Job description and person specification.

Job description and person specification

A job description is a document that lists the main tasks, duties and responsibilities required in the job place. At Woodbridge high school job descriptions are present for every job from caretaker to the head teacher post. The following are the main features of a job description.

Job title for example head of department

Job location at WHS in Woodford green Essex

Nature of the organisation, WHS is a secondary school

Lists of main tests

Standard expected

Pay and other benefits

Promotion

The person to whom the job hold reports to, at WHS the head of department will report to senior management team.

Who the job hold is in charge of, head of department will be in charge of subject teachers working in that department.

The job description is important to WHS as they use it for appraisals, identification of training needs for WHS staff and pay determination. With out this document WHS would not get the right candidates for the job which in turn will affect there performance, or might lead to a lot of resources being wasted on training.

Person specification

This document sets out the qualities of an ideal person for the job. The format of a person specification is based on Roger’s 7-point plan. This plan requires WHS to distinguish between essential and desirable qualities under each of the seven headings.

1. Physique, health and appearance, this includes grooming, looks, dress sense, voice, hearing and eyesight as well as general health matters. Due to safety issues WHS might not employ staff if they have HIV/AIDS.

Attainments, this includes educational qualification. At WHS all teachers are required to have degrees the school will not employ any teaching staff who does not hold a degrees in a stain subject.
General intelligence, organisation such as WHS uses IQ tests and by assessing general reasoning ability of the candidates WHS can estimate the IQ of the candidate.
Special aptitudes, this section includes skills with words, with numbers, with musical instruments and with artistic technique. WHS needs people with such skills; this improves the school’s results performance.
Interests, WHS would like to know whether the candidates are intellectual or practical or social or a mixture of them all. WHS would prefer to employ some one with a mixture of them all because of being a mixed culture school.
Disposition, this is an assessment of the person’s acceptability by other staff, leadership qualities, the person’s emotional stability and self-reliance.
Circumstances these are factors such as age, whether applicant is single or married, mobile or not.

Evaluation of the job descriptions/ person specification

Administrative assistant

This job description is very brief it lists the job title as administrative assistant for Woodbridge high school. It lists the name of the organisation but does not list its location and there is No address for the applicants to send the application to if they were to apply. It lists the main duties and the person whom the applicant reports to as the director of administrative service. But still the job description does not provide potential applicants with the all the information that it ...

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Evaluation of the job descriptions/ person specification

Administrative assistant

In fact this job description would not receive any applicants applying for the job simply because there is no address to which application forms are to be sent. The job description does not provide information about pay and benefits, hours the applicant will be working and does not give aims and objectives that the person should be aiming for. The JD does not talk about the purpose and does not give any conduct details. WHS could improve this job description by providing a brief outline of what WHS does this will give the potential applicant an idea of what to expect if he is employed. The document should does not list a point of contact, it does not tell the applicant who he/she will be responsible for and it does not have a deadline for the application forms.

WHS could also provide pay and other benefits and promotion prospects, if WHS give this information on there Job description they are more likely to get many people applying for job because applicants would know how much the job is going to pay and what promotion prospects are involved. Promotion prospects are very important because most people don’t want to get stack in one career level not moving on. With the shortage of staff to work in school in London east this job description would not get very many applicants applying for job because it does not provide the most important information that applicants look for.

The person specification does not give potential applicants the right/ clear level of qualifications required; it states that a good level of general education is required. Different people will understand this in different ways. WHS should give the applicant clear qualification levels that the job will require. It states what they will gain and learn from the post. It does not mention any thing about physique, health or attainments. Nothing concerning ages and sex of the person required has been stated. The person specification needs a lot of adjustments as its very brief and does not give applicants the information they need to know for this job as an administrative assistant.

Teacher of drama (CPS)

The job descriptions provides the applicant with the most relevant information for the job for example job title, purpose of the job, principles duties and responsibilities, and general duties. It also states to who the teacher will be reporting to. But it does not provide the most important information that every potential applicant will be looking like the objectives and aims of the job.

For example most applicants will be interested in how much they will be earning/ salary which the job description does not show. It does not show promotion prospects of the job which applicants are interested in as they would want to know what will happy in the future if say they got the job would there be a chance of being promoted to a higher post or are they going to be stack in the same position for ever. Because WHS did not provide this information it might discourage applicants to apply for the post leaving WHS with no one to cover the post. It also does not talk about the aims and objectives of the job and number of hours to be worked.

In future WHS should provide a brief outline of what it does, pay and other benefits, and promotion prospects this might lead to more people applying for the post. Also WHS would mainly need to give an address to which the applicants will send the application forms, because with no address the job description is useless as no one can apply for the job because they don’t know were the organisation is located and to whom they should send application forms.

The person specification for the teacher of drama lists clearly the qualification required; it states what experience the applicants must have and the abilities. However the person specification could have been improved to provide physique, health and appearance requirements that the job might require. This person Specification should be adjusting to include skills and knowledge need for the post.

Deputy headteacher-development-LI7+O.L.A.

The job description provides the applicants with information about the nature of the job. What the job involves, its purpose, job title, principal duties and responsibilities, to whom the applicant will be reporting to and who the applicant is responsible for.

Though this document provides most of the relevant information about the nature of job however this document would not attract very many applicants because WHS has missed some of the most important information the applicants would most be interested in e.g. pay and working conditions. WHS should provide information about the location of the job/ WHS; they should also give a brief outline of what WHS does. The job description should state the aims and objectives of the job on offer, and hour that need to be worked. It does not state whether the post is full-time, part-time, temporary or permanent.

WHS could improve their job description by adding information about pay/ salary per year and other benefits that the job will offer for the applicants. Applicants will also be interested in promotion prospects; they will want to know what will happy in the future for example would there be a chance of promotion after a stain number of years working for WHS. As in all the documents WHS does not give point of contact and address to which application forms are to be sent, this causes problems as applicants wont know were to send the application forms.

The person specification lists qualifications and experience required however it does not provide information with regard to the ideal person for the job for example it does not provide information about physique, health and appearance, general intelligence, interests and special aptitudes. It does not give any contact numbers for contact.

All the above job description and person specifications are brief and don’t not provide any form of contact details e.g. addresses or telephone numbers which are vital for the application forms to be sent back to. They don’t tell the applicants of the location of the job, so applicants don’t know how far to travel and what travel costs might be acquired. The job descriptions and person specifications need a lot of improvement e.g. contact details, pay and benefits, hours worked, and promotional prospects if they are to attract any body to apply for the posts.