Ep #8: Create a Job Description

Hey, everyone. I'm Chris Plackey, and this is how to Lead for female entrepreneurs and founders. Because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome. I'm super excited today to talk to you about a not very exciting topic.

But one that I know is really important for us to cover. And I know this because I work with so many of my clients on this very thing. So what I want to talk to you today about is designing a job description. And for those of you who are just starting your business, this is incredibly important. For those of you who've been in business for a while and have employees, nine times out of 10, this is also incredibly important because you haven't really designed job descriptions. You've hired people and sort of made some things up, but maybe not really formalized what people do. So I want to walk you through the process that I walk my clients through when we start thinking about creating a position in your business. Okay? So we're going to start at the very, very beginning, which is when you start to think, I need to hire someone to do the bookkeeping. I need to hire someone to help with market. I need to hire someone to be my assistant. I need to hire someone to sell for me. You know, whatever it is that you're starting to think, oh, I need some help here. So the first couple of questions I really want you to think about before you would ever, ever, ever start considering a person is what is the solution? I want this role to provide to my business. And also, what is the result that this role will create in my business? What. What is the purpose of this role? All right, so if I'm going to hire a bookkeeper, I'm going to hire a bookkeeper to ensure that all of the financials of my business are accounted for, paid, received, et cetera, in a timely manner. If I'm going to hire a salesperson, it's because I'm going to generate this much revenue by adding this person to my team. We have to. Before we ever get down the road of falling in love with a candidate and wanting to bring someone into our company, we have to be clear about what is the objective of the role. Okay. And I really want you to be able to write that as a sentence, just one sentence. Right. The purpose of this position will be to. What is it? Right. Here's what it will be. Then we need to think about, okay, then what are all the things that I want this position to do. And I want you to let your brain sort of have a little mini explosion. So get a piece of paper and a notepad or, you know, wherever you can write things down or you can even capture it, you know, if you, if you're talking with somebody. But I want you to brainstorm all of the things this, this role would do. So, and what's going to likely happen is you're going to be kind of micro in your business, which is. Okay, like you'll start saying things. Well, I want them to run my Monday meeting at 10. And I want them to follow this thing up with this thing and I want them to do this thing up with this thing and I want them to do this right. So that's very specific to your business and that's fine. I want you to really, really write down all of the things that you would want this particular role to be responsible for and to do in your business all the time. And then after you've done that, now you're going to have sort of the smorgasbord of stuff that you want done now. Remember, right. The goal always of hiring some person into your business is so that they deliver a result. Now all of things that you've written down, this is stuff they're going to do all day. But the result, the one or two primary results of why we have this position, those are always fundamental to the position. So we're going to write the purpose of the job at the top. The reason I have this job is to generate the revenue for the business, is to ensure all financials are properly handled, coming in and out. Right. Whatever it is that you decide, then we're going to take that list that you wrote of all the things you would want somebody to do who's working with you. And now I want you to look for themes. So I did this with a client recently where she wrote down all the things that she wanted her new assistant to do. And then when we looked at it, we could see it was very specific to her business. But there were themes in terms of responsibilities and skill set that permeated kind of different parts of the work. So things like must have experience using a CRM, needs to be able to run webinars, needs to be able to build web pages, needs to be able to edit and post videos on Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Okay, so now we're starting to identify out of the long list that you made, what are the key areas that we want to really hone in on that a Candidate would need to have demonstrated experience in. So you're the only one who can really do that because you know your business. But you've got to start micro so you can get macro. Okay. Which I think sometimes we start macro and that makes it a little more confusing because we think in these big themes. That's why I really want you to do the long list of the laundry list of all the things you want them to do. And then we can pick out like, oh, okay, yes. They need to have strong customer service experience and results. They need to have strong experience working on WordPress. They need to have strong experience working on, you know, a CRM. They need to have strong experience developing marketing campaigns, whatever the, whatever the position is. So the purpose goes at the top. Then the required skills and experience is listed as I've just done out of your detailed list. Then we also have to include our cultural component, our fit component. What is this person like? How do people who work with you thrive? What are you looking for? Initiative, the ability to anticipate, you know, focus, commitment, ownership. It's okay to really describe the person who will thrive in my business is someone who describe that person. Really, really think about them as you are building your business, right? You're building your employee niche. And I've talked about this in a previous podcast. It's okay to be really, really clear. I think the more clear you are, the better it is for the candidate. Right? If I'm, if you're looking for people who are total self starters and independent, if I'm somebody who needs a lot of direction and wants to work in a really structured formal environment, I'm probably not going to apply for your job. And that's a good thing, isn't it? Tell the story of the position as best we can. So we've got the purpose, we've got the responsibilities and experience and we've got really the vibe like this is, this is the kind of person that's going to succeed here. Once we have a job description, now we have one of two things to do. If we already have a person in the job, which is what a lot of you do, you've hired people but you didn't really formalize the position, then we want to present the position to them even though they're in the job and make them an offer. And you know, they sort of sound like something like, hey, I took this, I took your position. I really thought about what, what you do, what we want done in the role, what the results are for the role, what the day to day responsibilities of the role will be. And I want to present this to you and make sure this is still the job you want. We have to get their buy in again on the job. Okay? So don't just change a job description and then tuck it in someone's file and not really review it. You've got to review it with them. If we're looking for somebody now new, then we would post this. And there's lots of ways to look for people to work for you, right? There's indeed, there's LinkedIn, there's referrals, there's your own website. There's lots of ways of doing that. But mostly the job description has to be concise and tight. And I think it's also important to put in the job description. If these are the results that I'm looking for, here's how I will know that those results are being achieved. So if you're asking for somebody who has experience.

Their job is to provide exceptional customer service as measured by monthly NPS scores. I'm looking for someone who delivers exceptional marketing campaigns as measured by increased lead flow.

Right. Because remember, why do we hire people.

For results? Okay. And so the last thing I want to say, this isn't so much about the job description, but it's about the kind of person you want to hire. And I heard this from gentleman on a podcast whose name in this moment just went out of my head. But he talked about I'll make sure it's in the show notes. He talked about who you should or shouldn't hire. And one of the things he says is you should always hire people who have already experienced success and results.

That is, of course, if you want that on your team. And you know, this is definitely something I just keep finding that I have to keep talking to my clients about, not because they don't get it, but because we get lost in the weeds. We think we hire people to do work, but we don't. We're hiring people to achieve results. Employees think they're hired to go to work.

And show up and work every day. But no, we're paying people to come to work to get a result. And so when you're out there, especially if you're running a small lean startup or your own business that you've had for a couple years or three years or five years or 20 years, you don't have a tremendous amount of resources. Hire people who have already experienced success and results and that, you know, that doesn't have to be that these people are very like mature and have a lot of experience. There's people who have all levels of success in their life. Even young kids, right, have had what they've experienced success. They've been great athletes, they've done well in school. They've had different kinds of experiences in their life that have really helped them experience results and achieving results. Because we can't really teach people how to want to be results focused.

It's an innate thing, but it starts in your brain. And we can help people understand why they're not motivated or why they're disengaged. But I don't want to start off the bat with someone like that. I want to start off with somebody who's got their own intrinsic desire to be successful and to achieve results. So as you're thinking about making these decisions for your business, I just want to really invite you to consider that because that is such a factor in the team that you build. And if you're building a new young team, young to your business team, it's so vital that you really think about the dynamic of the people that will be on the team and how they're going to contribute to the team. So what we've talked about today is the job description. We've talked about being sure that you know what the purpose is and what the result is that you want from this position. I just recently listened to Darren Hardy's entrepreneurial roller coaster. If you haven't read that book or listened to it, I strongly suggest you do. And his chapter on hiring is exceptional. And he talks about how employees should be free.

So most of us, when we think about hiring employees, we think about them as an expense. And even in traditional accounting, right, we put them on the expense line. That's not. That's normal. That's not uncommon.

Thinking about an employee as an investment.

And that employee is contributing to a result, then if I'm paying somebody 80 grand, I should make at least 81 grand, because I added the person, I added the role to my business.

So as you're thinking about designing these job descriptions, really think about like this, this is an investment. I'm going to spend $80,000 or 50,000 dol. $200,000 to add a role to my business's investment. What do I expect to get back as a result? It's so critical that you think about that. And the last thing I want to say about this is that every role in your business should have a description, including yours. So if you're the founder, owner, CEO, president, principle, what is your role? And Is it clearly defined? When was the last time you sat down and really thought about what your job is? What do you contribute to the business? What result are you responsible for? So take a little time to really think about that. And. And sometimes my clients struggle with that. So one last piece of advice. If you're not sure what your job is, which is where I find a lot of my founders, especially if you're trying to get out of doing the work every day, right. There's this weird transition that happens between being a technical expert and then becoming sort of the visionary leader of people. I would suggest you make a T chart. So you put a line down the middle of a piece of paper, and on one side, on the left hand side, you write things I don't want. And on the right hand side, you write down things I do want, and you make a list of all the things you know you don't want to do in your business.

And then on the right hand side, you make a contrasting list. So if you write on. On the left hand side, I don't want to handle customer disputes. Okay, what do you want to do? I want to design our customer dispute policy. Right. I don't want to pay our vendors. What do you want to do? I want to have oversight of all accounts payable.

Okay, so we make a list of all the things we know we don't want to do, and then we really look at what we do want to do, and we value that. And then we think, okay, is this a real job? The things I want to do now, we don't get to only do things we want to do as business owners. And I know you already know that, but if you're elevating yourself to that CEO, as soon as you start adding people, you have to think like a CEO. You can't think like a donut maker anymore. You can't think like the person who's been doing the work all this time. You have to start to think like an executive. And that's a different. That's a shift in your brain.

So make your T chart. If you're not sure what your role is, make a T chart. Start there. And then what is the purpose of your position? What is the result you're accountable to? And then what are the responsibilities of your role? Okay. Give that some thought, and I will look forward to talking with you next time.

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