How to Make and Modify Job Descriptions

Where to Start

You can make a TIP job description from scratch; from a job description in the library that comes with TIP; from another job description you’ve already created; or even from an employee evaluation (which has a job description in it).  To get started, start TIP and choose

Then go to File, New, and choose how you want to start:

In what follows, we’ll assume you chose From Template.  That means you’re starting from a “generic” or “empty” job description that’s built into TIP.  You will make changes to it until it actually fits the job you want to describe.

Giving the Job a Name

The very first thing you should do is give the job a name (a Job Title):

The title that you type also becomes the first item in the tree on the left.

This is also a good time to identify the supervisor, employer, and department.  Here’s what we’ll use for an example:

Notice that as you are typing, useful advice is popping up in the help window.  For example, when you are typing in the “Supervisor” box, here’s what you see:

Get into the habit of looking at the help window when you’re not sure what to do.

You Can Save the File Now!

Even though you’ve entered only a tiny bit of information, now is a good time to save the file.  That way, it will have a definite name and location.

Choose File, Save.  TIP will suggest a name for the file, based on the name you’ve given the job:

Here the name is probably right, but if this is the first time you’ve ever used TIP, the place is almost certainly wrong!  Windows will remember where you keep your TIP files, but right now, you haven’t created any yet.

Decide for yourself where you want to save the job description.  We suggest “My Documents” if you do not have another specific place.  Then click Save.

Ready to Take a Break Yet?

Congratulations – you’ve created a job description.  It just doesn’t describe the job you want to describe, just yet.  Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

You can close TIP and take a break now.  In fact, we suggest that you do so.  In TIP, choose File, Exit. 

Now go to the folder where you saved the file, and take a look.  You’ll see it marked with a dark blue TIP icon:

You’ll also notice that the file name ends  in “tip-d”.  Actually, you may or may not see the “tip-d” ending.  If it’s not visible and you want to see it, choose Tools, Folder Options, View, and uncheck “Hide File Extensions.”

Opening the Same File Again

There are two ways you can get back into your file in order to edit it further. 

  • You can open TIP again and choose File, Open. 
  • Or you can simply double-click on the file itself.

Do either of these things now.

A Guided Tour of the Job Description Screen

Either way, when you reopen the file you’ll see much the same screen display as before:
 

Notice the following things on the screen:

  • The main menu (File, Edit, Help) across the top.
  • Boxes for Job Title, Supervisor, Employer, and Department at the upper right.  (You’ve already been typing there.)
  • A big text area full of helpful advice about how to create a job description. There will be similar advice in the text area for every part of the job description. Your task is to delete this advice and put the job description in place of it.
  • A tree diagram at the left, which is an outline of the job description. 

Finding Your Way Around the Tree

Now look at the tree diagram on the left-hand side.  It contains an outline of the job description. 

The very first item – the root of the tree – has the same name as the job itself.   Beneath it are five main items:

-         Job Summary (a short description of the job)

-         Direct Reports (who reports directly to this person)

-         Core Responsibilities

-         Behavioral Expectations

-         Hiring Criteria

Most job descriptions will have this structure, but you can change the structure to suit your needs.  The inner, subordinate items should be changed; they aren’t intended to fit everybody.

Now try clicking on various items in the tree.  You’ll see that different items have different text areas.  The job title itself has only “Remarks,” but if you go down to “Time and Task Management,” you’ll see this:
 

There are two text areas.

In the big, upper text area, part of the job description is already written for you. Just edit it to make appropriate changes, and you're done.

The lower text area is for interview questions about this item.  A later version of TIP will provide a procedure to interview candidates for the job.  In the meantime, interview questions are handy to have.

Note also that Time and Task Management has a percentage weight.  It’s 15% of Behavioral Expectations and 7.5% of the entire job.  Soon we’ll tell you how to change these percentage weights.

Just as in Windows Explorer or Outlook Express, you can click on + or – to show or hide the subordinate items in each part of the tree.  Try clicking on some pluses and minuses now.

Typing in the text areas

Now you’re going to type information into the text areas to describe the job.

Go back to the very first item in the tree (“Web Designer 3”) and then click in the text area.  Read the advice about how to create a job description, then delete it (by marking with the mouse and hitting Del, just as with any other word processor). This is the place to put remarks that describe the job description as a whole.  For example, you might say something like this:

The text area works just like any word processor except that it is less powerful. For instance, you can't change fonts, and you can't use the Tab key to create columns. In TIP, the Tab key always moves you to the next area of the screen.

You can mark, cut, and paste text in the usual way.  Also, you can mark text and then right-click to get this menu:

Here Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete have their usual meanings.  (If nothing is marked, you can’t cut, copy, or delete, and if nothing is on the Windows clipboard, you can’t paste, so these items will sometimes be grayed out.)

Hint:  You can paste text from other programs such as Word or Excel.  However, you can’t paste everything.  Elaborate structures such as tables and bulleted lists are not supported by TIP and will get simplified when you paste them in.

 Insert Date and Time does what it says – inserts the current date and time into the text.  It is used in employee evaluations; you will probably never need it in job descriptions.

When you’re typing in a text box, similar operations are available under Edit on the main menu:

Which menu to use is up to you.

Adding and Removing Items in the Tree

Usually, you’re going to need to do more than just fill in the text of the existing items.  To make changes to the tree structure, right-click on any item in it. 

For example, here’s what happens if you right-click on “Attention to Detail”:

Rename means, of course, to change the name of this item.  (You can’t rename the very first node in the tree; its name is always the job title.)

Delete means to delete this item.

Add After means to add another item on the same level, after this one.  For example, if “Effective Communication” were not yet there, you could add it by doing an Add After at this position.

Add Within means to add another item at a lower (subordinate) level of tree structure.  If you wanted to break Attention to Detail up into several sub-items, you could do an Add Within to get the first sub-item, then go to it and do an Add After to get the next one.  There is no limit to how deep you can go, with levels and levels of tree structure, but we suggest that you stick close to the style of the examples in the TIP library.

Change Percentage of Score will be explained more fully in the next section.  TIP will ensure that the scores for the parts of each item add up to 100%.  This is sometimes tricky (for the computer, not for you!).

Hide Interview Questions controls whether the Interview Questions text area is going to be visible on this item.  If you don’t have anything to put in it, we suggest that you hide it.  The computer remembers, as part of the job description file, whether each item’s interview questions are hidden or visible.

Percentage Scores

Remember that one of the main reasons we write job descriptions is to use them evaluating performance.

Some parts of the job description are suitable for evaluating, and some aren’t.  For instance, a job may require a college degree, but you’re not going to “evaluate” whether the employee has that degree, year after year.  Likewise, you’re not going to “evaluate” the Job Summary.

For that reason, some items in the tree have percentage weights for scoring, and some don’t.  The percentage weight determines how much of the employee’s total score depends on this item.  During employee evaluation, you will have to assign scores to all the items that have percentage weights.

In TIP, a weight of 0% is the same as not having a percentage at all.  If you want to make an item un-scoreable, change its percentage weight to 0%.

Now look back at the tree structure we’re working with:

Notice that the total score for the whole job has to total 100% and the items within each scoreable item have to total 100%.

For instance, this employee is going to be scored on Core Responsibilities and Behavioral Expectations.  Each of them is 50% of the whole job, and 50 + 50 = 100.  So far so good.

Under Behavioral Expectations, there are many items, some of them not scored. (We expect you to delete some of them and adjust the weights of the rest!) Right now, six items count toward the score, and they are weighted 20%, 20%, 15%, 15%, 15%, and 15%. Since 20 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 100, we’re OK.

And simple (though tedious) arithmetic tells you that if Attention to Detail is 20% of Behavioral Expectations, and Behavioral Expectations are 50% of the whole job, then Attention to Detail must be 10% of the whole job.

In TIP, you’re not going to have to do this arithmetic.  TIP will help you adjust the scores so that they always total 100% where they need to. 

For example, let’s change it so that Attention to Detail becomes only 15% of Core Responsibilities.  First right-click on Attention to Detail and choose Change Percentage of Score:

This information will pop up in the Help Window:

Click on the up and down arrows, or simply type the number 15 in the box.  Then, when you look back at the tree, here’s what you’ll see:

This group of items is shown in red because its percentages don't add up to 100. And the Help Window pops up with a helpful explanation:

When you adjust another percentage so that the total is again 100%, the red color will turn to black.

If there is only one item in a group, then TIP will automatically make that item be 100%.

Finally, note that only the first two levels of tree structure can have percentage weights.  Lower-level items cannot.