What Is Role Profile Analysis?
As one of the key components to any Talent Intelligence project, Role Profile Analysis allows us to dig deep into the various roles available within your organization. Our Industrial-Organizational Psychologists will then use their findings to build an analysis that both thoroughly defines the roles, responsibilities, duties, and expectations of the specific position, but also lays the groundwork for quickly and more efficiently identifying highly qualified candidates when positions become available.
How does TI gather the information needed for a Role Profile Analysis?
To target the competitive talent market with the greatest accuracy, we use our Industrial-Organizational Psychologist designed Position Description Process to truly understand the role and your company to quickly find you the best candidates. For all roles, we analyze the market to confirm titling and levelling are appropriate, and this is especially valuable for newly created roles, groups, and geographies.
We do this by:
- Producing a Position Description Questionnaire – In this step, we gather pertinent talent search information, as well as any helpful background information we can find, using a carefully constructed, data-backed set of questions distributed to knowledge area experts.
- Surveying Subject Matter Experts – By speaking directly with or surveying the people that know the role best (e.g. hiring managers, people in the role) we gather critical information that you can use to augment and adjust your position description and offerings.
- Conducting Market Intelligence Research – We analyze relevant job advertisements and market data to best position you for success in a competitive talent market.
- Putting What We’ve Learned into Position Description Creation – Once we’ve gathered this important information, we develop a comprehensive position description to guide our search. Once the position description is finalized with you, we will begin the search process. The process takes 3-5 days depending upon your availability. While not intended to replace your job descriptions, you are free to utilize the profiles and our research for your purposes.
Putting Role Profile Analysis to Use in Talent Acquisition
With our Role Profile Analysis tool, we’re able to help you truly understand what you’re looking for from a specific position. Furthermore, that same analysis will help us identify key characteristics that you should be looking for in job seekers in order to hire talent that best aligns with the needs of the job.
A lot of times, assembling a team can feel like putting together a puzzle, except the pieces can be interchangeable between your puzzle and someone else’s. On top of that, sometimes the pieces fit well, but there’s actually another piece out there that fits even better. What our Role Profile Analysis tool does is help you identify what you’re looking for from those even better pieces, helping you go from a team comprised of good players to a team stocked with top-tier talent who align with the goals and vision of your company.
Job Description Analysis
Are your job descriptions effectively selling the position? Just as important, are they effectively selling your company as the right place for the applicant? Are you portraying the key aspects or benefits of the role? How is your competition positioning themselves and their similar roles? Are the candidate qualifications, technologies and expectations for the role aligned with the talent market and/or competition? Are your job ads positioning your opening in the most attractive way, with positive and engaging, non-biased language? Understanding the answers to all of these questions, and adjusting your job postings with these in mind, can be key in not only catching the eye of key talent, but in convincing them throughout the application and interviewing process that your company is the right place for them.
The key information you need to provide in your job descriptions?
- Role Summary – Carefully and thoroughly describe the purpose of the role and what they will be doing on a regular basis.
- Key Responsibilities – Accurately describe the main activities, duties, and responsibilities of the role and what is expected of the individual. This can also include key metrics used to evaluate the work produced in this role.
- Key Qualifications/Experiences – What the role requires that they have, such as achievements, experiences, credentials, etc., on day one. These are what are traditionally thought of as “hard skills,” or the required job-related knowledge and abilities needed to complete the work.
- Preferred characteristics – Ideal characteristics for the role that are desired but likely not required. These are often referred to as “soft skills,” or the personal qualities that will help the individual succeed in the role by way of company culture, working style, etc.
- Working Environment/Work Culture/Employment Brand – We want to ensure we position the strengths of your brand to candidates to make sure you’re not only attracting top talent, but top talent that aligns with your vision, goals, and company culture – meaning they’re more likely to remain with the company long term.
Using Role Profile Analysis to Set Expectations
The better you understand the role you’re hiring for, the better you can pitch that job to potential candidates. Once you’ve filled the role, defining the job duties and setting correct and realistic expectations of the job is key to retaining the talent you worked so hard to recruit.
This starts with creating attractive job descriptions that appeal to the best candidates. Job descriptions are a powerful recruitment tool, as most job searches start online. While it’s important to sell the role, and your company itself, within the job description, it’s also vital to convey the type of person needed – including skill sets and experiences – and the values and characteristics highlighted by your Employer Brand.
Doing so means you won’t just attract qualified candidates, you’ll attract job seekers who align with your company’s value propositions, goals, and strategic visions.
Role Profile Analysis FAQs
No. In fact, the purpose of Role Profile Analysis is to go beyond your job description. We often find job descriptions to be outdated, sometimes irrelevant, and even inaccurate. They are a useful starting place, but we strive to go beyond the typical job description to align to your future talent strategies by speaking directly with hiring managers and job incumbents to identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and backgrounds of your ideal candidates, as well as the work culture and environment. This information, combined with our talent market intelligence, optimizes our process for finding you the highest quality candidates, with the best fit, as quickly as possible to position you to carry out your talent and organizational strategies.
We can either survey or speak directly with the hiring manager, job incumbents, and any other subject matter expert(s) with authority on the role. We go through a series of structured questions to identify the key knowledge, skills, competencies, behaviors, and backgrounds of successful candidates.
Once we have identified the key characteristics, we will use these characteristics to develop screening questions which we will use when speaking with the candidates. This not only ensures a better fit, but also brings efficiency, consistency, and alignment early on in the recruitment process, leaving you with a better candidate pool.
As part of the Role Profile Analysis, we will analyze the talent market – which includes looking at the available job postings for the role (including regional or industry competitors). This can help you to benchmark and align both the responsibilities and qualifications of the position you offer.