Chapter 2

Job Analysis and the Talent Management Process

Learning Outcomes
• Define talent management and explain why it is important.
• Discuss the process of job analysis, including why it is important.
• Explain how to use at least three methods of collecting job analysis
information.
• Explain how you would write a job description.
• Explain how to write a job specification.
• Explain competency-based job analysis and how it’s done in practice.

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Talent Management
• the holistic, integrated and results and goal-oriented process of planning,

recruiting, selecting, developing, managing, and compensating employees .

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Actions required to take Talent Management
Approach
• Starting with the results and determining the kind of recruiting,
testing, training, or pay action should be taken to produce the
employee competencies we need to achieve our company’s goals.
• Recruiting, training etc. are viewed as interrelated activities. For
example, the manager knows that having employees with the right
skills depends as much on recruiting and training as on applicant
testing.
• Using the same “profile” of required human competencies for
formulating a job’s recruitment plans as for making selection,
training, appraisal, and compensation decisions for it.
• Takes steps to actively coordinate/integrate talent management
functions
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Job Analysis
• The procedure for determining the duties and skill requirements of a
job and the kind of person who should be hired for it.
• Job analysis produces information for writing job descriptions and
job specifications.

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Elements of Job analysis
•Job Description
• A list of job duties, responsibilities, reporting relationships, working
conditions and supervisory responsibilities. That means, it is a list of what the
job entails. It keeps on relevant information about a job.

•Job Specification
• It is a statement of the skills, abilities, education, work experience physical
make up, intelligence etc. that are required to perform a job. That means,
what kind of people are required to perform the job is job specification

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Significance of Job analysis
• A clear description of roles and responsibilities through job analysis ensures that
every level of organizational hierarchy understands its contribution and adds
value to the product/service development and delivery with minimum overlap or
wastage of resources.
• A proactive job analysis also contributes to organizational performance by
promoting positive job attitudes and work commitment.
• it offers a useful opportunity to assess the physical and social context of work
and make necessary changes to enhance employees’ interest in their jobs
(Dessler et al., 1999).
• job analysis can be used to identify factors that shape workers’ motivation and
job satisfaction. Example: salary structure of NSU
• Timely and accurate information on job duties and responsibilities as well as level
of performance required to achieve results provides workers with clear direction
and definite targets to pace their performance efforts efficiently.
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information collected through job analysis
1. Work activities
2. Human behaviors
3. Machines, tools, equipment, and work aids
4. Performance standards
5. Job context
6. Human requirements

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Uses of Job Analysis Information
Recruitment & Selection
• Information about what duties the job entails and what human
characteristics are required to perform these activities.
• These activities helps managers to decide what sort of people to
recruit and hire.
Performance Appraisal
• Job analysis is crucial for all major human resource practices which
helps to compare the actual performance with the standard.
Compensation
• Compensation (such as salary & bonus) usually depends on the job’s
required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of
responsibility and so on- these all factors are assessed through job
analysis.
Training
• The job description lists the job’s specific duties and required skills –
thus pinpointing what training the job requires.
Steps in Job Analysis
Decide how will you use the information

Review relevant background information

Select Representative Positions

Actually Analyze the Job

Verify the Job Analysis Information

Develop Job Description and Job Specification

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1. Decide the way of using information:
• At first the job analyst should decide how they will use the
information which will help them to decide which data is to be
collected and how it will be collected.
2. Review background information:
• In this step, the job analyst needs to review the background
information such as organizational hierarchy that describes the
organization – wide division of work, with titles of each position
and inter connecting lines.
3. Select Representative Positions:
• An HR manager with the help of various line managers will identify
and priorities the jobs to be analysed.

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4. Actually Analyze the Job:
• In brief, job analysis process involves greeting each employee, briefly
explain the job analysis process and the participant role in the process,
interview the employee to get agreement on the basic summary of the job,
identify the job’s broad areas of responsibility, and interactively
identifying specific duties/task within each area.
5. Verify the Job Analysis Information:
• It is to verify the job analysis information with the worker performing the
job and with his/her immediate supervisor. This will help to confirm that
the information is actually correct and complete and help to gain their
acceptance
6. Develop Job Description and Job Specification:
• Job description lists the duties, activities, and responsibilities of the job,
as well as its important features like working conditions.
• Job specification summarizes the personal qualities, traits, skills, and
background required for getting the job.
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Methods for collecting job analysis information

Interview

Questionnaire
Methods for collecting
Job Analysis
information
Observation

Participant Diary/log

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1. Interview
• Information Sources
• Individual employees
• Groups of employees (when
large of employees performing
similar task)
• Supervisors with knowledge of
the job
Interview Formats
•Structured (Checklist) interview contains
specified terms or predetermined terms
to check off.
•Unstructured interview involves with the
interview questions like “Tell me about
your job”.

Advantages
• Quick, direct way to find overlooked
information

Disadvantages
• Distorted information
Typical Questions asked in Job Analysis Interview

• What is the job being performed?

• What are the major duties of the job?
• What other locations you work in?
• What activities do you participate?
• What type of qualification do you think needs to perform this
job?
• What are the basic performance standards?
• What are your working conditions?

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Guidelines for conducting interview

• Quickly establish rapport with the interviewee

• Follow a structured guide or checklist that lists open ended
questions and provide spaces for the answer
• Ask the workers to list his duties in order of importance and
frequency of occurrence
• After completing interview, review and verify data

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2.Questionnaire
• Information Sources
• asking employees to describe their
job-related duties and
responsibilities through
questionnaire
• Either open-ended or structured
Questionnaire Formats
•Structured Checklist questionnaire
contains specific question with
specific options to check off.
•Open-ended questions involves with
questions without specification like
“Describe the major duties of your
work”.

Advantages
• Quick and efficient way to gather
information from large numbers of
employees
• Less costly

Disadvantages
• Time consuming
• Filtered information
3. Observation
• Especially useful when jobs consist mainly of observable physical
activities such as assembly-line worker.
• Observation is usually not appropriate when the job entails a lot of
mental activity (lawyer, design engineer).
• Managers often use direct observation and interviewing together

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4.Participant Dairy/Logs
• Information Sources
• Workers keep a
chronological diary/ log of
what they do and the time
spent on each activity.

Advantages
• Produce more concrete picture.
• Employee participation.

Disadvantages
• Distortion of information.
• Depends totally on employees.
Writing Job Descriptions
• There is no standard format for writing a job description. However,
most descriptions contain sections that cover:
1. Job identification
2. Job summary
3. Responsibilities and duties
4. Authority of incumbent
5. Standards of performance
6. Working conditions
7. Job specification

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Writing Job specifications (Trained vs. untrained)
• In case of trained candidates, focus is given mostly on factors such as
length of previous service, quality of relevant training, and previous
job performance
• Here you must specify qualities such as physical traits, personality,
interests, or sensory skills that imply some potential for performing
the job or for trainability
• Employers identify the job’s human requirements.

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Approaches of identifying job’s human
requirement
1. a subjective, judgmental approach
2. statistical analysis.

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1. Specifications Based on Judgment
• The basic procedure here is to ask about the key human qualities
required to do this job well.
• One can simply review the job’s duties, and deduce from those what human traits and
skills the job requires
• One can also choose human traits and skills from those listed in Web-based job
descriptions like those at www.jobdescription.com.
• Generic work behavior, taking initiative, practicing self development, displaying high
integrity, drives for results, develops others hard working nature etc. are some key
human traits highly valued by employers.

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Job Specifications Based on Statistical Analysis
• The aim of this approach is to measure relationship between human
traits and job effectiveness. The aim here is to determine if these
traits predict the performance.
• This procedure has five steps:
• analyze the job and decide how to measure job performance
• select personal traits like finger dexterity that you believe should predict performance;
• test candidates for these traits
• measure these candidates’ subsequent job performance
• statistically analyze the relationship between the human trait (finger dexterity) and job
performance

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Competency based job analysis
• Instead of listing the job’s duties, company today are listing the
knowledge, skills, and experience someone needs to do the job.
• Such models or profiles list the competencies employees must be
able to exhibit to get their jobs done.
• cluster of highly interrelated attributes are treated as competency
that give rise to the behaviors someone would need to perform a
given job effectively

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Redesigning a job
• Job analysis in a worker-empowered world can be done in three
ways:
1. Job enlargement
• Assigning workers additional same level activities. Thus, for example, the
worker who previously only bolted the seat to the legs might attach the back
too
2. Job rotation
• Moving workers from one job to another
3. Job enrichment
• Redesign job in such a way that increases the opportunity to experience
feeling of responsibility, growth, responsibility and achievement and
therefore, more motivation. It does this by empowering the worker—for
instance, by giving the worker the skills and authority to inspect the work,
instead of having supervisors do that.
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