Creating a requirement profile: These points belong in it

If you want to create a job profile, you should be aware that this in-house document forms the basis for the job advertisement. The image of the ideal candidate for the vacancy is thus defined and fixed in advance. It plays an important role throughout the recruiting process. It provides orientation and forms the basis for decision-making for HR managers and supervisors.

The aim of the requirements profile is to ensure that the interests and respective requirements of specialist departments, HR and managers are taken into account in the candidate. For this reason, the criteria (hard skills and soft skills) that the applicant should ideally have in order to fill the vacant position in the best possible way are systematically collected.

If a requirement profile is not drawn up properly, it can lead to incorrect appointments. Not only can this damage the company's image, but it also causes unnecessary costs.

Sample: This is how a requirement profile is structured

Each job advertisement is formulated differently in terms of content, is technically tailored to the company and is therefore very individual. There is also no clear definition and regulations for the exact form of a requirement profile. Nevertheless, patterns according to which a requirement profile is structured have proven to be effective:

Two blocks structure almost every requirement profile:

• "Personal Fit" criteria in the first part:
  The absolutely necessary hard skills are the first to be determined: i.e. all personal and absolutely necessary requirements aimed at professional qualification: training, further education, verifiable professional experience (for how long? What position? Relevant or not?), but also, for example, requirements for language skills.
• "Cultural fit" criteria in the second part:
  The applicant's soft skills are also defined and documented. This includes the company's requirements for values, but also the candidate's core competencies and skills, as well as personal attitudes. These include, for example, communication skills, the willingness to work across disciplines and in teams, or the ability to work flexibly and share knowledge.
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Procedure in practice – This is how you can create the optimal requirement profile:

Step 1:
The HR managers / recruiters and the specialist departments as well as the supervisors sit around a table and conduct an intensive dialogue together in advance.

Checklists are helpful:
In order to capture the requirements profile seamlessly, but also to hierarchize and filter it, a list with the defined facets of the corporate culture and the characteristics of the ideal applicant is helpful.

The following questions need to be answered:
Which corporate values should the candidate live up to, which competencies are in demand currently, but also in the long term with a view to upcoming changes in the company? And: What type of employee are the participants looking for? The "intrapreneur" type who takes the initiative, or rather the type who just does his job conscientiously?

Step 2:
Together, the requirements profile is now created by documenting the defined criteria and entering them in documents. In this way, a systematic picture emerges, the knockout criteria and ideal qualifications of the applicants become clear. Depending on their relevance, these are also hierarchized with corresponding terms in the job advertisement ("advantageous", "important", "very important"). When the job advertisement is formulated or application documents are received, you can always use the predefined criteria as a guide.

Example: This is what it can look like in practice

The job profile is different for every position in the company. In some cases, even the requirements for two positions of the same name in the same team may differ slightly. This is the case, for example, if different technical priorities are to be set.

Each company can include any number of criteria in the requirement profile. Depending on the level of detail, however, not all competencies should be included in the official job advertisement.

Here you will find an example of a requirements profile with a target/actual comparison. The target profile is defined as an area on a scale and indicates which competence level should ideally be given for a particular position. The applicant's actual profile is entered after the interview or assessment center.