Recruiting: Job Brief Tips

There is a difference between a role’s Position Description and a Job Brief. Which do you use when recruiting?

While the position description is important in the hiring process especially at employment agreement stage, a detailed Job Brief is key to the success of your recruitment campaign – that is attracting and selecting quality candidates.

Why?

All too often a position description is filled with jargon; and fails to communicate or highlight what the job actually does on a daily basis.

 

The Job Brief

The Job Brief allows the recruiter to define why the job exists, the overall purpose of the job, what you want it to achieve in the next 12 – 18 months, what the job does on a day-to-day basis and what it would take for someone to be successful in the job.

In short, a Job Brief helps to: communicate not only the specific job requirements, but also what type of candidate would be best suited for the position.

The Job Brief is a recruiter’s roadmap, it is the foundation for all your recruitment activity. If done correctly, it sets the recruiter up nicely to write compelling advertisements that will captivate the right candidates, and it informs the recruiter how to ask the right qualifying questions of candidates.

Even if you are short on time, this is the one step you don’t want to skip. The Job Brief will help to:

1. Reduce your time to hire by filtering out applicants that don’t match your job’s specific criteria
2. Mitigate risk and cost of poor hires by asking the right questions; and matching both employer and candidate job expectations.

To help you better embrace this best practice – we’ve provided the basic steps below.

5. Qualifications required

• What trade/tertiary/university qualification is required?

For example: Site engineer requires Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) degree.

6. Key personality and behavioural attributes

What personality and behavioural attributes will help them:

• perform well in the job
• fit in well with the team
• deal well with customers

For example: a team player, helpful, strong work ethic, friendly.

 

7. What’s In It for the Candidate

The selling points!

This is essential information to help market the opportunity via advertising and conversations with candidates/prospects.

Some important factors to candidates when considering a job opportunity are:

• Culture
• Team
• Manager
• Career opportunities
• Career development
• Recognition
• Lifestyle balance
• Flexibility
• Social responsibility
• Leading technology
• Market position
• Company stability

 

What does your company offer?

TIP: If you or the hiring manager can’t answer this – speak to a current employee (performing well) in the role or a similar one. After all they represent your target audience.

 

The Job Brief helps you set up your candidate selection – qualifying process. Such as designing the job specific application, phone screen, interview and reference check questions, and selecting appropriate assessments.