Based on your knowledge of the specific job (gained through your own experience, through interview of someone in the job, and/or through observation of someone in that job), demonstrate the importance of conducting a thorough job analysis to accurately describe the most important criteria to be used when making employment decisions

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Based on your knowledge of the specific job (gained through your own experience, through interview of someone in the job, and/or through observation of someone in that job), demonstrate the importance of conducting a thorough job analysis to accurately describe the most important criteria to be used when making employment decisions.

You will not actually conduct a full Job Analysis for this assignment. You will perform some Job Analysis steps and reflect on lessons learned.

• Select a specific job (not just an O*Net "type" of job) for your job analysis. I would recommend a job with which you are familiar or have access to someone who is familiar with the job.
• Once you have selected your job, access O*NET. (https://www.onetonline.org/)
• In the top right hand corner, type in the name of the job you have selected to analyze. Note that O*NET refers to jobs as occupations. Your search will produce a list of occupations. You may find that the occupation you searched for has a name other than the exact term for which you searched, but you should easily be able to figure out the occupation that matches your search term. NOTE: Your specific job might not exactly match any O*NET occupation, and that's OK.
• For your paper, clearly define YOUR specific job, and include the O*NET code that's the best match and that indicates the occupation that you used as a starting point for your job analysis.

Use the following outline, and provide your answers to questions about the following Job Analysis elements:

1.  Organization, Location, Occupational Code, and Job Title: 

Answer the questions:

• What is your specific Job title, organization, and location?
• What O*NET SOC (Occupational Code) and title best matches the specific job you are analyzing?

2.  Job Overview: 

Immediately below the SOC and Title you will find the Overview of Occupation, even though it will not be identified as such.  

• Write a couple of sentences Job Overview of your specific job. Do not just copy the O*Net summary of a similar job.
• Answer the question: How is your job different from the general job description provided in the O*NET Occupation Overview?

3.  Tasks and Task Activities

Think of the most important Tasks and Task Activities for your specific job. Compare those to the tasks and task activities in the O*NET list for a related job.

Review our course material about criteria.

Answer the questions:

• What do you think are the 7-10 most important tasks and/or activities of your specific job? You may just list them for this answer.
• Are the most important tasks and task activities for your specific job included in the O*Net list for a comparable job? If not, which ones are missing? Why might that be? Use complete sentences for these answers.
• Are there tasks and activities on the O*Net list that are NOT typically used in your selected job? You may just list them for this answer.

4.  KSAs

Review our course material about Criteria.

After you have completed your Tasks and Task Activities, continue to read and use the O*NET resources to get some ideas of the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) that are generally important for your type of job.

As with the O*NET Tasks, there are many more KSAs available in the O*Net description than you need, and some might not accurately describe your particular job. Browse through the entire KSA list and think about those that are most appropriate for the Tasks and Task Activities that you identified and/or think about others that might not be listed by O*Net that make most sense for your particular job.

Again, review our material about criteria. 

Answer the questions: 

• What do you think are the 7-10 most important knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of your specific job? You may just list them for this answer.
• Are the most important KSAs for your specific job included in the O*Net list for a comparable job?  If not, which ones are missing?  Why might that be?  Use complete sentences for these answers.
• Are there KSAs on the O*Net list that are NOT typically used in your selected job? You may just list them for this answer.

5.  Reflection and Analysis

Answer the following questions (use complete sentences for these answers. Explain entirely in your own words. No quotes or paraphrases can be used, but be sure to cite our text or other sources of information – for example, about the importance of criteria and effective job analyses.):

• Why are criteria relevance, contamination, and deficiency important to consider when making employment hiring, selection, training, and performance appraisal decisions?
• How can a job analysis that includes observations and surveys of actual job incumbents help ensure that the most relevant criteria are used in making those employment decisions?
• In what ways might relying only on O*Net information to determine the most important knowledge, skills, abilities, and tasks and activities of the specific job you selected for this assignment result in criteria contamination and deficiency? In other words, what important elements of your selected job were missing from the O*Net information? What things were listed in O*Net information that are NOT important for your specific job?
• Describe 2 specific examples of employment decision errors (related to hiring, selection, training, or performance appraisal) that might be made if leaders in your specific job's organization relied only on O*Net to determine what was most important.

Be sure to answer each question clearly and fully. Be sure to edit carefully. The entire document should be in black font. Be consistent in your use of punctuation and capitalization. Please include a cover page with your name, the assignment name (Job Analysis Reflection), and your specific job title.

Some background information: For many years, job analysts conducted job analyses "from scratch" through interviewing, observation, job performance, and professionally published job analysis instruments. More recently a valuable resource has been made available to professionals, practitioners, academicians, employers, and job seekers. That resource is called O*NET (see more information about O*NET at the bottom of these assignment directions.)

When you visit O*NET, you will see this resource is actually a collection of many resources and databases. Feel free to explore and learn about the many elements that make up O*NET.

*IMPORTANT: Just as HR professionals and I/O Consultants use O*NET as a beginning frame of reference for their analysis of specific jobs in organizations, you will use the O*NET information as a place to start for this assignment. However, as you work on your Job Analysis Assignments, please note that the goal is to analyze your selected job, so, it's important to NOT just copy/paste everything from O*Net.  That's just a resource to help you identify possible essential KSA, tools, etc.

If you were a Human Resources Director in an organization, you'd need to fully describe and outline the actual job in your organization, so that hiring, promotion, and salary decisions could be made, and so that every person in the organization would "be on the same page" in terms of understanding the expectations and necessary facets of that job.

For example, listing a variety of things that all kinds of psychologists or librarians or childcare workers would need to know and do is NOT a job analysis. A preschool teacher and a nanny might both "do" child care, but the job expectations for them would be different.  An elementary school media specialist and the Director of Special Collections at the Library of Congress might both be "librarians," but their jobs and needed skills would be different. A director at a VA hospital and a counselor at a private high school might both be psychologists, but their jobs would not be the same.

Clearly defining a specific job at a particular organization and clarifying what an employee in that position would need to be able to do well - so that an employer could make hiring and performance appraisal decisions - is the point of a job analysis.