Job description
A job description records a role’s purpose, responsibilities, scope and relevant requirements. It helps the employer and the person doing the work share an understanding of the role.
Describe the work the role owns
A job description gives the team a shared account of why a role exists and what it is responsible for. It may record the work’s scope, reporting relationships, decision-making authority and the skills or behaviours needed to do it. The right detail depends on the role; a fixed number of duties or a year-one scorecard is not part of the definition.
Start from the work itself. The CIPD’s guidance on role design and job adverts recommends keeping requirements related to the current role and describing them in observable terms. The US Office of Personnel Management’s job-analysis guidance likewise connects duties with the competencies needed to perform them.
The description can inform an advert
A job description is a working account of the role. A job ad presents an opportunity to candidates and gives them a way to apply. The two can overlap: an employer may share the description, or draw from it when writing the ad. They are not always separate files with strictly internal and external audiences.
Revisit it when the work changes
Review the description when responsibilities, scope or reporting lines change, and before using it to set requirements for a new search. If an old requirement no longer follows from the work, it needs a fresh reason. A current description gives colleagues a reference for the role; it does not replace an employment contract or determine every later performance decision.