How to Complete A Job Analysis in 9 Easy Steps (And Why You Should)

Only one in two employees strongly agree they know what’s expected of them at work. That’s right. Half of your workers lack clarity on the ins and outs of their own job position.

And if they don’t even understand their individual responsibilities, how on earth are they supposed to know what their teammates are up to? They won’t know who to ask for guidance, who to escalate an issue to, or who gets the final say on a decision.

A job analysis provides the details in black and white so all your employees know the expectations of each role in your org chart.

Along with being the first step in crafting detailed job descriptions (which is super useful for recruitment candidates, too), the job analysis process also supports your development processes by showing employees how they can progress in their careers.

This guide describes the steps involved in using a job analysis to gain crystal clear clarity on what everyone’s supposed to be doing round here.

TL;DR – Key Takeaways

• A job analysis is a detailed breakdown of each role’s main responsibilities and tasks. When employees or candidates know exactly what’s needed from them, it often boosts their and the team’s productivity.
  
• Along with providing the data needed to create accurate job descriptions, job analysis also helps with identifying skills gaps, benchmarking performance standards, and setting fair salaries.
  
• You can use job task analysis in many ways — including recruitment, training, selection, succession planning, and boosting workplace safety.
  
• The main methods for analyzing jobs include options like observation, interviews, and task inventory.
  
• The steps to get started include gathering and analyzing data, identifying skills gaps, developing employee training programs, and crafting the job description.
  
• With Toggl Hire, your team can save time by automating the hiring process. You can also lean on our platform to assess the skills of employees and candidates quickly using ready-made skills assessments.

What is a job analysis?

A job analysis is the process of creating a detailed description of a specific role’s responsibilities, tasks, compensation, required qualifications, working conditions, and relationship to other roles.

This systematic process encompasses everything from gathering information about the role to documenting and presenting it to stakeholders.

Through performing job analyses, you establish the components of a role, which helps internally with employee career development and externally with crafting accurate job descriptions that attract suitable candidates.

The goal of a job analysis is to explain exactly what a role entails. For example, instead of telling an entry-level marketing team member they’re “responsible for social media,” a job analysis could clarify that they should “post on LinkedIn and Bluesky social media platforms twice a week.”

Job description vs. job analysis: What’s the difference?

A job description is the result of the job analysis — they’re not the same thing; one follows the other. The job description paints a full picture of a job opportunity, including:

• The role’s duties
• Core skills and experience needed
• What the company’s all about
• What’s in it for the successful candidate
• Salary and other employee benefits

But to get to this point, your job analysis is the process of gathering all the information you need to create a summary of the role’s tasks and subtasks. The findings from this analysis are included in the job description as its core responsibilities.

You might have heard of a similar concept called a competency model. To avoid any confusion, a competency model breaks down how a person performs a role. In other words, all the skills, knowledge, capabilities, and experience someone needs to succeed in a particular role.

Example job analysis for a junior marketer

Tweak this job analysis template to suit your own process:

Job title: Junior Marketer

Reports to: Marketing Manager

Location: Remote

Position summary: The Junior Marketer supports the marketing team by executing digital and traditional marketing strategies. This role focuses on content creation, social media management, campaign support, and data tracking to enhance brand awareness and drive customer engagement.

Key responsibilities

1. Content creation

• Write and schedule two LinkedIn and Bluesky posts weekly to promote company content, such as blog articles, events, and product updates.
• Collaborate with the design team to create graphics for social media posts, newsletters, and digital ads.

2. Social media management

• Monitor and respond to comments, messages, and mentions on social daily.
• Track social media metrics, including reach, engagement, and click-through rates, and create weekly reports.

3. Campaign support

• Assist in developing email marketing campaigns by creating draft copy and coordinating with the design team.
• Support promotional activities for product launches or special events, including drafting press releases and coordinating logistics.

4. Market research

• Conduct competitor analysis and trend research monthly to identify opportunities for new marketing campaigns.
• Gather customer feedback from surveys and interviews to inform marketing strategies.

5. Administrative tasks

• Organize and maintain a digital library of marketing assets (e.g., logos, images, templates).
• Update and maintain the marketing calendar, ensuring alignment across teams.

Skills and qualifications

• Proficiency with marketing tools such as Canva, HubSpot, and Google Analytics.
• Ability to analyze and report on marketing metrics.
• Basic knowledge of SEO and digital advertising platforms.

Working conditions

• Fully remote role
• Requires collaboration with cross-functional teams, including design, sales, and customer support.
• Fast-paced environment with multiple ongoing projects and deadlines.

Performance evaluation criteria

• Achieves weekly social media posting targets with high engagement rates.
• Consistently meets deadlines for campaign support and content creation.

• Provides accurate and insightful data analysis in reports.
• Builds effective working relationships with teammates and external partners.

Why should you use job analysis?

HR teams are busy. They have a lot of spinning plates, and job analysis is yet another process to commit to and invest resources in. But trust us, it’s worth it. Why?

The core benefits include:

• Improving recruitment strategies and overall employee selection
• Enhancing your HR decision-making to implement better processes
• Shaping your performance management approach
• Boosting internal mobility
• Setting clear criteria for fair promotion and salary decisions
• Identifying any skills gaps or training recommendations
• Providing the data to optimize the makeup of teams and boost productivity
• Supporting strategic workforce planning that improves business resilience

A job analysis forms a solid foundation for managing the workforce more efficiently and, in doing so, improving the employee experience and overall productivity.

More job analysis examples

HR professionals can use job analysis data in many different ways, including:

Where	Purpose
Recruitment and selection	To identify the core capabilities to include in job posts, your selection criteria and which assessment tools will best suit a particular role.
Training and development	To assess the strengths and areas of development for current employees. You’ll have a clear benchmark to use for comparison and can easily add relevant points to their career development path.
Performance evaluation	To develop performance standards for tasks employees perform and evaluation criteria aligned with the specific job requirements.
Compensation	Determine whether an employee is being compensated fairly for a particular role, especially if the analysis reveals they have many additional tasks and responsibilities.
Succession or organizational planning	To identify the essential competencies that ensure a successful role and include them in a succession plan for key leadership or management positions.
Workplace safety	To identify potential risks and hazards associated with specific duties and create safety protocols and training to keep employees safe.

6 core job analysis methods

There are a variety of ways you can perform a thorough job analysis. Choose which one (or a combo) would best suit the particular role you’re analyzing.

Method of job analysis	How to implement it
Direct observation	Gather information about all the specific work activities and tasks in a particular role by observing an incumbent employee in their daily work.
Interviews	An interview is a good way to follow up on the observation or get more detail on exactly what they do. You could also interview their supervisors to gain more context from their perspective. In either case, a structured interview process uses the same set of interview questions in each job analysis to keep things consistent and mitigate any bias.
Questionnaires	Structured questionnaires with an employee or supervisor typically include open-ended and closed-ended questions to cover all bases. They’re a great option if you’re carrying out a high volume of job analyses and don’t have time for one-to-one discussions with every employee.
Performance analysis	This approach entails analyzing job performance data, such as productivity, quality and error levels, to establish the specific tasks that should make up a role. Combing through the employee’s performance appraisals could generate some key insights here.
Critical incident technique	For this method, you gather info on any critical incidents (like a work accident) that happen on the job to differentiate between good or safe behavior and unethical or dangerous behavior.
Task inventory	Have the existing job holder list all the tasks associated with their job and get their colleagues or supervisors to rate the importance and frequency of each task.

9 Steps to conduct successful job analysis

Organizations that understand what their employees do every day and structure their roles so that everyone can give their best, maintain higher levels of morale and productivity.

The journey begins with the insights gleaned from job analysis data. So, let’s see how to get started with the data collection process.

#1. Establish the purpose

Kick-off by determining why you want to perform your job evaluation. For example, is it to improve the quality of job applicants you receive by clarifying your job ad role descriptions?

Or perhaps it’s to improve your performance management process to provide more clarity about the necessary skills and training needs for each position. There’s no right or wrong here. It’s about choosing a purpose that aligns with your particular organization.

#2. Choose the method of job analysis

Decide which method, or a combo of methods, best suits your work environment and role responsibilities. For example, if you need to get data from a busy executive, you could use a questionnaire.

#3. Collect data

Appoint a job analyst (or an entire team) to gather all the information you can about the job you’re assessing. The more sources you use, such as job descriptions, subject matter experts, employee growth plans, observations, and industry best practices, the more context you have for your analysis, and the more impactful it’ll be.

#4. Analyze the data

Next, analyze the data you’ve collected. How you do this depends on volume. For example, if you’re conducting a job analysis process in a small business, a simple Excel spreadsheet might be enough. But if you quickly outgrow the grids, you might prefer to use a dedicated human resources management platform with built-in analytics to make sense of the data.

Whatever approach you use, the aim is to distinguish which job tasks or responsibilities are essential and which detract from the role’s key outputs or goals.

For example, a social media manager has started transcribing customer interviews in addition to their main duties. You discover the transcribing task takes a lot of their time and doesn’t contribute to improving social media metrics, so you red-flag it.

#5. Verify your findings

When you’ve completed the job analysis and analyzed the data, then you’ll need to verify your findings. As a best practice, discuss them with the current employee in the role, a supervisor, and a hiring manager. You could also compare the findings to competitors’ job ads for further confirmation.

#6. Set out the role responsibilities and job tasks

From the info you’ve verified, you’ll now have what you need to put together a detailed breakdown of the role’s essential duties.

Use your job analysis data to get a clear picture of the role and start to see what candidates or employees need to perform the duties successfully. You’ll have all the knowledge requirements to create accurate job descriptions that reflect the physical demands, day-to-day tasks, professional and legal guidelines, and any other details that apply to the role.

#7. Identify skills gaps

You can now determine if there are any skill gaps with the employees in that role by comparing the job tasks list with what they’re actually doing and the quality of their work.

Some of these gaps may be caused by a lack of knowledge or experience, but they can also be caused by the rapid pace of technological changes (ahem, Chat-GPT 4o, anyone?).

It’s important to identify skill gaps during the job analysis process, such as a lack of knowledge or need for advanced training.

#8. Develop employee training programs

If you see a skills gap, you can develop a training program for that employee to help them improve the knowledge or skills required to perform that specific task.

Successful training tools could include:

• Online training programs
• Accredited certifications
• Group training
• Mentorship
• Case studies

#9. Create the job description

Now you should have all the pieces you need to develop a job description that is:

• Detailed
• Accurate
• Covers the minimum job requirements and exact tasks
• Able to streamline recruiting and selection with quality candidates

When you’re creating job descriptions based on your job analysis, also ensure the copy is clear and concise and shows off your company culture.

The whole point of conducting a job analysis, besides creating a detailed job description, is to continually streamline and evolve the position with industry changes and organizational growth. Once you have conducted an in-depth evaluation of the job duties and identified skills gaps, remember that your efforts will only stay relevant for a couple of years or so.

AIHR | Source

Identify skill gaps fast with online skills tests

Performing a job analysis may sound like a major time suck. But, when done right, your team can actually save heaps of time in the overall hiring, employee selection, and onboarding process. Not to mention, you’ll ensure current employees are no longer in the dark about what’s expected of them. And that’s pretty darn important.

Skills testing complements the job analysis process perfectly by ensuring your employees and job seekers have the required skills to perform well in their respective roles.

Toggl Hire offers an all-in-one skills assessment platform with 150+ ready-made templates available to test 180+ skills. The whole process is automated, saving your team loads of time. You can create customized skills tests in two clicks and make them role-specific (with valid questions sourced from SMEs!)

Sound good? Oh, you betcha! Sign up for a free Toggl Hire plan today.