The perfect job profile

Ex­cess­ively high costs, unusual fluc­tu­ation, tension in the work place, and too many sick days – all these can be the results of the wrong choices being made when it comes to hiring employees. However, if the necessary re­quire­ments for an employee are defined in advance, positions can be filled by the “perfect” candidate, and the risk of making a wrong decision is reduced. The cor­res­pond­ing criteria needs to be included in the job profile.

The job profile is a part of the job de­scrip­tion and is therefore aimed directly at potential ap­plic­ants. In a job profile, the employer lists all the essential skills and abilities that an employee should have in order to apply for the ad­vert­ised position. If an employee has these skills, they can achieve the best possible results in the relevant position.

By de­scrib­ing the skills as ac­cur­ately and in as much detail as possible, there’s a much higher chance of suitable ap­plic­ants con­tact­ing the company. If ap­plic­ants don’t have a good idea of the desired qual­i­fic­a­tions, you’ll end up with numerous un­suit­able can­did­ates applying for the position. On the other hand, suitable can­did­ates won’t consider a job ad­vert­ise­ment that is too general and may refrain from applying.

When writing a job profile, it’s necessary to highlight the most important skills and abilities for the position in question. In order to express the re­quire­ments as com­pre­hens­ively and ac­cur­ately as possible, it is advisable to create the job profile in four steps:

1. Analyse the task areas
2. Collect re­quire­ment criteria
3. Weight the re­quire­ment criteria
4. Write the job profile

The job profile is based on the concrete tasks that the applicant is to perform later. These tasks therefore have to be defined at the beginning. The following questions can serve as a guide. The questions should be answered by the re­spons­ible manager, and, if necessary, by a de­part­ment employee:

1. Highlight tasks: what are the main tasks?
2. Pri­or­it­ise tasks: how important are the re­spect­ive tasks?
3. Define goals: which goals should the holder of this position achieve?
4. Future de­vel­op­ments: could the area of re­spons­ib­il­ity change in the future?

The most important re­quire­ment criteria for potential ap­plic­ants can then be derived from the answers given to the above questions. These re­quire­ments can be assigned to different fields. Basically, you should limit yourself to the most important re­quire­ments – those that are necessary for carrying out the tasks ef­fi­ciently.

• Formal re­quire­ments: vo­ca­tion­al training, degrees, work ex­per­i­ence
• Technical re­quire­ments: skills, special knowledge such as language skills or IT knowledge
• Social and lead­er­ship skills: in­de­pend­ence, as­sert­ive­ness, or stress res­ist­ance
• Meth­od­o­lo­gic­al skills: struc­tured work, strategic thinking, or com­mu­nic­a­tion skills
• Personal re­quire­ments: re­li­ab­il­ity, flex­ib­il­ity, or con­ver­sa­tion com­pet­ence

After you have de­term­ined the necessary re­quire­ments, the next step should be to weight them. The best way to do this is to classify the com­pet­ences and skills on a scale. A typical example would be marking the re­quire­ments from 1 to 6, where 1 could stand for “essential” and 6 for “not important.” Answering various questions can help you to weight the criteria. For example, always ask yourself how necessary a re­quire­ment really is in order to be able to optimally fulfil the tasks typical of the pro­fes­sion. Further mean­ing­ful questions are:

• Would it have an impact on the de­part­ment or the company if one of these skills were missing?
• Could other employees com­pensate for the lack of certain com­pet­ences and skills?
• Which re­quire­ments can sub­sequently be acquired easily and which more dif­fi­cultly (e.g. through work ex­per­i­ence or further training)?

Once you have de­term­ined and weighted all the re­quire­ments, you can create the job profile. The following structure is re­com­men­ded for this:

1. Summarise the formal re­quire­ments
2. Formulate the technical re­quire­ments
3. Present the meth­od­ic­al skills
4. Present the social skills

This is an example for a job profile for a job as a marketing manager:

Your profile:

• A degree in economics or com­mu­nic­a­tion sciences with a focus on marketing or a com­par­able qual­i­fic­a­tion
• You ideally have some pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence in marketing or online marketing
• You have strong ana­lyt­ic­al skills
• You have a proactive and results-ori­ent­ated way of working
• You have a high degree of ini­ti­at­ive
• You have excellent com­mu­nic­a­tion skills and are per­suas­ive

In our example, we adhered to the re­com­men­ded structure for a job profile. First, the formal re­quire­ments for the applicant were included: a degree in economics or com­mu­nic­a­tion sciences with a focus on marketing or a com­par­able qual­i­fic­a­tion, as well as initial pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence in marketing/online marketing. In the next step, ana­lyt­ic­al thinking was mentioned as a technical re­quire­ment. In addition, the applicant should have a proactive and result-ori­ent­ated way of working as well as a high degree of ini­ti­at­ive (meth­od­ic­al skills). At the end of the job profile, social skills were requested: first-rate com­mu­nic­a­tion skills and a per­suas­ive ap­pear­ance.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.