A good job description management process smooths out your entire recruitment process. But if your job descriptions are just “surface” level, take many months to create, and aren’t standardized, you’ll have a complicated hiring journey. The good news is, this is where a job description platform comes in.
Job description tools make writing, editing, modifying, approving, and publishing job descriptions easier.
So in this article, I’ll show you how job description management tools simplify your job description management challenges.
What is a Job Description Platform?
A job description software is a tool that helps HR teams create, manage, and store job descriptions. These platforms save time and lay the foundation for an efficient job description management process.
A good job description management software should offer some of these key features:
- Automation of creating JDs
- A unified job description cloud library
- Text analysis for improving job descriptions
- A smooth job description collaboration process
- Version control for job description revisions and audit trails
- Custom job description templates
- ATS integration
So here are 8 signs you need a job description platform to manage your job description management journey:
1. Your Job Description Creation Process is Time-Consuming
Writing job descriptions manually is tedious and a long process. For instance:
- Without a central library, your job description creation process starts from scratch, taking time.
- Standardizing all your job descriptions becomes a challenge because you must review many documents to understand the standard organization JD format.
- You have to manually rewrite all the company information, such as the common skills and salary for all job descriptions.
- For everyone to get feedback, they have to do endless email loops.
And because of the manual process, there is also a high chance of writing an inaccurate JD that doesn’t include all the crucial sections of a job description.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Job description tools speed up your job description writing journey in some of these ways:
- The software leverages AI automation to help you through the JD creation, updating, editing, and approval process.
- Provides pre-populated content, so you don’t start creating your JD from scratch. The tool uses pre-existing customizable templates and content libraries to auto-populate certain job description fields.
- The software leverages advanced intelligent recommendations to boost the efficiency of your job descriptions. The platform can recommend the appropriate job title length and job title name. Plus, it highlights any critical fields you’ve forgotten to include in your job posting.
- A unified space for creating your job descriptions. This quickens your JD writing process by removing the need for endless scrolling on Google Docs, shared Drives, and Word documents.
For instance, Ongig’s Job Description Management Software speeds up your JD writing process through:
- Generate your JD with the Help of AI: With Ongig’s Text Analyzer, creating job descriptions from scratch is easy. Just input your job title, and the platform uses AI to do the rest.
- Tailored Templates Builder — Use easy 4-step templates to generate your JDs quickly.
- Simplified User Management — Ongig lets you have as many users as you want with various user privileges for creating your job descriptions (for instance, you can have Editor, Administrator, Auditor, and Editor+).
Content Improvement:
- Bias Reduction: Ongig Text Analyzer’s “Optimize Content” feature minimizes gender bias and ensures inclusivity in job descriptions.
- Score Enhancement: Witness a boost in your JD’s score as Text Analyzer’s AI polishes your JD draft.
- Exclusionary Term Deletion: The software highlights any exclusionary language by deleting identified “exclusionary phrases and words”. So you can attract candidates from different types of backgrounds.
Read also: How to Use Ongig’s Job Description Creator: A Step-by-Step Guide
2. Your Job Descriptions are Inconsistent and Unreadable
If you do an audit of all your job descriptions and notice that they’re:
- Full of technical terms and jargon
- Full of blocks of paragraphs and texts
- Too long
- Full of poor grammar and texting
- Poorly formatted
- Not inclusive of different types of people
Then your team needs a job description platform.
Unreadable and inconsistent job descriptions lead you to the wrong candidates because your language is unclear. And hence, you miss out on hiring qualified candidates. This leads to a high time-to-hire process because the recruiters waste time clarifying the details to all candidates.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Job description platforms help write consistent job descriptions in these ways;
- Recommending the correct length of your job descriptions
Most job descriptions are wordy and longer than they need to be. An efficient job description software will suggest you use fewer sentences because they improve the readability of the job descriptions. For instance, 1 to 2 sentences work well.
And depending on your preferred job description platform, you’ll get the average reading grade level of your JDs. This way, you’ll see the sections to delete to get the correct reading grade level.
- Highlighting complex words in your job descriptions
Manually created job descriptions are full of adverbs and have complex words that make it difficult for candidates to understand the job description. A good job description tool will highlight all adverbs and complex words and provide replacements for them.
- Provides standardized, customizable templates
Different job description platforms provide templates that make it easier for the hiring team to create readable, effective job descriptions. Using the customizable templates, the team can follow a consistent structure and easily include all the organization’s JD standardized sections, such as qualifications, benefits, and job summary.
3. Your job descriptions have unconscious biases
Manually writing job descriptions leads to unconscious bias creeping in. And examples of unconscious bias in job descriptions are numerous. For instance:
- AARP study showed that older individuals received job offers at a rate that’s 68% lower than young individuals.
- The US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that persons living with a disability were much less likely to get hired than those with no disability.
- A study from The National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that individuals with Black sounding names were 10% less likely to get a call back compared to people with White sounding names for the same job opening.
All these unconscious biases lead to your organization failing to attract top talent.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Job description management tools flag biases in job descriptions in different ways, such as:
- Flagging Biased Language in Job Descriptions: The platform scans your JD content for biased language related to ethnicity, elitism, religion, mental health, gender, age, race, disability, LGBTQ+ status, former felons, and more.
- Recommends Inclusive Suggestions: After flagging the problematic phrases and words, the tool provides more inclusive alternatives to ensure your job postings attract a diverse pool of the best talent.
- Provides Real-Time Feedback on Inclusivity: The software provides real-time feedback on your JD’s inclusivity, helping your team make immediate changes with just a few clicks. So with inclusive language, you create a company culture where all team members feel at home.
4. Your Job Descriptions Collaboration Process is Messy
The traditional job posting creation process makes the collaboration process chaotic. For instance, the manual rotation of job description documents creates a series of scattered feedback emails, endless inputs, poor transparency, and many review cycles.
So instead of focusing on the quality of the job description, the team will just be checking who has reviewed their section, who hasn’t, and tracking approvals. And hence, the job posting gets published late.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Job description software makes this submission and approval process easy by providing a “user controls” feature.
Image Source: KrakenImages on Unsplash
This way, the job description gets created, edited, modified, and approved on time. So the platform does this:
- Provides Role-Based Access Control: With the tool, everyone in the team has specific permissions to create the job description on time. This ensures that not just anyone can edit any section of the job description the way they feel like it.
- Creates a Real-Time Feedback Process: With the platform, commenting and even editing are in one place. This way, stakeholders can provide quick feedback, leading to on-time publishing of the job description.
- Easy User Management Process: Set an “Administrator” control to manage the user accounts. This way, you can add new users to the system without any challenge. For instance, if you want a current employee to contribute to a JD you’re writing, you’ll easily add them.
With this seamless collaboration workflow, your job descriptions get published on time.
Read also: 9 Steps for Creating a Job Description Workflow
5. Your Job Description Revision Process is Chaotic
The traditional manual process of revising job descriptions leads to time-consuming edits, version control chaos, and high chances of failing to include critical JD updates.
For instance, manually locating the right version of a JD, editing, modifying, and then sending the document for feedback through email becomes tiresome. And this slows the hiring process.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
The job description tool allows Version Control features that enable your team to track, revise, edit, and review all versions of your job description in one place. With the tool, you get:
- Job Description Version Comparisons: The tool lets you see the differences between two versions of your JDs. This way, everyone can understand what content got updated and the reasons for the modifications. So, you can view any single change in a job description, eg, the user, time, date, and any specific changes made.
- Restoration Capabilities: If you have unintended changes, edits, and errors, version control allows you to return to a previous JD version. So, you restore the correct version without any challenges.
- Provision of Standardized Templates: While editing and modifying the job description, your team can leverage the platform’s provided templates. This ensures standardization across all job descriptions.
This visualization of the JD revision ensures transparency across your job description journey because everyone in the recruitment team, including the organization stakeholders, will understand the reasons behind any changes.
6. Your Job Descriptions Lack a Centralized Storage
A smooth job description management process needs a centralized cloud library.
But if you’re still using the traditional processes, your job descriptions are probably buried in your organization’s shared drive. And because of this, you end up experiencing challenges such as:
- Time wastage locating job description details
- Poor collaboration and job description revision process
- Inconsistent standardization across your job descriptions
- High risk of failing to include crucial JD information
- Compliance challenges
And finding it difficult to analyse your job descriptions data.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
With job description software, your JDs stay in a single place. The documents get stored in a file folder, they aren’t scattered. So this centralized library helps in:
- Retrieving Existing Job Descriptions: This way, when your team wants to create a new job description, they don’t have to start from scratch. They can easily retrieve a library of previous approved job descriptions. They can then use relevant structures from the previous job descriptions as their foundation, hence saving time.
- Provision of Templates and Existing Content Libraries: Access to customizable job description templates makes it easier to check if all the job descriptions follow standardized formats, language, content guidelines, and best practices.
- Ensuring Legal Compliance: Pre-approved content libraries and customizable templates usually include legally needed elements. And this makes it easy for your hiring team to create compliant JDs.
Read also: 9 Benefits of Job Description Repository Software
7. Your Job Descriptions Have Compliance Risks
If you notice that your job descriptions don’t comply with all the different labor laws, then you need a job description platform. And manually ensuring your job descriptions are labor law compliant is a time-consuming process.
For instance, here are examples of labor laws that you have to keep in mind when writing a job description:
- Americans with Disabilities (ADA): A job description shouldn’t exempt people living with disabilities from applying to a job opening. Non-compliance leads to legal problems.
- Record-Keeping Conditions: Legal labor laws may dictate the period for storing job postings, the storage method, and the format of storage. So if a legal dispute arises, compliance ensures your organization can provide the correct legal requirements.
- Data Privacy and Protection Laws: Job listings may sometimes contain sensitive details of candidates, such as educational background and work history. Compliance is key to ensure the details get processed legally.
- Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Compliance: Job descriptions must comply with EEO regulations so that no applicant gets discriminated against because of age, religion, disability, or race.
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Job descriptions software prevents compliance risks in your job descriptions in different ways, such as:
- Availability of Customized Templates: With easy-to-use templates, you don’t have to worry if you have included all the important details. Depending on your software, the provided templates have compliant required sections such as EEO statements.
- Automated Labor Laws Changes and Updates: A good job description software keeps up with updates in employment laws. This way, the software automatically updates its content guidance and provides templates to reflect the changes.
- Easy Workflow Process: Job description platform creates an easy user management process that ensures you can easily add your compliance team to review the job posting before it goes live.
- Easy Audit Trails: Job description software ensures that the creation of a job description gets visualized in such a way that you can see any version of your job description. And it ensures you can see who made any edits and why. This becomes crucial during any legal dispute.
Read also: How to prepare for an OFCCP compliance audit (+ free OFCCP compliance checklist)
8. You have a poor ATS Integration System
The traditional job description writing process results in the JD documents getting scattered everywhere. This way, they are in silos, such as Google Docs, Word Docs, and Shared Drives. Because of this, the documents don’t integrate with your other HR software, such as ATS(Applicant Tracking System).
How a Job Description Platform Can Help
Simply put, a job description software creates a good system combination with your ATS that enhances:
- One-Click Export and Posting: The integration of the two systems removes the need for repetitive tasks of manual entry, which can introduce errors. So, with the quick export and posting, your organization gets to post job ads to job boards on time.
- Data-Driven Insights: With a combination of the two systems, easily track the efficiency of your job postings by analyzing recruitment metrics such as source-of-hire, application rates, and time-to-hire data within your ATS.
- Improved employer branding: Most job description platforms enhance consistent employer branding details. This process is carried over to the job ads in the ATS. This way, you build a unified brand with your potential candidates.
Combining Both Automated and Manual Approaches in Job Description Creation
Mixing automated and manual job description writing methods provides additional benefits since you get to minimize the limitations of each approach.
For example, the manual method can limit any unconscious bias that might have crept through the automated writing process. And you can use job description platforms to get the first draft quickly and have a human review it.
So, before you start writing your job description, create a documentation of steps to guide your team to use the two approaches. For instance, create a documentation with information such as:
- We’ll write the first JD draft through automation
- We’ll get JD keywords with the help of automation
- Through automation, we’ll conduct test cases of the job description quality control
- We’ll check the job description analytics performance through the job description platform
- The last person to approve the job description is the department head
- Compliance checks will be done through AI.
Having an example of such clear steps ensures your team knows what to do at each stage.
How a Job Description Platform Fits Into a Modern Talent Strategy
A Job Description Platform Supports Skills-Based Hiring and DEI
Today, more companies are shifting away from outdated hiring methods. Instead of just focusing on degrees or years of experience, HR leaders are looking for soft skills and real abilities. A job description platform makes it easy to highlight job requirements that matter, such as the ability to lead platform teams or solve problems in DevOps roles.
It also helps remove bias in the job posting process. With AI tools and expert-vetted data, you can create accurate job descriptions that promote pay equity and inclusion. Whether you’re hiring for a platform engineer role or a software engineer, clear and fair descriptions help you attract the right people.
Your Job Description Platform Connects with the Rest of Your HR Tech
A job description manager shouldn’t live in a silo. It should connect with your ATS, HCM, and other systems. That way, everything works together, making it easier to schedule interviews, track data, and improve the entire process.
Modern job description management software solutions offer configurable workflows, so your development teams, recruiters, and hiring managers can all stay aligned. For example, platform engineers and operations teams can each view the specific tasks and key responsibilities that matter to them.
The Right Job Description Platform Makes Job Architecture Smarter
Good hiring starts with strong job architecture. So, with the right platform, you can build a library of free job description templates tailored for different roles, from a platform developer to a job description manager. Also, these templates include important data points like expected outcomes, job specification details, and the key information candidates need to see.
This helps create clear expectations from the start and supports better performance reviews down the line. It also helps high-performing teams stay focused on business goals, especially in a large enterprise setting.
Your Job Description Platform Boosts Access and Visibility
One of the best parts of a user-friendly interface is easy access. Recruiters and hiring teams can quickly find, edit, or share a well-written job description. This kind of intuitive interface saves time and also reduces mistakes.
Additionally, many platforms help improve how your jobs appear on search engines and social media platforms, increasing your reach to more job seekers, including the best candidates for a particular position.
A Job Description Platform Works for Businesses of All Sizes
Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, the right platform should be flexible. So, look for a modular solution with built-in analytics tools, AI-powered editing, and a free trial so you can test it first.
Need to hire for an internal developer platform or a great platform engineer? A smart tool with new capabilities will help you write accurate job descriptions and attract the right talent, without all the hard work.
4 General Factors To Consider When Choosing a Job Description Platform
We’ve analyzed examples of challenges you might have in your job description management journey. And we’ve seen areas where job description writing tools can help you. But it’s also important to consider more general key factors like:
1. User-friendliness
When choosing a job description tool, consider the user interface. How easy is it to use? User-friendly tools will help your team create, edit, modify, manage, and approve job postings without technical challenges.
2. Flexibility and Customization
Look for a job description platform that will suit your organization’s job description-specific needs as you grow. So you won’t have to start looking for new software once you start creating a bulk of job descriptions.
3. Customer Service
Buy from a vendor that provides helpful and timely support. For instance, this can include responsive customer calls, user guides, and tutorials. Don’t buy from a vendor that takes days to respond to your queries.
4. Pricing
Consider the cost of the job description software. The cost should be within your company’s budget. And still have value once you evaluate the benefits and features it offers for that cost.
WHY I WROTE THIS:
A well-crafted job description is the first step to ensuring you hire the right candidates. But if you’re still writing your job descriptions manually, chances are you face numerous challenges. Our mission is to make your job description management journey easier by helping you write the best job descriptions, fast. Book a demo today to see how we can take your JDs to the next level.
