27 of February, 2025

One of the fundamental stages of recruitment is the job analysis. If this is correct, it will be much easier for us to choose the right candidate to fill the vacancy.

What is job analysis?

To understand the importance of this issue, it is necessary to explain what job analysis is. It is the study of the vacancy to understand the activities and responsibilities it involves. This way, we can establish the right criteria to select the best candidate.

We are talking about the starting block in human resources. From job analysis, we will not only choose the best candidate. We can also design career plans or complete the corporate organization chart. All this, without forgetting the necessary training for the employee.

In addition, the analysis and description of job positions allows us to establish the conditions of the vacancy. What contract we will offer, its duration, the salary it involves, the schedule…

If you want a good job analysis, you will have to prioritize the figure and not the employee. A quite common mistake is to create a job that adapts to the available worker.

However, the candidate is the one who should adapt to the position. To do this, they must meet a series of requirements.

How to carry out job analysis

The key to a proper job analysis is to gather information. The more, the better. It is a process that we will divide into five phases to complete the analysis and description of job positions.

Define the tasks associated with the job

Each vacancy implies the performance of a series of tasks. Each job position involves certain functions. Therefore, at this first stage of job analysis we need to define the tasks of the vacancy.

We will have the help of collaborators, area or department managers, etc. The best way to define the tasks is to answer these four basic questions:

What does the worker do?
How does he/she do it?
What for?
Why does he/she do it?

In fact, you can simplify this first stage in a simple structure: action verb + object + with what + for what = task. From this formula, you should be able to define the tasks of any position in your organization.

Responsibilities and functions in the workplace

Not all responsibilities, tasks, or functions will have the same relevance. Therefore, the second step will be to group the tasks into job functions. From here, we can establish the level of responsibility of each function.

You can create your own responsibility scale. For example, what is more important, serving the customer or keeping the premises clean? Answering the phone or completing orders?

KSAOs

These are the initials for knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics. In English, knowledge, skills, abilities, and others. To define the KSAOs necessary for the position, we start from the first two phases.

What education is needed? How much experience? What skills?

Some will be relatively simple to define. However, with others, we may have more difficulties. Therefore, we can ask workers or managers for their opinion. At this point, it is worthwhile to analyze what the competition is doing.

Job analysis and competences

Although we already have an idea of the competencies necessary to perform the job, it is time to delve into them. We will analyze the vacancy offered based on the competencies that the ideal candidate should have. For this, we have three interesting sources of information:

The managers: once again, we will turn to middle managers. They should know like no one else each vacancy, the functions it involves, and the characteristics of the person suitable to cover them.
Performance evaluation: they reveal the competencies that make the difference between a good candidate, the ideal one, and a bad one.
Critical incidents: from history and mistakes we learn. They allow us to define the key competencies and behaviors of the position. What should guarantee success in performing the tasks.

Each source of information has its pros and cons. However, each one offers us very useful information for the job analysis. But remember, these competencies will be associated with the skills and functions of the position previously defined.

Refine competencies

Finally, we will define the necessary competencies based on our own business. Each company is a world, and we will have to adapt to our reality.

As in the first step of the process, there are two questions you should ask yourself:

What makes the difference between a good and a bad worker?
Why do some workers offer better performance than their colleagues?

Who carries out the job analysis?

We already know how to complete a job analysis. But… who is responsible for it? As we indicated at the beginning, this is one of the tasks of human resources.

The HR department of the company should assume this responsibility.

Many times, the management decides to assume it without having the right skills for it. This is a mistake that can lead to failure. HR should have a profile oriented to headhunting.

Having a human resources software like Sesame HR will be very useful. Functions such as work climate surveys or performance evaluation contribute to job analysis and description. Also when it comes to filtering CVs among the candidates received to select the best ones.

Do you want to know more about job analysis? Discover related content on the Sesame HR blog and in our guides.

Customer-oriented, both internally and externally, specializing in the definition and implementation of HR policies, as well as talent management, recruitment, and retention. Strong leadership, communication, negotiation, organization, and team coordination skills. Over 12 years of experience in Human Resources.

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iriserrador

HR Content Specialist

How a job analysis is conducted