Handout A
Conducting a Job Analysis
Why Conduct a Job Analysis?
- It provides an objective basis for hiring, evaluating, training, promoting and determining salary for all personnel.
- An effective analysis helps to write specific job descriptions.
- Detailed job descriptions improve the overall efficiency by having clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
- Detailed descriptions clarify the evaluation of candidates through paper screenings and personal interviews.
- When evaluating a candidate with a disability, an indepth analysis of the position better enables the determination of the need for an accommodation or for task reassignment if it is a marginal function.
When conducting a job analysis ask yourself
the following questions about each task:
- How is the task performed?
- How often is the task performed? Are tasks performed less frequently as important to success as those done more frequently?
- How much time is allocated to performed the task? Is the pace consistent?
- Why is the task performed?
- Where is the task performed?
- How much is success measured?
- What happens if the task is done wrong or not on time?
- What aptitudes are necessary? (Aptitudes refer to the potential to learn and accomplish a skill.)
- What knowledge is necessary? (Knowledge refers to the level of general or technical information.)
- What skills are necessary? (Skills refer to the applied ability through training required.)
- How much physical exertion is required? (Physical exertion refers to lifting, standing, bending, reaching, twisting and crawling.) Be careful to list only those activities that are actually performed.
- What are the environmental conditions (i.e., hot, cold, dust, wet, etc.)?
- How much mental exertion?
- How much emotional exertion?
- What possible kinds of reasonable accommodations could be applied if necessary (i.e. amplified phones, large print, etc.)?