I don’t know whether it has been the same for you, but for me, my job descriptions have never been the same as what I am ultimately tasked to do. Take my present job for instance. The fancy title on my cubicle says ‘Project Manager’. But I spend all my time resolving fights between clients and consultants, negotiating deals between employees who hate each other and generally keeping the peace in our division of the organization. I would classify my job description as ‘fire fighter’. But apparently, that is naturally and normally included in my existing job description.

Sometimes, when I am able to wrangle the time from my daily travails, I often ruminate about all my previous jobs and the job descriptions they entailed. Come to think of it, never have the jobs ever matched the job descriptions at all! In fact, thanks to all those previous experiences, I am a firm believer in the fact that job descriptions often conceal more than they reveal! It’s true. You don’t have to take my word for it. I am pretty sure that if you examine your own professional life, you will find the same thing.

Take my first job for instance. The job description said Public Relations Consultant. But the role entailed meeting nobody other than the company staff, faxing press releases, making copies of voluminous texts and drinking copious amounts of tea. I never met a member of the public, let alone get the time to develop a relationship with any of them. Or even take the second job. Here I was a corporate communication manager and the job description mentioned that I would have to ‘manage all the strategic and tactical corporate communication needs of the company’. What I did in reality however was very different. I attended all the meetings of the board members, listened to them bickering about each other, took the minutes of the meetings and sent out a soft copy of the minutes to all the attendees. Nowhere in my job description did it ever say that I was to be a glorified secretary. But there you have it. The dichotomy between the job description and the actual job!

Now that I have been through my fair share of jobs and job descriptions, I have finally gained the maturity to understand that the two shall never meet. Which is why, even when the human resource person in any of the companies I go to waxes eloquent about how great a job it is and flashes a detailed job description at me, I barely acknowledge him. I am now wise to the ugly side of job descriptions. And have learned to wait until I actually fill the role before I set out to see what the job description actually is!