Death of the Position Description

A quick google search will show posts from as early as 2009 about job/position descriptions (PD) or role statements becoming obsolete, but despite this, most of the organisations with whom we work here at Resourceful Pro still want to continue to use these documents to underpin recruitment decisions and performance management reflections. Having said all of that, we have just recently started to see a change in behaviour and a move towards organisations embracing ‘Success Profiles’ or ‘Performance Profiles’.

Let’s start with some definitions; what are the differences between a PD and a Success Profile?

A Position Description is generally a document that outlines the tasks, duties, or responsibilities of a position. It can also include information about reporting structure, level of influence, salary range or job grade, and often the skills or experience required to do the role.

Meanwhile, a Success Profile is a document that is designed to better align the fit between candidate or employee and the job required. Amongst other things, it does this by including measurable short-term and long-term goals that link into organisational needs and objectives; as well as what an employee needs to do once they join, and in which critical performance areas. Often, a success profile will include the competencies and qualities that a person should possess to be successful in attaining the goals. Success profiles also more easily allow for candidates to self-select and better determine if they want to take on the expectations of the role.

Why move to the success profile concept?

PDs are often linked exclusively to a specific job or position and can be seen as a screening out tool – failure to hit the points listed in a PD gives explicit and easy reasons not to hire someone. A success profile is a tool for identifying high performers and a blueprint for pinpointing reasons to hire someone.

Success profiles are also more future focussed – they can answer the question for the candidate or employee on where the organisation wants to go and what it wants to be and what competencies does an organisation need in order to be successful now but also in 3, 5 or 10 years. Often it will be the case that the top performers now may not be the right people to lead the organisation into the future. It is important as an organisation to understand what success looks like – who are the top performers and why? Are they the people who get the most sales, generate the highest profits, or have the highest team retention or employee satisfaction scores? Frequently, it is a combination of metrics – but it is a great exercise to work through this to determine what constitutes success. In addition, a success profile defines what ‘good’ looks like and combine what you know, as the employer, about individual, team, and company success in the organisation.

With our Talent Mapping & Pipelining service line, we often use success profile. They can easily be targeted at a range of roles or even a desired demographic of people. As they are purposefully targeted at a skill group or segmented demographic, they can be extremely valuable tools in creating talent communities and talent pools – for instance, female executives or transformational leaders etc.  In addition, demonstrating the EVP of the organisation as a whole (why work there) is better served through a success profile than a role specific PD.

Some other benefits of well-crafted success profiles are that they enhance the quality of your role & HR content and IP, and they can drive HR efficiencies by providing a consistent methodology for performance management and talent mobility. In addition, they encourage a more seamless transition from recruitment to assessment to development and ultimately onto career & succession planning.

Recruitment is not an exact science but at Resourceful Pro, we have developed an evidence driven approach which helps to de-risk a person hire. We are passionate about looking at more than just the CV, knowledge and experience and we believe this means new hires create value faster, they get promoted more quickly and they stay longer in their roles. Success profiles play a critical role in this.

To learn more about how we use success profiles as part of our behavioural competency assessment methodology or our talent mapping service, please get in touch.