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Describing and advertising the job

Planning for the process

A mistake as you start your planning can be costly and can undermine the employment relationship that will eventually be established. In part, this is because the good faith requirements set out in the Employment Relations Act and other legislative requirements can impact on each stage of the hiring process:

You should therefore plan to ensure that:

Describing the job

The employer is required, as a minimum, to describe the work to be undertaken in their employee’s employment agreement.

However, you are more likely to find the best person if, as you advertise and interview, both you and the applicants have a clear idea of:

Equally, before you begin the recruitment process, it is worthwhile considering what flexibility you might have in any of these areas to meet the genuine requirements of a suitable employee who, for example, has a disability or is caring for dependent children or a dependent relative.

If this is the first time you have filled the position, this is the time to consider the needs and shape of your business. If you are replacing an existing employee, it is also worthwhile reviewing the present arrangements and making certain that they still fit your needs.

Questions you can ask yourself about the job:

You don’t need to write any of this down or make it a major exercise, but putting time aside to think it over, and maybe talking things through with someone who understands your needs, can help to clarify your thoughts.

Having answered those questions, you can then bring the answers together to develop a job description, the proposed type and hours of employment and a profile of the type of employee you require.

Developing a job description

A job description should:

Take a look at our job description checklist.  

A full-time, part-time, permanent, casual or fixed-term employee?

Having identified the needs of your business, it is important to be clear, before advertising a position, what is essential to you in the employment arrangements you plan to make and what would be ideal.

Your legal requirements and ability to recruit may be affected by these decisions.

Legal requirements

In the employment agreement you eventually agree with your employee, you must be clear about the arrangements you have made for hours of work, and if, at a later stage, you wish to change those arrangements, it is necessary to do that by agreement with your employee.

Most minimum conditions of employment are consistent across all forms of employment, although there are some other factors to consider:

  • There are additional requirements when entering into a fixed-term agreement. Fixed-term agreements can only be offered where there is a genuine reason for the fixed-term. More information about fixed-term employment is available on the Department of Labour’s website or by phoning 0800 20 90 20.
  • Many people are referred to as casual employees when they are actually fixed-term or part-time workers. Genuinely casual employees are those who work only intermittently or on an irregular basis, and some different rules may apply. More information about who is an employee is available on the Department’s website or phone 0800 20 90 20.
  • Special provisions for the payment of holiday pay apply for some fixed-term employees and for employees undertaking genuinely casual work. More information about holiday payments for some fixed-term and genuinely casual employees is available on the Department’s website or phone 0800 20 90 20.
  • There are additional requirements if your employee is being employed on a trial or a probation period.

 

Hours of work

Employees in different industries and types of work have different expectations regarding hours of work.

Your ability to recruit can be improved or undermined by the extent to which your expectations on hours of work reflect practice in your industry.

This is particularly the case where employees have to balance external responsibilities, such as study, childcare or travel, against the needs of the job.

Before advertising and developing a proposed employment agreement, you need to be clear whether the employee is employed to work:

The choice you make can also influence where and to whom you advertise the work. For example, employees relying on public transport may not be able to travel easily outside normal business hours and, if work is for short or broken periods of time, local rather than more distant candidates are more likely to be interested.

Examples of hours of work arrangements frequently provided in employment agreements can be found in the Department of Labour’s web-based employment agreement clauses section, and you can develop a draft employment agreement by using our Employment Agreement Builder.

Place of work

You are required to include details of the place of work in your employment agreement with an employee.

In advertising or offering a job, you should make it clear whether the person will always be working in one place, will be required to work at a set number of places, or will work at different sites on a regular basis.

For some types of work, you might also like to consider whether the employee could undertake some or all of their duties at home if he or she wished – this can sometimes provide flexibility for people with family responsibilities and may make it easier to recruit.

Personal attributes

Having defined the job, you should then describe the personal characteristics you value and what the job requires – sometimes called a “personal profile”. This can often be put quite simply, but must be clear and easily understood. Make sure the characteristics you identify are genuinely required for the job, and that they do not reflect discrimination.

Issues a personal profile can cover are:

Take a look at our checklist for a personal profile.

As you develop the profile, remember that it should reflect the genuine needs of your business. Setting requirements out of habit (for example, you have always used a school leaver for this job, or the previous employee had these qualifications so the new employee requires them) may both reduce the range of people who apply for the job and open you up to accusations of discrimination.

Human rights legislation makes it illegal to discriminate in employment against a number of groups. Details of these requirements, exemptions from them, and advice on how they relate to recruiting are on the Human Rights Commission website.

Skills and qualifications

A related but separate issue is the qualifications the job requires and the training you are able or willing to provide for the successful applicant.

Although providing training involves costs for an employer, it can also be an investment that ensures employees can meet the needs of the job and progress over time.

There are a much wider range of qualifications and on- and off-the-job training available than in the past. Also, with increased immigration, it can be difficult to assess the value of a qualification.

If you wish to understand the nature of existing qualifications, or include an appropriate qualification in the personal profile, you can obtain advice from:

If you are prepared to provide training towards a qualification for the employee, you should consider whether there are entry or prior learning requirements for that training, and include that information in the personal profile.

Regardless of other skill requirements, you should consider the level of literacy and numeracy required for the job, or for the training you will be requiring the employee to undertake.

Where training is expected to occur on the job, it is important to ensure these requirements are realistic and that you have the time and people to deliver the training.

Alternatively, the costs, availability and ability of an employee to participate in external training need to be fully investigated before commitments are made.

An employer’s failure to provide necessary training could later be used by the employee to respond to criticisms about his or her performance.

Workplace character

Every workplace has a character or style.

When recruiting, you should consider what the character of your workplace is, and whether that character is the best for your business.

It is easy for cultures to develop that are taken for granted, but which aren’t the best for you or a new employee.

The job description and personal profile should reflect the reality of your workplace. When you have designed both, if there is clearly a mismatch, you need to consider whether the job description and the personal profile or the culture should change.

Examples could be:

No one culture is right or wrong, as long as the culture that is established does not:

Attracting suitable job applicants

How you attract the best applicants depends on the job, how much money you are able to spend on advertising, and how much time you have.

Options include:

If you are considering advertising overseas, contact the Department of Labour’s Immigration Service for information about visas.

When you prepare and publish an advertisement, you retain responsibility for what is said, and you need to make sure that what is said is accurate and not discriminatory.

It is also important to consider whether there are any procedures that must be followed in making a new appointment.

For example, many employers in the public sector are legally required to notify a vacancy in a way that ensures that suitably qualified applicants are aware of the vacancy, and are then required to appoint the applicant best suited to the position.

Some private sector employers may have agreed to certain hiring obligations in their collective or individual employment agreements.

One example would be a preferential re-employment clause applying to any employees who have recently been made redundant. Another example would be an agreement with staff that vacancies will be advertised internally as well as externally.