Meaning, Need and Features of Job specification

Job specification can help hiring managers decide which qualities and requirements are most important in a candidate. When reading these job specifications, a candidate can decide whether they have the right experience, education and characteristics to apply for a specific job. Learning the details and components of job specifications can help you create effective ones to hire the best talent for your company. In this article, we discuss what a job specification is, why it is important, what elements are in a job specification and give examples of each.

A job specification is the list of recommended qualities for a person to qualify for and succeed in a position. While the job description includes the title position, responsibilities and summary, the specification identifies the skills, traits, education and experience a candidate might need to qualify for that job. This helps outline a candidate’s capabilities to perform what’s listed in the job description.

Need:

A job specification is important because it can help provide more insight into what skills a candidate will use in a role rather than what tasks they will do. Hiring managers write these to help encourage the most qualified candidates to apply for a job. Often, recruiters or other human resources employees use the job specification to understand what qualifications, education and skills the hiring manager seeks as they help to fill the position. An effective job specification can help a company find and hire the most qualified person.

Features:

1. Skills & Knowledge

This is an important parameter in job specification especially with knowledge and skill based profiles. The higher the position in a company, the more niche the skills become and more is the knowledge required to perform the job. Skills like leadership, communication management, time management, team management etc. are mentioned.

2. Experience

Job specification clearly highlights the experience required in a particular domain for completing a specific job. It includes work experience which can be from a specific industry, position, duration or in a particular domain. Managerial experience in handling and managing a team can also be a job specification criteria required for a particular position.

3. Educational Qualification

This parameter gives an insight on how qualified a certain individual is. It covers their basic school education, graduation, masters degree, other certifications etc.

4. Personality traits and characteristics

The way in which a person behaves in a particular situation, handles complex problems, generic behaviour etc. are all covered in the characteristics of a job description. It also covers the emotional intelligence of a person i.e how strong or weak a person is emotionally.

Advantages of Job Specification

• It gives the HR managers a threshold and a framework on the basis on which they can identify the best prospects.
• Job specification highlights all the specific details required to perform the job at its best.
• Helps in screening of resumes and saves time when there are multiple applications by choosing those who are closest to the job specification.
• HR managers can used job specification as a benchmark to evaluate employees and give them required trainings.
• It also helps companies during performance appraisal and promotions.

Disadvantages of Job Specification

• Job description is time bound and changes with changing technology and changing knowledge & skill requirements.
• It is a time consuming process as it has to be very thorough and complete.
• It can only give a framework of emotional characteristics and personality traits but cannot specify the experience or forecast complex issues is any