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I've been fortunate to
have had opportunities during my career to create jobs.
Ultimately I even ended up creating customized jobs for
myself, based on bringing my best talents and passions
to giving great value to my employer.
In this article, I'm
going to describe the general approach. In the next
ones, I'll walk you through the process of creating a
job which could just be the most exciting work you've
ever done.
First, let's recognize
that EVERY job was created by someone, at some point in
time. Your job description might have been invented by
your boss in order to hire you. Or it may be a job role
defined by someone back in 1910 who had no idea that
people would still be using it a century later.
Job descriptions are
created as the best possible balance between:
- short term and long
term value delivered to the organization;
- the cost of getting
someone in that role; and
- interactions with
other roles around it.
"Value" is itself a
complex formula which includes what the employee
delivers, how that is used by other people, how it
impacts what customers pay, and so on. "Cost" includes
salary, benefits, hiring, cost of managing the role,
expectations set about maintaining that employee in the
future, associated risks, and other factors.
The reason why I'm
explaining this is that it sets the context for how to
create your own job description. A typical process for
creating a job is:
- Identify the need,
the value that would be provided.
- Look around for
existing similar job descriptions that would seem to
be a good fit.
- Tweak as
appropriate, including making a generic job
description more specific.
- Evaluate the cost,
direct and indirect, of creating and maintaining
that job.
- Ensure approval,
buy-in and support of others affected by this new
job.
- Start the hiring and
selection process.
As you can see, there's
already some degree of customization involved in this.
Your company's culture and rules will govern how much is
normal. There will be a variety of people (stakeholders
and gatekeepers) involved in refining and approving a
job description.
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Carl Dierschow is a
certified Organizational Leadership Coach and author of
the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23
Secrets to Rediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your
Work. He is a career coach for those going through
interesting transitions, and works with leaders who are
creating amazing teams. Find out more at
www.Dierschow.com
and
www.PossibilitiesPartnership.com.
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