Writing job specifications for trained employees is relatively straightforward. Here your job specifications might focus mostly on traits like length of previous service, quality of relevant training, and previous job performance. The problems are more complex when you’re filling jobs with untrained people. Here you must specify qualities such as physical traits, personality, interests, or sensory skills that imply some potential for performing or for being trained to do the job.
Finally, the job analyst compiles all this information in a job requirements matrix for this job.
This matrix would list the following information, in 5 columns:
Column 1: Each of the four or five main job duties;
Column 2: The task statements associated with each main job duty;
Column 3: The relative importance of each main job duty;
Column 4: The time spent on each main job duty; and
Column 5: The knowledge, skills, ability, and other human characteristics related to each
main job duty.
Such a job requirements matrix provides a more complete picture of what the worker does on the job and how and why he or she does it than does a job description. (For instance, it specifies each task’s purpose.) And, the list of each duty’s required knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics is useful for selection, training, and appraisal decisions.