should not proceed with the direct selection of employees. This document is a kind of hint that is used in the following cases:

• selection of candidates to fill vacant positions;
• for certification of already working personnel in order to determine the degree of compliance with the position held (this also applies to employees who have completed a probationary period);
• for the purpose of drawing up plans for personnel training and professional development;
• if you need to create a personnel reserve for the future;
• in order to plan career growth and further promotion of employees to senior positions in the organization.

Quite often, the job profile of a candidate for a particular post is confused with the job description. The fundamental difference between these two documents is that the second is drawn up on the basis of legal requirements. A job description is a general document that is drawn up for the profession as a whole, and not for a specific employee of a particular organization. It defines the main responsibilities and working conditions. A job profile is a document of a local nature that does not have clear requirements for content and structure. The HR manager (or other HR workers) draws it up based on his own experience or the general practice of the organization.

What is the difference between a recruiter and an HR manager?

The recruiter deals only with the search and initial assessment of employees, sometimes with their introduction into work processes and adaptation. This type of position is reserved for organizations with high staff turnover or very large companies (for example, retail chains). A recruiter is also needed at the startup stage, when the core of the team is being formed from scratch.

An HR manager is a specialist who performs all (or most) of the functions related to people management, including the ability to select employees as needed or formulate a search task for an outsourced hunter (for example, for a recruitment agency).

Professional competencies

Each position requires the employee to have certain competencies. These are qualification characteristics that are necessary to perform certain jobs. Thus, the competency profile of a position usually includes the following points:

• strategic thinking (implies the ability to draw up long-term plans taking into account possible risks and alternative options);
• influence on others (the ability to defend one’s point of view, as well as convince others of its correctness);
• problem-solving skills (the ability to adequately respond to non-standard situations and difficulties, as well as quickly find ways out of them);
• information search (selection and filtering of data, ability to find and use relevant sources);
• ability to work with clients and counterparties (taking into account interests, understanding psychology, satisfying wishes and needs);
• flexibility (quick response and decision-making in accordance with the changing situation);
• focus on quality (knowledge and compliance with all requirements and standards, as well as the desire for continuous improvement).

Depending on what position we are talking about, the list of competencies may expand or narrow. The professional profile of a position contains not only requirements, but also the degree of their expression (basic, high, maximum). This indicator can be determined based on the results of an interview or through special psychological tests.

Specific competencies of the position

The second group of skills included in the competency profile includes specific or personal competencies. These are the skills and knowledge required to perform certain duties, as well as the behavioral styles that this particular employee must adhere to. For example, a sales manager must have strong leadership skills to set clear goals for his team, set expectations, provide constructive feedback, and encourage independence in handling situations.

The list of specific competencies will be useful not only for hiring, but also for improving the skills of employees, forming a personnel reserve, and will also allow us to identify criteria that will serve as a measure of employee success.

How is it compiled?

Creating a job profile is a fairly labor-intensive process. Its necessity is due to the fact that this document allows you to determine the parameters that a valuable employee should have. Having correctly formulated a profile, HR specialists greatly facilitate the process of searching and selecting new employees. When drawing up a document, you should be guided by a number of recommendations and rules:

• The job title should be short and clearly reflect its essence. It is also worth creating a brief description that will contain a list of the employee’s main responsibilities. Can be presented in the form of a list of tasks. This will be the basis of the job profile.
• The list of basic information about the position should include not only the work procedure, but also the salary, which will be one of the key points during the interview. It is also worth describing the hierarchy of subordination, as well as an approximate list of people with whom the new employee will have to interact.
• To perform job duties, you must have a set of certain competencies. This list should not be too extensive (no more than 10 items). It can be compiled on the basis of personal experience, theoretical research, observations of employees, as well as a sociological survey. You can divide competencies into several groups (for example, specific and corporate).

The profile should be both short and succinct. This will allow you to obtain comprehensive information without spending too much time processing it.

Main stages of creation

Developing a job profile includes several sequential stages:

• At the first stage of drawing up the document, you should carefully study the job descriptions, as well as all information regarding the specifics of the enterprise. You can conduct conversations with employees or a sociological survey using standardized forms.
• Next, the circle of people who will be directly involved in the work is determined. Most often, this issue is dealt with by HR specialists. However, it is also important to involve the heads of other functions for which the profiles are being compiled. The work can be carried out jointly or separately, with subsequent integration of the results obtained into the final working document.
• The third stage involves studying the organizational structure of the enterprise in order to determine the place of a particular position in it. Subordinates must be identified, as well as immediate superiors, to whom the new employee will report.
• Next is a detailed description of the functional responsibilities that correspond to a particular position. The basis is taken not only by regulations, but also by personal experience at a particular enterprise.
• At the fifth stage, the HR manager (or other specialist who is involved in compiling the profile) must determine the list of knowledge and skills that will be required to perform the job responsibilities. We are talking about professional competencies.
• Having decided on competencies, it is important to distribute them by degree of importance, as well as the level at which a specialist should possess them. This will facilitate the personnel selection procedure.
• Next, the working group members must determine what personal characteristics an applicant for the vacant position should have. Sometimes character traits are even more important than professional competencies, because the latter can be developed, but the former can become a serious obstacle in the work process.
• At the eighth stage, it is necessary to determine the general requirements for the employee. Usually this is gender, age, level of education or work experience, etc. It is worth noting that the first two signs are not always appropriate to use, because legislation can interpret them as discrimination.
• The last stage involves determining the criteria according to which the employee’s performance will be determined. They can be used during a probationary period or for periodic assessment of the quality of work of existing employees.

It is worth noting that this algorithm is not mandatory for compliance in all organizations. Depending on the size of the enterprise, as well as the specifics of its organizational structure, some stages may be omitted, and additional ones may be introduced.

Drafting sample

At the moment, there is no unified form in accordance with which a profile of the requirements for a position would be compiled. And the professions themselves at each enterprise may have specific requirements. Nevertheless, HR managers have already developed a certain practice, in accordance with which a job profile is drawn up. A sample might look like this:

• job title, according to the staffing table;
• brief description (what the employee must do);
• essential conditions (work schedule, salary level, etc.);
• requirements for the applicant for the position (level of education, experience in a particular field, certain special skills);
• expanded list of job responsibilities;
• corporate competencies that a potential employee of a particular organization must have;
• psychological tests and other methods for assessing an employee’s suitability for a particular position.

This is a rough template. Most often, this is the structure of the job profile. The sample can be expanded or narrowed, depending on the structure of the organization. Also, additional parameters can be entered for specific positions.

BOSSHUNT

A vacancy profile is a list of minimum candidate requirements that is indicated in posted vacancies for specific positions. Most often it contains: a) Personal data and mandatory competencies, including: age, education, work experience, adequacy of salary expectations, knowledge of foreign languages, availability of a driver’s license and car, level of PC proficiency, etc. b ) Personal qualities (behavioral skills): activity, energy, communication skills, result orientation, analytical thinking, leadership, etc. c) Professional skills depending on the field of activity and position: sales, finance, logistics, management, advertising, etc. etc. It is important to understand that when compiling a profile, the peculiarities of the company’s corporate culture and the specific content of the work are taken into account.

Job profile "Sales Representative"

Let's look at the example of the position of sales representative . The vacancy profile is compiled using the general position profile approved by the company.

1. Job profile
2. Job profile

1. Sales Representative Job Profile Sample

Contents of the work: 1. Working with the client 2. Working with products 3. Representing the company TP functions: 1. Working with the client: • Trade turnover: • Ensuring the availability of products at points of sale; • Working with points of sale and clients (product range, orders, delivery control, customer payments (accounts receivable); • Ensuring sales to end consumers (merchandising on the shelf, consultations at points of sale); • Creating and maintaining a customer base (ABC - active customer base); • Search for new customers; • Collection and analysis of sales statistics; • Training of sales personnel.

2. Presentation of the campaign: • Ensuring compliance with the corporate image; • Ensuring the credibility of the company's growth; • Ensuring compliance with the brand strategy; • Ensuring compliance with campaign policies and image; • Training and transfer of experience to new colleagues.

3. Professional qualities of a sales representative:

• Communication skills; • Entrepreneurship; • Power of persuasion; • Focus on results; • Ability to represent the brand.

4. Organizational qualities of a sales representative:

• Discipline and self-organization; • Honesty and integrity; • Punctuality; • Planning.

5. Personal qualities of a sales representative:

• Positivism (winner attitude); • Proactivity; • Team spirit; • Flexibility; • Listening skills; • Autonomy; • Self confidence; • Determination.

This is what the job description looks like based on the specified employee profile criteria for the position of sales representative.

2. Job profile Position: sales representative

General objectives of the position: Achieving KPI goals (key performance indicators): sales volume, product distribution, pricing control, increasing product representation on the shelf (share, product placement, design with promotional materials).

Main responsibilities: Planning control over customer sales at each outlet; Coordination and control of the assortment matrix and pricing; Shares and places of display of products on retail shelves; Placement of advertising material on retail shelves.

Reporting to: Sales Manager

Candidate requirements: General: 2 years of experience in sales, experience in a Western company as an advantage; Additional education, business skills training is a plus; Higher education; Personal car in good technical condition; Mobile phone with direct landline number; English is a plus for further career growth; User of PDA, PC (Power Point, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word).

Personality/Behavioral Characteristics: Goal-oriented; Energy/Activity; Communication skills; Teamwork; Customer orientation.

Professional skills: Basics of sales (distribution, pricing, merchandising); Seven steps to a sales representative's visit; Rules and principles of negotiations; Presentation skills.

Why do applicants need to know what a vacancy profile is and what parameters are used to compile it?

Researching a candidate's profile is a very important step and contains keywords that need to be included in the resume and used in interview responses. A resume sent to a posted vacancy must meet the specified criteria as accurately as possible, otherwise your resume will not even appear in the search results and the chances of being viewed are minimal.

In the article What does the job profile of a regional manager look like, you can find out what general requirements companies put forward and what needs to be included in a resume for the position of a sales manager.

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Raisa Sorokina

Find out more at www.raisasorokina.ru
Career expert, resume and business letter copywriter, interview coach, founder and author of publications on bosshunt.ru.

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HR Manager Job Profile

A personnel manager is one of the most responsible positions in an enterprise, because the quality of the workforce depends on this employee. Therefore, special requirements are imposed on personnel officers, which are reflected in a document such as a position profile. A sample could be as follows:

• skills in working with people (an HR manager must have communication and dispute resolution skills);
• quick involvement (the HR specialist should not be indifferent, he should have an interest in solving certain issues);
• taking initiative in matters related to improving the structure and quality of personnel;
• openness to communication (this quality is necessary due to the specific features of the position);
• enthusiasm in solving current issues;
• a positive mood that will be transmitted to all other team members;
• ability to conduct a conversation (it is the manager who plays the leading role in conversations with potential and actual employees);
• leadership skills;
• public speaking skills (for presenting reports and reports to senior management, as well as conducting seminars for subordinates);
• thinking outside the box to make creative decisions in emergency situations;
• oratory skills, persuasiveness of statements;
• speed of thinking and quickness in action;
• the ability to adapt to changing conditions (as well as providing assistance to newly hired employees);
• lack of fear of risk (this characteristic should be moderately expressed);
• independence in decision making;
• the ability to experiment and find new approaches to management;
• a sense of humor that helps defuse stressful and tense situations.

The position profile of the manager responsible for personnel selection must be drawn up with special care, because this position is one of the key ones in any enterprise. The person applying for this position must fully meet the requirements, because it is on his shoulders that the responsibility for forming the personnel will fall.

How to find a good HR manager? Tips for employers

• Look for a person with the following qualities: a high level of activity, the ability to overcome difficulties, and solve non-standard problems.
• Assess the ability to quickly establish contact with people, the presence of empathy and flexibility in communication.
• Don’t get hung up on specialized education; consider people with different work experience.

If you need a remote employee, add an advertisement seeking a HR manager to the Kadrof.ru website. If a specialist is needed in the office, the vacancy can be added to employment sites.

Author: Kadrof.ru (KadrofID: 79032) Added: 02/02/2020 at 13:43

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Requirements for a sales manager

Quite often you can find such a vacancy as a sales manager. Despite the fact that many young people begin their career path with such work, already at this stage quite serious demands are placed on applicants. A typical sales manager job profile looks like this:

• willingness to constantly communicate with a wide range of people (suppliers, customers, buyers, etc.);
• ability to quickly make decisions based on the results of negotiations with counterparties;
• the ability to maintain an optimistic mood in a conversation, as well as create an atmosphere of trust;
• creativity of thinking (important in product presentation);
• the ability to rationally organize your time (since work involves many daily meetings and negotiations);
• diplomatic tone in communication with counterparties and clients;
• emotional balance, the ability to remain calm in stressful situations, and quickly find a way out of conflicts;
• the ability to find a common language with different types of personalities;
• loyalty to the product being sold.

It is worth noting that the given position profile is very approximate. The example can be expanded or shortened according to the needs of a particular organization.

TestProfi will help you create a job profile and use it

The TestProfi online personnel assessment system allows you to automatically create a job profile based on personal competencies. Using the Grani online questionnaire, you can identify the personal characteristics inherent in the most successful employees of your organization.

Fragment of the report on personal competencies of Grani

Based on the information received, the system will create a position profile with the necessary personal competencies, on the basis of which you will be able to conduct selection and certification. TestProfi also provides access to a library of standard job profiles for the most popular specialties, for example, the job profile of an accountant, sales manager, marketer and more than 30 other specialties.

Basic approaches to creating a job profile

The development of a job profile can be carried out in accordance with two main approaches:

• The situational approach implies that the document is drawn up on an emergency basis when it is necessary to urgently fill a vacant position. Since time is very limited, the document is drawn up very roughly, indicating only the most basic requirements for a potential employee. In the future, this blank can serve to form a full-fledged profile.
• The methodological approach implies thorough work, the results of which will develop clear features of the position, necessary competencies, personal qualities, and functional areas of responsibility. It will contain all the comprehensive information, and therefore will be considered a working document when searching and selecting personnel. As the organization undergoes any reforms, the profile will also undergo changes.

Job Profiler: how to create a job profile

In order to structure the processes of hiring, employee evaluation or internal promotion in a company, it is first of all important to understand what requirements are imposed on a specific position and what kind of person managers at different levels see in this position.

One of the best ways to compare, agree and capture the vision and expectations of different parties for a position is to profile it: define a set of important competencies.

Profiling is based on a competency model from which participants select key ones. This could be the company’s own competency model or, if it doesn’t exist, a ready-made library with a list of competencies that covers all possible business situations, roles and standards of behavior. Such libraries help not to waste time on formulating competencies, but focus on choosing priority ones for a specific company and position.

Profiling can take place in the format of a face-to-face meeting. As a rule, the participants in the process are managers at different levels, successful employees in this position, colleagues from related functions, and ideally, representatives of external clients and the company’s HR functions. The meeting is facilitated by an external consultant.

However, it is not always possible to gather all participants together, which is why many companies use an online profiling solution.

In our practice, we regularly use the Job Profiler online competency profiling service
.
This is a tool with which company representatives (usually up to 20 people) prioritize competency cards online, that is, determine the significance of each competency for a position on a special online platform.

Each expert does this independently, without seeing what profile the others have compiled, and this leads to the first key advantage of the online format - it allows you to find out everyone’s point of view: if at a face-to-face meeting one of the participants may not speak out or be influenced by more expressive experts, then on the online platform he will in any case formulate his vision. An additional advantage is that there is no need to coordinate the meeting time of all participants.

Job Profiler is based on the Wave competency library of the British company Saville Assessment. This is one of the most comprehensive libraries on the market, written in clear business language. It contains 36 competencies and is structured into 4 clusters: solves problems; influences people; adapts the method of action; achieves results.

Participants “arrange” 36 competency cards into 7 columns, ranking them from “unimportant” to “critically important.” The service also offers you to select destructors - competencies that will interfere with the employee’s work. The process takes on average 20–30 minutes.

All answers are collected into a single upload, and the system calculates the final profile using a customized mathematical algorithm, taking into account the similarities and differences in the selection of experts. The resulting profile can be used for selection, internal development planning and training of successors - the Wave model has an extensive ready-made toolkit for assessment and development.

But most often, different representatives of the company have different ideas about the position, so usually the work does not end there.

Job Profiler inevitably reveals differences in the views of experts regarding the tasks of the profiled position, and often the company’s business priorities, and stimulates discussion of questions about the role of the position in the company, its complexity and significance, the possibility or impossibility of performing these tasks within one position by one employee. In other words, Job Profiler essentially forces stakeholders to carefully consider and agree on the company's position vision and requirements.

This thoroughness at the stage of developing requirements is a guarantee that people who meet these requirements will really be useful to the company.

To start this discussion, Job Profiler presents information in three ways:

1. Shows the profile that was created for each profiling participant

— you see which employee, with what set of qualities, different participants imagine to be successful in this position: an employee who is already successfully coping with the tasks of this position, his manager, managers at higher levels, a representative of a related department or client.

This aspect allows you to identify all discrepancies, record the difference in requirements and expectations from the position and ask questions about the role of the position in the company: can the range of these tasks really be entrusted to one person, is one position enough for these roles, are all the tasks of the position really important for business goals of the company.

2. Job Profiler calculates the profile obtained for each group of participants

. You can see the profile of not only a specific expert, but also the entire group - colleagues, managers, subcontractors, HR specialists. This helps determine:

• how employees achieve success in this position now (the view of successful employees);
• what competencies are identified as important by managers. Most often they are about the “ideal” picture. The employees’ point of view is the “as is” image, and the manager’s view is most often the “to be” image. Comparing their opinions helps to see the discrepancies between the qualities that lead to success in this position today and the competencies expected of employees in the future.
• what competencies are important in this position for successful cross-functional interaction (they are highlighted by colleagues from their adjacent departments).

3. Job Profiler calculates the integral final profile of the position’s competencies

. You immediately receive a finished product - a list of competencies ranked by importance that are important for achieving success at work. Considering that the Wave library has 36 competencies and they cover the entire cycle of solving any business problem, the finished profile is as complete as possible: there is no chance to leave out important “software” competencies.

We profiled positions with Job Profiler in companies in different industries: retail, banks, insurance sector and even manufacturing companies. We have not yet encountered situations where the Wave model turned out to be insufficiently complete or lacked some competencies to describe roles and behavioral manifestations.

Job Profiler calculates a profile for which there are already developed assessment and development tools: tests, questionnaires, assessment centers, a menu of development actions, on the basis of which an IPR can be generated.

So, literally the next day after online profiling, you can organize a profile assessment of any number of candidates and employees - ten, a hundred or a thousand - a wide range of tools allows this.

Profiling using the online Job Profiler tool is an opportunity to obtain a calculated profile that balances the requirements and vision of the position of all stakeholders, and can easily proceed to its use in assessment and development. And most importantly, this is a way to raise often insufficiently fully developed questions about the difference in views of different experts and about the role of the profiled position in the company.

conclusions

It is worth noting that for successful recruitment it is important that the company has a job profile. It is quite difficult to give an example of a unified document, since this issue is not regulated by law, but remains at the discretion of the company’s managers.

A profile is one of the main tools that is used in selecting candidates to fill a particular vacant position. In addition, in accordance with this document, periodic certification of personnel or verification based on the results of the probationary period can be carried out. Depending on the results of the study, areas for improving the level of qualifications can be identified.

When compiling a profile, one of two approaches can be used. Situational occurs when there is an urgent need to fill a vacant vacancy. In this case, the job description can be compiled very roughly, indicating only the main characteristics. If we talk about the methodological approach, then a thorough, detailed document is developed, which is constantly used in personnel selection practice.

The typical process of developing a job profile involves going through several successive stages. To begin with, the features of the profession are studied, as well as the requirements for it put forward by regulations. It is also necessary to form a group of competent specialists who will take part in the preparation of documents. The profile is compiled taking into account the organizational structure of the enterprise, and therefore it must also be carefully studied. The main part of the document is a description of the potential employee’s job responsibilities, as well as competency requirements. It is also worth paying attention to personal qualities (communication skills, stress resistance, and so on).