Recruiter Officially Does Away With The Concept Of 'JDs'

By Mrudul Arora / Mumbai

In a bizarre move in Mumbai, a leading MNC has decided to scrap the concept of Job Descriptions (JD). Addressing the media, the senior HR officer with the company Gupta said, “We have decided to discontinue the system of mentioning job descriptions while notifying vacancies.”

He added, “There was a ‘considerable difference’ in interpretation of the JD by the company and the employees, which led to frequent disputes between both the parties. The primary reason for this was the ‘unrealistic expectations’ of the employees regarding job profiles. Hence in order to deal with problem we have decided to scrap the practice of mentioning JD.”
While the HR has claimed that this step was much needed, other departments of the company are suspicious about the motives.

Speaking to this writer, a Marketing manager of the same company said, “Earlier HR department used to put in efforts for structuring the job descriptions. I even saw the HR executives sincerely referring Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis for hours to improve their vocabulary as the management had asked them to make the JDs an ‘interesting read’. Now that there will be no work, god knows what they will do!”

A systems analyst with an IT company welcomed this move, but alleged, “Job descriptions are purposely structured very vaguely by using broad-based statements so that the employee keeps wondering about his exact role in the organization during his entire tenure. In many cases it will be extremely difficult for someone to even guess the designation by reading the job description. 

In fact, I have heard that IIMs may introduce it in match the following section in CAT wherein the candidates will be asked to match the JD with the ‘correct’ Job Title.”

Rohit, a management graduate, who considers himself a “victim” of this practice, shared his interesting tale with us. He said, “The other day I was cleaning up my mail box when I came across the mail, which was incidentally the interview call letter for the post I am currently working on. I became nostalgic and opened the mail. I went through the mail and was shocked to discover that the job description mentioned was entirely different from what I have actually been doing for the past 3 years.”

“The description I had given to my girlfriend about my roles as a husband before our marriage matches more accurately to what I’ve been doing after the marriage, when compared to this shit!” he added.

Later, Rohit took a print of the e-mail, called it a complete nonsense, and tore it off in front of his colleagues during the lunch hour.

While most job aspirants didn’t react to this story, some of them were euphoric. Rahul, a commerce graduate, is one of them. He said, “No JD means no work. You see the government follows this principle only. It has been notifying its vacancies without mentioning JD since ages.”

It remains to be seen whether the other recruiters choose to follow this practice in days to come.