Harrison Mbuvi

Do you struggle to speed up your job description writing process? Do you find it hard to keep track of all your job descriptions? And do you end up writing biased, unreadable, and inconsistent JDs?

This is where software for job descriptions comes in. Job description tools make creating, editing, modifying, organizing, approving, and publishing job descriptions easier. 

So in this article, we’ll show you how software for job descriptions can help you solve different problems related to your specific needs.

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Image Source: John Schnobrich on Unsplash

What is a Job Description Management Software?

Job description management software solutions help you write, manage, and store JDs. These tools create a place for the hiring team and stakeholders to work together on creating job descriptions. This ensures a simplified JD writing, editing, and approval process.

An efficient software for job descriptions should have some of these features:

  • Automation of writing job descriptions
  • A job description library
  • Text analysis for boosting job descriptions
  • Collaborative creation, editing, modifying, and revision of job descriptions
  • Custom job description templates
  • ATS integration

7 Signs You Need Software for Job Descriptions

list of the 7 signs in the blog

Here are 7 signs you need software for writing job ads:

1. Your Job Descriptions Take Too Long to Create

Writing job descriptions manually takes too long, is tedious, and is prone to error. Plus there are high chances of writing an inaccurate JD that doesn’t include all the important sections for a job description. 

A good job description is free from complex language and boring industry jargon. It also needs to be compliant, consistent, gender-neutral, racially inclusive, free from disability bias, and more.

How Software for Job Descriptions Descriptions Can Help

Job description software speeds up your job description creation process:

  • The job description software leverages AI automation to guide you through the JD writing, updating, modifying, and approval process. 
  • Provision of pre-populated content, this way, you don’t start writing your JD from scratch. The software uses pre-existing templates, and content libraries to auto-populate certain job description fields or sections.
  • It uses advanced intelligent suggestions to improve the effectiveness of your job descriptions. The software can suggest the appropriate job title length, job title name, and highlight any important sections you’ve forgotten to include in your job description
  • A job description library for creating a unified space for writing your job descriptions. This speeds up your writing process by eliminating the need for endless scrolling on Google Docs and Word documents.

For instance, Ongig’s Job Description Management Software speeds up your JD creation process through:

  • AI-Assisted Job Description Writing: With Ongig’s Text Analyzer, writing job descriptions from scratch is easy. All you have to do is input your job title and the tool uses AI to do the rest.
  • Custom Templates Builder — Use easy 4-step templates to write your JDs quickly.
  • User management — The tool lets you have as many users as you want with different user privileges for writing your JDs (such as Editor, Administrator, Auditor, and Editor+).

Content Optimization:

  • Reducing Bias: Minimizing bias is important in today’s recruitment landscape. Our Text Analyzer’s “Optimize Content” feature reduces gender bias and ensures inclusive job descriptions.
  • Score Improvement: Witness your JD’s score improve as Text Analyzer’s AI perfects your JD draft.
  • Exclusionary Term Removal: Ensure your JD is free from any exclusionary language by deleting any identified “exclusionary phrases and words”.

By leaning into the capabilities of job description builder software you can speed up your JD writing process and attract qualified candidates.

2. Your Job Descriptions Aren’t Inclusive

The words and phrases in your job descriptions should make the right impression on any candidate regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, race, nationality, mental health, and ethnicity.

Any type of bias whether unintentional or not, can ruin a good job description and deter potential candidates from applying to your job openings. In fact, according to research, 62% of candidates would reject a job offer if your organization didn’t support diversity and inclusion. 

But sometimes unconscious bias creeps in and it’s hard to spot all types of biases if you’re writing the job description manually. 

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

So this is where job description management software comes in and reviews your JDs and flags all types of biases such as: 

  • Racial bias
  • Gender-coded words
  • Age bias
  • Education bias
  • Physical disability bias
  • Neurodiversity bias

And more. 

3. Your Job Description Approval Workflow is long

The manual job description approval process is long. Before you post your job description, it has to pass through different employees in the hiring process for approval to the next step.

For example, the HR specialist might initiate the job submission process. The HR manager might start writing the JD. 

And another employee in the recruitment department might approve the job posting. So through this manual approval process, a lot of time gets wasted.

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

Job description software makes this submission, and approval easy by providing a “user controls” feature. 

This ensures the JD is created, edited, modified, and approved on time. So the tool lets you:

  • Define Access Control: With the software, everyone has specific permissions to execute the job description process on time. For instance, HR specialists might have access to write and edit drafts. HR managers might manage JD style guides and templates. And the HR lead might have final authority.
  • Easy User Management Process: With the job description tool, you can set an “Administrator” control to manage the user accounts. So no one messes with other people’s tasks and everyone gets to perform their tasks well. Plus, you can add new users to the system without any trouble.

With this collaboration workflow, your JDs are published on time

4. Your Job Descriptions Revision Process is Messy

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Image Source: Campaign Creators on Unsplash

The manual process of revising job descriptions is tedious and prone to errors. The chances of failing to include important details are high. 

Plus with manual revising, you can’t quickly see the changes made. And your JDs are also prone to poor formatting and branding through the manual process.

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

Software for job descriptions allows Version Control that enables you to track, revise, and review all versions of your job description. With the software you get

  • Version comparisons: The platforms allow you to see the differences between two versions of your job descriptions. JD modifications get reviewed well and minimize back-and-forth misunderstandings.
  • Rollback capabilities: If there are errors and unintended changes, version control allows you to return to a previous job description version. This way, you restore the right version with no problems.
  • Audit trails: Version control gives you a comprehensive audit trail of your job descriptions. So you can view any single change in a JD such as the user, time, date, and any specific changes made.

By visualizing this whole process of revising job descriptions, anyone in the hiring team including the company stakeholders will understand the reasons behind any changes. 

5. Your Job Descriptions are Unreadable and Inconsistent

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If your job descriptions are:

  • Full of technical language and jargon
  • Too long
  • Poorly formatted and inconsistent
  • Missing important details such as salary and benefits or compliance language

Then you need a job description management software. 

Unreadable and inconsistent job descriptions prevent candidates from applying to your job openings. So you need to write a JD that’s easy to read and contains all important sections of a job description such as job requirements, location, and salary. 

Your job descriptions should also be between 300 to 650 words and read around the 8th-grade level.

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

Here’s how job description management software boosts the readability of your job descriptions:

  • Suggesting the right length of your job descriptions

Most job descriptions are wordy and use longer sentences than necessary. Good software will suggest you use fewer sentences because they are easy to read. For example, 1 to 2 sentences work well. 

And depending on the job description software you’re using, you’ll get the average reading grade level of your JDs. Most candidates prefer reading JDs at a very low grade level (around 8th grade).

  • Finding unnecessary and complex  words in your job descriptions

Manually written job descriptions are full of adverbs and have complex words that make the job description hard for candidates to read. 

For instance, “in order to” is a complex word that’s commonly used in job descriptions. An efficient job description tool will highlight all these adverbs and complex words and provide replacements for them.

6. Your Job Descriptions Lack Centralized Storage

All your job descriptions need to be in one place. This can be a centralized cloud library. 

But if you’re still using the manual processes, then your job descriptions are probably buried in your organization’s shared drive, or scattered across different Word documents. And this also makes the collaboration and editing process a mess.

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

With job description software, your JDs stay in a single place. The documents are stored in a file folder, they aren’t scattered everywhere. 

This makes it easier to check if all the JDs follow standardized formats, content guidelines, language, and best practices. 

Plus it improves the collaboration and editing process of job description writing among the different team members. And different users can access, edit, and modify the job descriptions as needed.

7. Your Job Descriptions Aren’t Published On Time

Job descriptions need to be published on time so you can attract qualified candidates and don’t miss out on top talent. 

But, due to the many problems associated with manual job description writing such as endless revisions, long approval process, and long writing process, the publishing also takes time.

Plus the manual integration of JDs with various applicant tracking systems takes forever.

How Software for Job Descriptions Can Help

An important feature of most job description software is easy integration with your Applicant Tracking System. When your new job description gets approved internally, you’ll post it to your ATS. 

This integration ensures one-click publishing of your job descriptions. It saves you the time you would have used to manually input information and publish your job descriptions.

WHY I WROTE THIS:

Understanding the problems with your job descriptions will help you identify the kind of help you need. For instance, if you find that your job descriptions use non-inclusive language, you can now take the right steps to create inclusive JDs.

Ongig’s mission is to simplify your hiring journey by helping you write the best content. Book a demo today to learn how we can help you write using software for job descriptions.

by in Job Descriptions