There is no doubt that a well articulate job description helps the organisation select the right candidate. But companies nowadays go beyond the JD’s for searching talents who can take the organization forward. There is a constant war for talent in a highly competitive market place and organizations should be battling for good talents out there. JD’s sometime act as a hindrance for recruiters in attracting the right talent. HR should think of looking beyond JD’s and looking at competencies, gaps etc. There will be candidates in the market place who can address the organizations talent requirements but may not fit in the prescribed JD format.

Companies have to look at other factors like stability, networking skills, analytical skills while looking for talents rather than the traditional JD’s. These attributes are relatively missing in most of the JD’ s followed by organizations. Those who take such innovative steps can be the competitive differentiator that organizations needs today.  

In Indian context, most of the JD’s look at relevant experience from the same industry while hiring lateral hires as mentioned in it rather than looking at their other key skills like result orientation, analytical skills, innovation etc. Most of the roles have some form of sterotypes attached to it and HR department always faces a challenge in overcoming it mainly due to the resistance from the line managers who have a key role in selecting the candidates.

There will be resistance to change in going beyond the JD’s and when somebody recommends the change, its difficult to accept. The driver of change can be if the linkage with key business parameters like productivity and customer retention can be emphasized with examples of  successful hirings beyond the JD.

There are experts who argue that organizations should stop having fixed JD’s and make it variable as per each role. By applying design thinking, JD’s should be customized as per each vacant role so that it stands out compared to the competitors and candidates should not feed any rigidity attached to the role. It may also look at including other talent processes and value propositions like onboarding, learning opportunities, career plans etc so that talents gets attracted to the organization.