Partial profile · Book Profile — full narrative profile planned
A Practical Guide to Job Analysis
A step-by-step practitioner's manual arguing that a competent job analysis is the indispensable foundation of every human resource function, complete with eight ready-to-use job-family templates.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Written by four seasoned industrial-organizational psychologists who have analyzed more than five thousand jobs, this practical guide demystifies job analysis and positions it as the keystone of the entire human capital life cycle. Rather than treating job analysis as a low-level clerical chore, the authors show how identifying work activities, competencies, workplace characteristics, and job performance levels underlies recruiting, selection, training, compensation, and litigation protection. The book's signature contribution is a set of eight standardized templates—arranged from entry-level to senior executive jobs—that let HR professionals and line managers conduct rigorous, defensible analyses without starting from scratch. Supplemented by a Workplace Characteristics Profile and a BARS methodology for setting performance levels, it offers both the rationale and the tools to do job analysis right.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- An HR professional or line manager who wants to hire, develop, and retain the right people and manage human capital effectively.
- The problem
- They cannot reliably identify the competencies required for job success or produce defensible, current job descriptions. They feel overwhelmed, uncertain they are looking for the right things, and anxious about making costly hiring mistakes or facing litigation.
- The plan
- Understand why job analysis is the foundation of the human capital life cycle.
- Learn what a job analysis is and its four essential elements.
- Choose a method (self-report, observation, interview, document review, questionnaire) suited to the job.
- Select and customize the appropriate one of eight job-family templates.
- Gather ratings from multiple subject-matter experts and summarize importance of activities and competencies.
- The payoff
- Accurate, current, defensible job descriptions that clearly specify required competencies. · Better hires who succeed, greater retention, lower turnover, and reduced litigation risk. · HR functions—recruiting, training, compensation, performance management—all built on a solid foundation.
See our guide
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