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21st-Century Job 
Descriptions
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For exclusive use at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile), 2015
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2016.
MANAGEMENT
HARVARD
LETTER
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H A R VA R D B U S I N E S S S C H O O L P U B L I S H I N G 
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For exclusive use at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile), 2015
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2016.
3Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.
You’ve probably looked at it from
time to time, and then filed it in the very
back of your drawer. You thought to
yourself, “That’s fine, but it’s not what I
do.”
That virtually useless object is the tra-
ditional job description. It usually lists
percentages and tasks, like “20% of the
employee’s time is spent answering 
the phone and handling customer
inquiries.” It may also list requirements
for the job, like, “The successful candi-
date will have a bachelor’s degree and
five years’ experience in a comparable
field.”
Why does it have so little to do with how
you actually spend your work life now? 
The traditional job description has
failed to change with the workplace.
Jobs are much more fluid, project-ori-
ented, and multifaceted. Companies
hire and fire much faster than they used
to. The corporate world has flattened
hierarchies, eliminated support staff,
and made much greater use of contrac-
tors and other temporary employees.
Mergers and acquisitions have led to
wholesale elimination of job cate-
gories. The Internet has created new
kinds of jobs that are still being defined
and re-defined daily.
Says Lou Adler, president and CEO of
POWER Hiring, Inc., “Traditional job
descriptions are a complete waste of
time. They are the cause of more hiring
errors than any other reason. I think that
anyone who uses them to hire doesn’t
know what they’re doing.”
Dr. Pierre Mornell, author of 45 Effec-
tive Ways for Hiring Smart, puts it sim-
ply: “If the job description is too
restrictive and detailed, people don’t
think out of the box.”
So why have job descriptions at all?
“As fast as society is moving,” says
Roger Plachy, coauthor (with Sandra
Plachy) of More Results-Oriented Job
Descriptions and principal of The Job-
Results Management Institute in Win-
ston-Salem, N.C., “I think you still
need job descriptions to ground and
attach yourself somewhere. Otherwise
you’re liable to lose sight of the job
you’re supposed to do.”
In addition, says Plachy, a “job descrip-
tion is the statement of the employment
relationship. When you walk in the
door, you agree to accomplish certain
things in exchange for money. That is a
business contract. So the job description
is important for relationship-building,
to know what each side is expecting.”
Indeed, in today’s fast-moving work-
place, a job description may be the only
contract you get. How, then, to make it
useful?
Adler says, “You have to focus on what
people will actually learn, do, and
become. That is motivating and inspir-
ing.”
Job descriptions should describe what
results the company wants from the
employee. Rather than focusing on
how an employee should spend his or
her time, the good job description
should focus on performance. What
will success look like? How will it be
measured? How should the employee’s
work affect the mission and needs of
the company? And it should make an
attempt to describe what qualifications
the prospective employee would need
in order to be able to perform that job.
Another way to put it: what is the point
of having the employee work for the
company?
As Adler says, “Don’t say ‘requires an
MBA and five years’ experience,’ say
‘use your MBA to develop an interna-
tional financial plan for a growing new
business in Europe.’ People get excited
about that.”
Plachy adds that a good job description
tells the employee “what I want you to
do and what you need in order to do it.”
Plachy contrasts the old and the new
job description for a receptionist in a
doctor’s office. Where the old descrip-
tion might say something like, “The
receptionist greets patients, answers
questions, and maintains an orderly
reception area,” the new description
would say, “The receptionist comforts
patients by anticipating anxieties,
answering questions, and maintaining
an orderly reception area.” The key dif-
ference is that the latter describes what
the employee is supposed to accom-
plish, rather than merely listing how the
employee should spend time.
This shift in perspective allows the
employer to make the job description
part of an ongoing process that begins
before employment and continues
through the employee’s term of service.
If the job description makes the desired
results clear, it becomes possible to
monitor performance and assess an
employee’s progress. For example, a
sales manager might be charged with
“reducing costs of sales by 30%,” as
part of increasing profitability in a new
software company. That kind of
explicit goal-setting is good manage-
ment at any time, but particularly so in
this era of fast-changing responsibili-
ties and shifting priorities.
Following are some further criteria for
creating the effective, useful job
description.
Consult the entire team. Use the occa-
sion of filling a position to re-evaluate
what that job role really needs to be. In
today’s flat companies, that means
going across functional lines to find out
how that job affects all the other rele-
vant parts of the company. 
21st-Century Job
Descriptions
How to make them relevant and useful
For exclusive use at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile), 2015
This document is authorized for use only in 15 Administraci?n de Recursos Humanos by Rosario Macera, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile) from August 2015 to February 
2016.
H A R VA R D M A N A G E M E N T C O M M U N I C AT I O N L E T T E R F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1
Distinguish among credentials,
skills, and traits. Some jobs require
advanced degrees. Some require skills,
like the ability to program in Java. Oth-
ers require traits, like patience. Spend
some time figuring out what you need
in each area. The effort will at the very
least help the hiring staff remember to
ask questions like, “describe to meone
time when your patience in a job-
related crisis saved the day.”
Take your time. Yes, today’s pace in
the business world is hectic. You need
that new employee to start yesterday.
But the cost of getting rid of the wrong
employee more than outweighs the cost
of the time spent finding the right one.
Make sure you’ve thought through how
the position will help fulfill the com-
pany’s overall mission and goals—and
make that clear in the job description. 
Make sure you comply with all legal
restrictions. The Americans with Dis-
abilities Act of 1990 broadened the
opportunities for disabled workers. It
also made employers’ lives more com-
plicated. Review the law with compe-
tent legal authorities, but keep in mind
that basically it is up to you to ensure
that your job requirements are clearly
related to getting the job done and do
not unfairly prevent people with dis-
abilities from getting hired. 
Describe your company’s culture.
Most employers fail to do this, and yet
culture clashes are the cause of most
bad employee-employer matches. How
high are your performance standards?
What kind of learning curve do you
expect? What is the work ethic? What’s
the management style? Does the com-
pany encourage individuality and ini-
tiative—or the opposite?
Write job descriptions for external,
not internal audiences. Job descrip-
tions often read like mysterious coded
messages to the outside world. Instead,
describe your job in terms that will
attract people from outside the com-
pany. Don’t assume knowledge of what
a job title means. Don’t list ongoing
projects and tasks whose names only
have meaning for the initiated. If you
want to attract potential employees
from outside of your industry, don’t
forget to excise all industry jargon. 
Reveal the salary range of the job.
Many employers are reluctant to do this
because of fear of offending existing
employees, preferring a miasma of
ignorance to veil uneven hiring prac-
tices. This is not only bad management,
it is also potentially illegal. Now is a
good time to figure out if you’re paying
people equally for equal work. 
A clearly written, result-oriented job
description can usefully shape the
beginning of the employee relationship,
as well as help everyone involved to
understand the mission, culture, needs,
and goals of the company. It can lead to
clear performance objectives and mea-
surement. It can give both the employer
and the employee firm guidelines and
milestones as the term of employment
plays out. And it can form the basis of a
legal termination of employment
should that become necessary. �
Further Reading:
45 Effective Ways for Hiring Smart by Pierre Mornell 
(1998, Ten Speed Press,
226 pp., $24.95, available through local and 
online bookstores)
Hire with Your Head: A Rational Way to Make a Gut Decision
by Lou Adler (1998, John Wiley & Sons, 336 pp., $29.95,
available through local and online bookstores)
More Results-Oriented Job Descriptions
by Roger J. Plachy and Sandra J. Plachy
(1997, AMACOM, 333 pp., $65.00, available through 
local and online bookstores)
4
21st-Century Job Descriptions, continued
For exclusive use at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile), 2015
This document is authorized for use only in 15 Administraci?n de Recursos Humanos by Rosario Macera, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile (PUC-Chile) from August 2015 to February 
2016.