Why Job Descriptions don’t always Describe the Jobs!

Never happy with my job descriptions, I used to make up my own. I think this was a lot to do with me being an uneducated egomaniac with an inferiority complex at that time.

Whatever, it didn’t matter what I did it never sounded good enough, so I always had to glorify the job descriptions to feel superior or at the very least, sound successful to my peers. I’m happy to say that as the years passed and I became more educated and successful, I eventually stopped lying about my job descriptions as my positions became acceptable to me. However, quite often many of the job descriptions given by companies do not always match the actual jobs.

I don’t know whether it has been the same for you, but for me, my job descriptions have never been the same as what I am ultimately tasked to do. Take my present job for instance. The fancy title on my cubicle says ‘Project Manager’. But I spend all my time resolving fights between clients and consultants, negotiating deals between employees who hate each other and generally keeping the peace in our division of the organization.

Sometimes, when I am able to wrangle the time from my daily travails, I often ruminate about all my previous jobs and the job descriptions they entailed. Come to think of it, never have the jobs ever matched the job descriptions at all! In fact, thanks to all those previous experiences, I am a firm believer in the fact that job descriptions often conceal more than they reveal! It’s true. You don’t have to take my word for it. I am pretty sure that if you examine your own professional life, you will find the same thing.

One job I had, for instance had the job description of Public Relations Consultant. But the role entailed meeting nobody other than the company staff, faxing press releases, making copies of voluminous texts and drinking copious amounts of tea. I never met a member of the public, let alone get the time to develop a relationship with any of them. Or even take the second job. Here I was a corporate communication manager and the job description mentioned that I would have to ‘manage all the strategic and tactical corporate communication needs of the company’. What I did in reality however was very different. I attended all the meetings of the board members, listened to them bickering about each other, took the minutes of the meetings and sent out a soft copy of the minutes to all the attendees. Nowhere in my job description did it ever say that I was to be a glorified secretary. But there you have it. The dichotomy between the job description and the actual job!



Now that I have been through my fair share of jobs and job descriptions, I have finally gained the maturity to understand that the two shall never meet. Which is why, even when the human resource person in any of the companies I go to waxes eloquent about how great a job it is and flashes a detailed job description at me, I barely acknowledge him. I am now wise to the ugly side of job descriptions. And have learned to wait until I actually fill the role before I set out to see what the job description actually is!

So, when it comes to updating your resume, perhaps it’s best to give an appropriate job description rather than the title you actually have. A street sweeper could perhaps be a Landscape gardener, or a road digger a civil engineer etc. Does it pay to be honest with job descriptions in resumes? Well, ask yourself this; are employers truthful with the job descriptions they give to you at an interview?