Most job specs describe the last person who did the job. They list the experience, degrees and titles of whoever just resigned. That is understandable, because it is the clearest picture you have. But it answers the wrong question. What matters is what the job has to deliver over the next few years.
Why job specs miss
A job spec is usually written in a hurry. Someone has handed in their notice, the vacancy has to go out, and the quickest route is to dust off the old job description. What comes out is a list of everything the previous person could do, plus a few wishes from the leadership team.
Two things follow. The list gets so long that no candidate fits it. And it looks backwards, so the people who fit best are good at what the business needed last year.
Five questions to ask first
1. What must be delivered in twelve months? Write down three concrete results. Not “strengthen the procurement function”, but “every framework agreement above a set value has an owner and a renewal plan”. The answer decides more than the title does.
2. Which decisions does the role own? Does the person choose suppliers, or recommend them to someone else? Do they own the plan, or assemble it for others to approve? Decision rights separate a leader from a specialist far better than years of experience.
3. Who must the role convince? A category manager who has to persuade the operations director to switch suppliers needs different qualities from one reporting to a procurement director who already agrees. Name the two or three people who will decide whether the hire succeeds.
4. Which skill is actually scarce? Most items on a typical list can be found in plenty of people. One thing is usually hard to find. It might be experience in a narrow category, or the ability to negotiate with a supplier you cannot replace. That is what you should be searching for.
5. What would you trade away? Imagine the ideal candidate lacks one of your requirements. Which one could you live without? If you cannot say, the list has not been prioritised yet.
A procurement example
Picture a company that wants to hire a Head of Category. The spec asks for long experience in category strategy, line management and work at a strategic level.
Now ask the first question. The answer is that most framework agreements expire within a year, nobody has a full overview of them, and suppliers are not being managed. That is not a job for a category strategist. It is a job for a contract manager with a feel for structure and supplier follow-up.
Run the search on the original spec and you get a capable strategist who spends a year bored by contract clean-up.
A supply chain example
Or take a company looking for a demand planner with deep knowledge of one particular planning system. The system is not the problem, though. Sales and production each work to their own forecast, and nobody owns the number.
The scarce skill is getting sales to take ownership of the forecast. The system can be learnt in a few weeks. Chairing an S&OP meeting where two departments disagree is not learnt nearly as fast.
What to do with the answers
Rewrite the spec starting from the answers. Open with the results for the first twelve months. State the decisions the role owns and who it has to win over. Make the scarce skill the only absolute requirement and move everything else to “nice to have”.
A shorter spec brings fewer candidates, but better ones. It also sharpens your interviews, because you know what you are testing for.
At By Name every search starts with us working through the job spec with you, and we tell you when we think it describes the wrong role.
Questions and answers
Why should we challenge our own job spec?
Because it is often a portrait of whoever held the job last. The role you need now may be a different one, and then you are searching for the wrong person.
What is the most important question to ask before a search?
What must be delivered in twelve months. The answer tells you more about the role you need than the title or the list of requirements.
How many must-have requirements should a job spec contain?
As few as possible. Find the one skill that is genuinely scarce in the market and be ready to let go of the rest.
Thor has worked in procurement and supply chain for almost 15 years, as a leader, an adviser and the person who built the teams. He has assessed procurement functions in more than 40 companies, in the Nordics and internationally, and seen how procurement, planning and logistics have to work together for the supply chain to deliver. He knows what a CPO or a supply chain director needs from their people. That is the judgement you get when you call.