If a job could talk, it would tell us exactly what sort of person it required for superior performance. Because jobs can’t talk, we have to find other ways to work out what’s important.
The hard skills for a job are fairly easy to determine: things like level of education, experience and technical skills. However, what is sometimes harder to determine is what type of behaviours, motivators, professional skills, etc. are required for superior performance in a role and therefore, what type of person would be the best match for the job and the organisational culture.
The job benchmarking process identifies the traits and qualities that are most important to success in a particular job. Benchmarking is not a categorical way of determining who should or shouldn’t be hired. It represents a structured way of comparing candidates by working towards a well-defined picture of what the job actually requires and therefore what the most ideal candidate looks like so that hiring managers can make more informed hiring decisions.
Common uses: Recruitment, succession planning, gap analysis and development planning.