Traditionally a job description is drafted by conducting a full analysis of the role and breaking down each task into levels of priority. A job description is the first taste of what an employee is to expect from the role and therefore writing one should be a priority to any organization.

1. Where to start?

It may sound patronizing, but the best way to analyze a position is to have it described by the current employee, first-hand. Take some time out of your day to sit down with your employee(s) and discuss what they do, how they feel about each task, what they find challenging and what they find rewarding. Knowing about the extra bits of their role holds more value than you may think! Getting first-hand information like this is not only beneficial in writing job descriptions, but also as a resource in the case of sudden spikes in employee turnover.

2. How to be accurate?

As mentioned, job descriptions rarely meet the actual job’s demands and instead reflect a basic outline of what the employee should be doing. Most employee’s work longer hours and transfer their skills across more divisions than what was initially described. New Zealand especially, with a market dominated by small businesses, requires employees to be ‘jacks of all trades’.

Despite the need for transferable skills, stating the basics is a crucial part of the job description. Will the employee be answering phones? Compiling reports? Cleaning the kitchen? Completing end of month sale budgets? Analyising stats? The best way to be accurate is to be honest. There is no reward in omitting the ‘less favourable’ tasks in order to bolster the position. False advertising eventually leads to employee dissatisfaction, and reflects poorly on the organisations’ ethics.

3. What is included in a job description?

Arguably, the most important aspect of a job description is whom the employee will report to. Make this clear in your job description; even if it means including a graphic to illustrate how the company operates. The more senior the position, the more important it is to have this understood by the applicant – if an employee is unsure about whom they report into, they will be unsure of their standings within the management umbrella. Other important areas to include are:

• tasks / everyday functions
• key clients / employees / suppliers
• percentage of time dedicated to each main function
• the goals or mission statement of the company
• key skills required
• milestones (if relevant)
• KPI’s / sale targets (if relevant)

4. Is a job description really that important to a business?

In short – yes. Of course, for every one HR Advisor or Recruiter that agrees to this, they will be inevitably challenged by the majority of other departments. Put simply – job descriptions are a lot of time and effort with absolutely no monetary gain. However, dynamic managers and successful organizations will agree that a business is built ‘from the ground up’. Therefore, the effort and time that goes into foundations is invaluable.

As an employer, it’s important to have current documents, so if it’s been more than six months, go through the job descriptions on file and consider whether they are still relevant. You’ll be surprised about how quickly a position can change, and at what extra duties your employees have picked up!

Questions? Suggestions? If you’d like to know more about job descriptions please email our HR Advisor- michelle.reasbeck@crackerjacks.co.nz!

We would like to congratulate existing team member, Michelle Reasbeck, on being promoted as the HR Advisor for Crackerjacks. Michelle is your ‘go-to’ person for all recruitment and business queries.

Her passion is people, and she is driven by ambition, hard work and success. Having been with Crackerjacks since March 2009, she is well versed with online recruitment in the professional contracting arena. Michelle’s email address is michelle.reasbeck@crackerjacks.co.nz and she can be contacted on (09) 9148540 ext 450.

Deanna Yang – Communications Advisor

Welcome to Crackerjacks brand new Communications Advisor – Deanna Yang. In her last year studying journalism at university, Deanna loves to be around people and has a passion for writing.  She will be in the ‘driving-seat’ for Crackerjacks marketing and PR initiatives – so watch this space! She begins on the 4th of April and can be contacted directly on deanna.yang@crackerjacks.co.nz, (09) 914 8540 ext 453.

2010 has been a year of growth for Atlantis Healthcare. Their cutting edge patient support programs are gaining more recognition on a global scale and business is steaming ahead. To meet their client’s escalating demands – they’ve had to resource up – and fast. Crackerjacks has worked along side Atlantis and helped them recruit over 25 contract and permanent positions during 2010. This is a significant number, considering that they’re a relatively small business on a global scale.

Crackerjacks provide Atlantis Healthcare with a full-service recruitment service;  working directly with line managers while taking the role brief,  searching for suitable candidates, coordinating interviews and referencing etc.

Jonny Dudder, the Group General Manager for Atlantis explains; “we’ve used Crackerjacks to recruit a range of positions across our Auckland and Sydney offices. From Account Executives, Healthcare Call Centre staff, to Network Engineers – they’ve found us some great people. After initially using them for our contract roles, we decided to use their full-service recruitment solution that incorporated hiring permanent staff too. I estimate they we have saved approximately $150,000 in recruitment fees in 2010 alone by using Crackerjacks”.

As Loyalty Marketing professionals and technology service providers, Visible Results has particular skill requirements in the IT sector. We have helped them source a range of Developers and Data Technicians/Analysts in New Zealand, as well as senior finance executives.  In recent times we’ve worked with their Australian office to source marketing professionals for their client service teams. A full service recruitment service is provided for Visible Results; this has enabled them to save money on their recruitment spend while still sourcing high calibre people with an excellent with their business culture.

“Crackerjacks offers us a quality Trans-Tasman service which, quite simply, has achieved outstanding results for us, affordably ” said Richard Glass, CEO of Visible Results Group Limited.

• New look homepage – With a live count of contractors and business users, have a squiz.

• New Notes addition to the Job Management page – the ability to add contractor notes.

• Launch of Wholesale solution – new tool on Crackerjacks for high volume contractor recruiters with customized access to our platform/database

• Branded job postings and automated job reminders – keeping you on top of the recruitment process.

• Job Alerts for contractors – to encourage more contractor to apply to your jobs!

And we’ve got a lot more exciting developments lined up for this year – so keep your eye on Crackerjacks!

To help get around this we’ve added a brand new Notes tool for business users on the Crackerjacks Job Management page (see screen shot below). For all shortlisted contractors, you can add a note next to their details on the Job Management page. This allows you to keep tabs on the recruitment process with ease. This tool is particularly handy when there are a multiple people in the business accessing the page and documenting their thoughts on applicants.

Remember that after the job has been filled, all associated notes will be deleted. This is done for privacy reasons, so if you need to save information about contractors, we encourage you to use a separate document.

If a contractor particularly interests you – but they’re not suitable for the going job, you can add them to your Watch-list. This allows you to stay in touch with them for future projects.

If you’re an existing business user on Crackerjacks, we encourage you to log-in now and test out this new tool!

Performance ratings provide businesses with extra confidence that the contractor they find in a search is the right person for the role. As a contractor, if you have a proven history of going above and beyond, you are rewarded with a higher rating. Rated contractors have a higher chance of receiving profile requests from businesses. Read more about performance ratings here.

When a referee is entered on a contractor’s profile, an email is sent to the referee, requesting that they complete a quick online performance check.  The beauty of our performance check system is that the checks only need to happen once: once a reference check has been completed, that is the one and only time they will ever have to provide details to Crackerjacks about that contractor. This means the contractor is free to apply for any roles posted on Crackerjacks, knowing that the reference check process has been taken care of.

As a professional contractor, it is expected that any referees added to your profile will have been first contacted by you to ensure they are willing referees.

Lastly – it is important to remember you don’t have to list referees who you have specifically worked for as a contractor. The 9 reference questions are general statements regarding your overall work ethics and capabilities both as an employee and/or contractor.

View the Hub here

Crackerjacks is designed to connect employers with contractors through an innovative contracting portal. When we initially launched back in 2008 we brought a brand new model to the table– representing the future of contracting recruitment. After working through some early day BETA bugs, we now have a thorough solution, which is almost airtight.

Take a glance at our home page – you will see that we now have a live count of contractors and business users.  Have a look.  You’ll quickly see that while we have an excellent pool of contractors, we are slightly lacking an abundance of business users who regularly post jobs. Whilst we have a few loyal clients who’ve had much success in finding outstanding people on Crackerjacks, we still need more.

Don’t get us wrong, we have exciting plans up our sleeve to boost job activity, but your help is needed to push this even further. If you are currently in work, and believe Crackerjacks is a good solution, recommend us to your employer.

As an open-source web based tool, the Crackerjacks application can be accessed anywhere and anytime by contractors and businesses, provided you’re connected. Registration for businesses is free – check out the details here.

Inevitably, if more businesses use Crackerjacks we will have a wider variety of jobs for professional contractors.

We view Crackerjacks as a community of contractors, not just a job-board or a snap-shot of contractors’ CV’s. As contracting specialists, we’re here to provide you with advice and resources that will set you up for success in your freelancing career.

We’re open to your feedback too, so if you think there is something we could be doing better, let us know; Info@crackerjacks.co.nz or 09 914 8540!

Talk soon,

The Crackerjacks team

Individuals who have ported mobile numbers are not able to validate their number during the registration process.

If you have a ported number (i.e. 021 number but your actual provider is 2Degrees), we encourage you not to validate your mobile number at present, so you can successfully register.  If this still does not work for you, please contact us on info@crackerjacks.co.nz and we can activate your account.

Crackerjacks is currently changing SMS providers from Clickatell to a New Zealand based solution – Bulletin, to make sure this issue doesn’t arise again.

Thank you for your patience, this should be resolved within the next three weeks.

Talk soon,

The Crackerjacks team.

If you receive a profile request for a job, we encourage you to either accept or decline this as soon as possible.  Businesses send you these requests to find out more about you, so it’s respectful to get back in touch in a prompt matter.  Profile request alerts can now be sent to your mobile (in addition to the standard email), if you haven’t set this up already, click here to find out how.

We know that your availability can change quite regularly, so we encourage you to log in now and update this using the calendar function on your Dashboard.  If you are currently in a contract or in employment, you can make your profile unavailable by blocking out your availability.  This will also mean you won’t be contacted with profile requests during this period – and when you are ready for a new project, you don’t have to start from scratch and build a new profile.

Do you feel like you are missing out on this action?  It could be because you have not completed your profile yet!  Businesses can only find Crackerjacks who have complete profiles.  You can easily find out if you’ve completed your profile, by logging on and looking at your Dashboard.  If there is a “Print profile” option at the top right side of your Dashboard, then you’re good to go.  If this isn’t displayed – the areas you need to complete will be highlighted there.

If you have any questions relating to your profile, please don’t hesitate to contact us on question@crackerjacks.co.nz and one of the team will be in touch with you.

Talk soon,

The Crackerjacks team