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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
My company doesn't have job descriptions for its employees. I think 
we need them. What are they keys to writing a good job description? 
 
Answer: 
 
We do a lot of consulting work with businesses, and we’ve run into two 
kinds of businesses: those who have job descriptions but nobody ever 
looks at them, and then those that don’t have job descriptions and 
think they should. 
 
Let me give you some ideas for how to build a dynamic, useful, 
effective job description. It should have five components. They’re very 
simple. 
 
Number one is that it should have a title. The purpose of a title for a 
job is so that people from the outside world know how to relate to you, 
so think about what’s the best title for the outside world to connect 
with you. It’s not about status; it’s not about prestige; it’s about how 
you can build quick rapport with people on the outside. 
 
Number two: a good job description tells you who you answer to. It’s 
amazing how, in many entrepreneurial businesses, you ask people who 
their boss is, and they don’t know exactly who to say that supervises 
them. So a good description clearly identifies who the supervisor is.  
 
The third part of a good job description is that it has a brief summary 
of why the job exists. It really completes the sentence, “This job exists 
to . . .” and then in one or two sentences it describes why the job 
exists—not the person, but the job. 
 
 
 
Number four: what are the key results that reflect superior 
performance in this job? So, a great position description. This is where 
a lot of companies miss it. They list all the activities, all the tasks, 
various responsibilities and accountabilities.  
 
Focus on the key results that reflect superior performance in this job, 
and then you can put the activities as bullets under those points if 
you’d like. But every job should have three to five key results that 
result in superior performance. 
 
Number five, last of all: what are the minimum qualifications—the 
absolute minimums for somebody to be in this job? If they don’t have 
these, they don’t qualify. So, for instance, if it’s a nursing job, they 
need to have a nursing degree. Or if it’s a CPA or a CFO maybe they 
need to have a college degree.  
 
Cover those five things, and do it in no more than two pages—the job 
title; who they answer to; what the basic or summary description of 
the job is; what the key results that reflect superior performance are; 
and the absolute minimums required for somebody to be in this job. 
 
That’s a great position description that will get used repeatedly to 
guide a person’s performance. 
 
 
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