Information will be gathered in order to conduct a job analysis. Such data can be gathered by skilled job analysts, concerned supervisors, and job holders themselves. The following approaches are used to get job information:
1. Worker Diaries/Logs: Workers can keep a participant diary/long or a list of what they do during the day. The employee keeps a diary of all the activities he or she participates in (together with the time). This may provide you a pretty detailed picture of the position, especially if it's reinforced with follow-up interviews with the employee and his or her boss.
If done correctly, this approach yields more accurate results. It does, however, take a long time. Furthermore, each job holder may keep records in his or her own method, which might cause issues with analysis later on. As a result, it's only useful in certain situations.
2. Interview: You can use one of three types of interviews to collect job analysis data: individual interviews with each employee, group interviews with groups of employees who have the same job, and supervisor interviews with one or more supervisors who are intimately familiar with the job being analysed.
When a large number of people conduct similar or identical work, a group interview is utilised since it is a rapid and affordable approach to learn about the profession. In most cases, the worker's immediate supervisor will attend the group session; however, if this is not the case, you should interview the supervisor individually to gain their viewpoint on the job's duties and responsibilities.
3. Critical Incidents: Using this approach, job applicants are asked to explain incidents related to the position based on their previous experience. The occurrences are evaluated and categorised based on the job functions they depict. By differentiating between effective and inefficient actions of workers on the job, a fair image of actual job needs may be obtained. This approach, however, is time intensive. Analyzing the contents of worker descriptions necessitates a high level of competence on the part of the analyst.
4. Technical Conference Approach: This method makes use of supervisors who are well-versed in the task. Specific work features are gathered from the "experts" in this case. Although it is an effective data collection tool, it frequently overlooks the incumbent worker's opinion of their work.
5. Job Performance: In this technique, the job analyst does the profession under investigation to gain first-hand experience with the job's real duties, as well as its physical and social demands. This approach is only appropriate for professions with modest skill needs that can be learned fast and simply. This is a time-consuming approach that isn't suitable for professions that need considerable training.
6. Functional Job Analysis: Functional job analysis (FJA) is a job analysis technique that focuses on employees. This method tries to capture the complete person on the job. The following are the major characteristics of FJA:
- The amount to which explicit instructions are required to complete the task
- The extent to which thinking and judgement are required to complete the task
- The assignment's mathematical requirements, and
- The verbal and linguistic capabilities necessary to complete the task.
7. Observation Method: A job analyst uses this method to observe employees on the job. Various tasks, activities, the rate at which tasks are completed, and the manner in which different activities are conducted are all observed. This approach is appropriate for occupations that need manual labour and have a short employment cycle. This approach also necessitates the observation of the whole spectrum of actions, which is achievable in particular occupations.
8. Questionnaires: Questionnaires are a popular approach used by engineering consultants. Job applicants are issued questionnaires that must be completed and submitted to their superiors. The information obtained, on the other hand, is frequently disorganised and incoherent. The purpose of distributing questionnaires is to gather the essential information from job-holders so that any errors may be reviewed with the employee first and then corrected before being sent to the job analyzer.
