External versus Internal Skills
INTRODUCTION
In this unit, you will take up the concept of the job description. Job descriptions
are necessary for current employees to understand what they are to do to
forward the objectives of the mission of the organization and its goals, and for
human resources managers to recruit and hire employees with the skills to
complete the job tasks needed in order to deliver services.
With the job description completed, a human relations manager must
understand what skills the job has and the skills that the organization has within
its current staff with the use of a skills inventory. This comparison allows the
development of a list of skills that must be acquired by either training current
staff or recruiting new staff with these skills. You will experience the skills
inventory this week in your project and explore whether it is more effective to
train staff or hire new staff for your organization.
OBJECTIVES
To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to:
1. Use existing theory bases to explain the requirements of the job description in
maintaining progress within the organization.
2. Discuss the function of the job description and its impact on operations within a
public setting.
3. Demonstrate the ability to create more efficient personnel management
practices by explaining the function of the job description within a public setting.
4. Unit 5 Study 1
Studies
Readings
Use your Public Personnel Management text to complete the following:
• Read Chapter 5, “Defining and Organizing Work.” The text will explore the topic
of job descriptions from the viewpoint of different groups, such as elected
officials and employees, and the role of the job description in the organization in
helping the employee advance.
Research
From the organization you are using for your final project or from an organization
that provides similar services, obtain two or three job descriptions with, if
possible, their classification information. You will use these as models for the job
description you are submitting in the next unit.
r
Unit 5 Study 2
Project Preparation
The second component of you course project, Job Description and Delivery
Model, will be due in Unit 6.
If you have not already done so, review the assignment at this time and work
ahead as much as possible. If you have any questions about the requirements of
the assignment, contact your instructor.
Unit 5 Discussion 1
External versus Internal Skills
Finding the best mix of new perspectives and existing knowledge is an important
aspect of the public sector human resources manager’s challenge. Consider and
explain how to bring necessary skills into the organization without upsetting
productivity in the workforce. Describe the challenges and pitfalls you need to be
aware of as you balance locally available skills with internal skills as you recruit
talent to your organization. Be sure to support your positions with appropriately
cited references to academically sound sources.
Response Guidelines
Read the posts of your peers and respond to at least two by expanding upon or
refuting the positions taken. Be sure to support your arguments with
appropriately cited references to the readings or other academically credible
sources.
Unit 5 Discussion 2
To Recruit or to Train?
Consider the organization you are using for your final project and decide whether
it is more efficient and effective to hire on new skills or to send current staff to
training to acquire these new needed skills. Explain your analysis in detail and
support your position with appropriately cited references to the readings and
other relevant literature.
Response Guidelines
Read the posts of your peers and respond to at least two by comparing your
peers’ decisions to your own. Try to select posts that took different positions than
you did, and discuss possible reasons for the differences.
CHAPTER 5
Defining and
Organizing Work
The ways in which work is defined and organized tend to separate those responsible for public
HRM into two camps—HR specialists and everybody else. In that respect, these functions
generate responses like those that accompany topics such as rotating your car’s tires or flossing
your teeth. Experts consider them essential, but many of us do not spend enough time on them,
and certainly do not want to spend more time talking about them.
For HR specialists, writing a job description—a position’s duties and the minimum
qualifications required to perform them—is the key to position management. And position
management (classifying positions by job type and level of responsibility, and limiting total
agency payroll to sum of the salaries authorized for all classified positions) is the cornerstone of
personnel management from which all other activities derive. Others do not see it that way.
Legislators and elected officials may concede that budget management and program evaluation
are legislative oversight tools designed to limit the number of employees and the operating
budget of agencies within budget guidelines, but the actual process of writing job descriptions
and classifying positions is an administrative detail they are not concerned with. Managers and
supervisors tend to consider job descriptions and position management undesirable and
unnecessary restrictions on their ability to manage human resources flexibly and autonomously.
Understandably, their main objective is to be able to freely shift employees from one job to
another as circumstances dictate, without reference to formal job descriptions. And position
management puts an additional type of restriction on a manager’s budget autonomy—and
therefore on their ability to meet program goals flexibly by preventing them from hiring
additional employees or paying them more, even if they have money in their budget to cover
these expenses.
Therefore, this chapter starts with that dilemma. How do we reconcile these competing
perspectives on job analysis and classification within the context of contemporary public HRM?
As indicated in Chapter 3, the objectives of public HRM have changed over time with the
competition among traditional and alternative systems and values. Moreover, the focus of job
analysis and classification is shifting from management of positions to management of work or
of careers. This chapter will explore how these changes affect the way public agencies define
work today.
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
1. Tell why different groups responsible for public agency HRM have different views of job
analysis; and relate the historical development of the field to the conflict and interaction among
underlying values and objectives: patronage jobs for elected officials, merit systems for civil
service reformers, position management for HR directors and specialists, work management for
managers and supervisors, and career management for employees and applicants.
2. Summarize why traditional job descriptions (those oriented toward position management)
may not be suitable for supporting public personnel management as its focus has changed to
work management and employee management.
3. Analyze work using a performance-oriented description, which incorporates work
management and career management into the traditional job description.
4. Understand why job descriptions are important for jobs filled through other systems besides
civil service, including the alternative mechanisms and flexible employment relationships that
characterize nongovernmental personnel systems.
JOB DESCRIPTIONS: DIFFERENT GROUPS HAVE
DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES
A job description is a brief statement that describes a job by listing major duties and specifying
the minimum qualifications needed to do it. Exactly how job descriptions are prepared and used
is a complicated story that has its origins in the creation of civil service systems and merit system
principles. Because different groups have been involved, and because these groups have different
perspectives, it is not surprising that attitudes toward job descriptions differ. Fundamentally,
each of the important groups involved in HRM policy or implementation has a different
perspective on job descriptions and position management based on the historical evolution of the
field and their respective roles in it.
•Elected and appointed officials have three contradictory attitudes toward job descriptions. If
they are in charge of an agency, they may consider job descriptions and position management an
intrusion on patronage (their ability to hire who they want for policy making or other positions
where personal or political loyalty are the most important selection criteria). Nowhere was this
view of job descriptions more apparent than in the summer of 2008 when political appointees in
the U.S. Department of Justice were caught dismissing job applicants for their political affiliation
when the descriptions of the jobs they were applying for clearly stated that they were
nonpolitical.1
If they are more interested in oversight, they may consider position management
essential to control the size and direction of agency staff as an important aspect of budget
management and program evaluation. Finally, most elected officials may consider job
descriptions and classification systems to be simply irrelevant unless their primary focus is
budget cutting.
•Merit system reformers consider analyzing and classifying positions as the key to a successful
transition from the evils of the spoils system to the greater effectiveness and equity of a civil
service system as the basis for responsive and professional public administration.
•Public HRM specialists consider job descriptions and classification systems as the key to
effective position management, which includes compliance with legislatively mandated controls
over the number of positions and salary levels as part of the total budget
•management process. In addition, they are the key to other functions like recruitment, selection,
pay equity, and performance evaluation.
•Managers and supervisors have an ambivalent viewpoint on job descriptions. They may
consider them a necessary first step to recruitment, performance evaluation, setting equitable
pay, or disciplinary action. At other times, they may be an unwelcome intrusion on work
management—their ability to creatively and flexibly use human resources to achieve program
objectives.
•Employees may view job descriptions ambivalently. A current and accurate position
description (PD) may clarify what they need to do to succeed on their job. On the other hand,
criteria established in a job description (like specific types of experience or education) may seem
unfair and artificial barriers to career management—personal mobility and advancement based
on competencies. In some cases, job descriptions are also used as the basis for formal complaints
in those instances where employees are asked to perform duties outside of their job descriptions
but are not compensated accordingly.
Elected and Appointed Officials Focus on Politically
Appointed (Patronage) Positions
Jobs are not defined, analyzed, or classified at all under political patronage systems. Employees
simply are awarded a job and the salary that goes with it because they supported a successful
candidate for elected office. Indeed, originally the justification for patronage jobs was that “no
public job should be so complicated that any citizen could not complete it.” Therefore, many
advocates of the spoils system felt that any individual could perform any public job, without the
necessity of setting minimum qualifications. Not only were minimum qualifications considered
unnecessary, they also tended to interfere with elected officials’ freedom to allocate jobs to their
supporters. While some minimally acceptable level of performance might be required to avoid
political embarrassment for the elected official, in some cases employees did not even have to
show up to get paid. Moreover, today two changes in the nature of work—the proliferation of
independent contractors and electronic communication—make political patronage even easier.
For example, at the time of this writing, there were sixty one investigations being conducted into
contracting associated with waging the war in Iraq. Independent contractors can be hired to
temporary or part-time positions not subject to classification; and the reality of remote (“virtual”)
offices allow political appointees to work with little direct oversight.
Merit System Reformers Focus on Civil Service Systems
For merit system reformers fighting to increase government effectiveness in the face of
patronage politics, job analysis epitomizes the principles of scientific management and budget
transparency that enable them to control the spoils system. Founded on the Classification Act of
1923, which formalized job analysis and classification in the federal government, merit system
reformers support job analysis because it is the essential first step to ensure that employees are
hired and promoted based on ability and performance, and that jobs of equivalent difficulty are
paid the same salaries. Without this, it is simply not possible to hire or pay employees to support
the values of individual rights or administrative efficiency. Again, anyone who assumes that
objective and fair pay systems are inevitable, or that they are easy to achieve, has only to look at
the chronic and interrelated economic, political, and social problems that plague governments in
developing countries—corruption, incompetence, and “brain drain.”
Operationally, creating a civil service system means identifying how many employees work for
each agency by job type, geographic location, and salary. This enables personnel specialists to
develop a staffing (manning) table, a roster of all authorized positions in an agency. Hopefully,
as personnel actions result in employees being hired, transferred, or discharged, the position
management information system will keep this information current. While the need to develop an
adequate position management information system may seem self-evident, and the steps
involved in doing so may seem childishly simple to complete, the political culture of patronage
politics can make it difficult to achieve this basic administrative reform. The important thing to
realize here is that merit systems do not simply arise out of general societal pressures for
modernization. Instead, they develop because reformers first win political approval for specific
administrative reforms designed to make it more difficult for patronage systems to operate
openly or secretly. Once these reforms are enacted as law, they must still become routinized
administrative procedures.2 Under patronage systems, it is actually quite difficult to determine
how many employees actually work for an agency because there are three possible answers, all
different: (1) all persons on the payroll (whether or not they are expected to show up for work),
(2) all persons who actually show up for work on a regular basis, and (3) the authorized positions
in an agency (whether or not they are filled and whether or not those individuals actually show
up for work).
Each of these answers is the result of different pressures on patronage systems. The first option, a
payroll “padded” with persons who get paid but never show up for work, results from allowing
elected officials to place nonemployees on the public payroll as a reward for political or personal
loyalty (and perhaps to pocket a percentage of salary as a “kickback” from the nonworking
“employee”). The second option, a valid payroll matching the number of actual employees, is the
objective of civil service reformers. The third option, a payroll inflated by showing as filled
positions those that are actually vacant, allows senior managers to pocket the salaries of “ghost”
employees as a reward for their own political loyalty. It is widely accepted that the first and third
options are corrupt and wasteful. But given that the primary function of public employment
under a patronage system is to buy political support, this waste and corruption are irrelevant, or
at least less important than maintaining a leader or party in power. This tension between
patronage and merit systems is by no means limited to the past or to underdeveloped countries.
Occasionally, local governments in the United States will cut civil service positions to save
money at the same time they are adding political employees to the payroll. These may be
legitimate excepted appointments (outside the merit system), or they may simply be positions
created because a powerful elected official wants a friend to have a job and happens to control
the budget of the agency in which the new job is to be created.
HR Specialists and Position Management
Once a transition from patronage to civil service has taken place, merit system reformers have
sought to restrict patronage by entrusting HR directors and specialists implementing civil service
through position management. This means ensuring that public agencies limit pressure by
elected officials to create patronage positions by limiting the number of employees an agency
can hire and requiring agencies to account for these positions by identifying which ones are filled
or vacant, what the salary attached to each position is, and (therefore) what is the total agency
payroll. As part of public administration, position management supports rational budgeting by
limiting the total amount that can be spent on salaries and benefits. In addition, it fosters rational
policy making and implementation by making the staffing of agencies consistent with the intent
of the law and the objectives of public programs.
The underlying assumption of position management is that public agencies, left unprotected, will
be unable to resist pressure from elected officials to add patronage positions or to fill vacant civil
service positions with patronage employees. The way personnel specialists seek to protect the
merit system is by working inside the agency to implement legislatively imposed personnel
ceilings—These are budget limits on the agency payroll and position management limits on the
number and type of personnel they can employ. Frequently, position and budgetary controls are
combined through the imposition of average grade-level restrictions, which limit the number of
positions that can be created and filled at each level of the agency hierarchy. A low average
grade level means that most positions are low-level positions.
Theoretically, at least, these position management techniques are analogous to line-item budgets
in that they focus on inputs to the governmental process (number and type of employees).
Together, line-item budgeting and position management have historically been successful at
forcing compliance and accountability because the first controls the budget and policies of the
executive branch, and the second controls the allocation of personnel and money to implement
programs in executive agencies.
HR specialists (personnel directors and technicians) have long considered job analysis the heart
of personnel management because for them the ability to specify a job’s duties and the
minimum qualifications (“quals”) needed to perform them satisfactorily (in terms of the type,
level, and length of education and experience) is an essential prerequisite to other personnel
functions like recruitment, selection, training, performance evaluation, and workforce planning.
They regard setting minimum qualifications as essential to establishing an equitable pay range
for the position and encouraging career development by creating career ladders (vertically
linked positions within the same occupational field) by which employees could advance to
positions of increasing responsibility as they met the minimum quals (minimum qualifications)
for the next higher position on the ladder.
So, historically during the period of transition from patronage to merit, and even today among
specialists, the ability to conduct a job analysis and write a good job description is considered an
essential HRM competency. Two of the authors began their careers as management interns in the
federal civil service agency (the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, formerly the U.S. Civil
Service Commission). This program involved one to two years of rotational assignments, with
the authors assisting such memorable accomplishments as a nationwide computerized testing and
score reporting system for all entry-level jobs and drafting what later became the law
implementing technical assistance programs among federal, state, and local personnel agencies.
Nevertheless, many disgruntled HR specialists had worked their way up “through the ranks”
rather than through an internship program that offered what they considered an unfair
promotional advantage to recent college graduates who were not nearly as smart as they thought
they were. For these specialists, the success of the entire internship boiled down to the answer
the graduate of the internship program could give to a single question: “Can you write a good job
description?” Other skills and experiences might be useful, but unless an HR trainee had learned
this, he or she could not be considered qualified as a technician or a professional in the field.
Managers and Supervisors Focus on Work Management
As might be expected, however, the control over program inputs that is achieved by line-item
budgets and position management is less critical for managers and supervisors whose primary
objective is managerial effectiveness, not legislative compliance. This is because budgets and
personnel ceilings function well to control the size and direction of inputs to an agency; they are
quite ineffective at making the agencies more productive, as measured by program outputs.
Public managers have policy objectives to accomplish and limited resources with which to do so.
For the work to be done with the most efficient use of human resources, the agency must hire the
right number of people, with the right qualifications, for the right jobs, in the right locations. It
must pay people enough money to be competitive with other employers, but not more. This is
true regardless of which type of public personnel system predominates, especially for agencies
that focus on mission and consider themselves bound to definite performance standards and clear
paths of political accountability. Under these conditions, managers need to be rewarded for
flexible and responsible stewardship of personnel and financial resources. As such, they are
likely to resent job descriptions and classification systems, commonly viewed as legislative
“micromanagement,” because it restricts their flexibility and autonomy. Alternatively, they may
be unable or unwilling to function as managers because they have for too long been accustomed
to citing legislative controls as the reason for not managing resources creatively or effectively.
Overall, some of the primary reasons public managers dislike job descriptions and position
classification include the narrow divisions created between positions, the limited ability of
descriptions and classifications to adapt to changing technologies, and the associated demand for
standardization.3
Employees Focus on Career Management
Employees have a different perspective than either managers or elected and appointed officials.
They want to be treated as individuals, through a continual process of supervision, feedback, and
reward. They want to know what their job duties are and how performance will be measured.
They want to be paid fairly, based on their contributions to productivity and compared with the
salaries of other employees. They want their individual skills and abilities to be fully utilized in
ways that contribute to a productive agency and to their own personal career development.
Today, the current emphasis on flexible employment relationships makes us forget that civil
service systems were originally created to prevent elected and appointed officials from hiring
and firing public employees at will. This stability was designed to make government more
efficient and to increase public confidence in the quality of public service. Moreover, today, the
widely accepted notion that civil service systems provide a safe haven for lazy and incompetent
employees makes us forget that civil service systems were originally created to protect employee
rights by establishing clear criteria and procedures for selection, reassignment, promotion, or
discharge. This is based on the assumption that people work most productively when they have
adequate skills, clear objectives, adequate resources and organizational conditions to do their
jobs, and clear feedback and consequences. They work not only as individuals but also as
members of groups that collectively shape the culture of the agency and the ways in which
employees work together to meet objectives.
In summary, these five different perspectives on job analysis frequently come into conflict
because they embody different values and objectives about public HRM. Elected and appointed
officials emphasize either the internal discretion to make political appointments or the external
authority to control agency activities by controlling personnel inputs. Merit system reformers
view job analysis as the key to effective and transparent budget management and personnel
management. HR directors and specialists have traditionally allied themselves with civil service
reformers to emphasize external control over patronage through position management. Managers
and supervisors consider job descriptions increasingly irrelevant to flexible use of human
resources, and employees are more concerned with how minimum qualifications and
classification systems impede their personal career development. Much of the trend toward
professional (rather than technical) personnel management is connected to the movement toward
seeing HRM in strategic terms and can be seen as the transition of public personnel managers
from a policing role (control over employees and managers through position management) to an
enabling role (facilitation of employee productivity and satisfaction, or of managerial autonomy
and responsibility) through more enlightened job analysis techniques. Moreover, this change in
roles affects the way all personnel functions are performed.
JOB ANALYSIS AND JOB DESCRIPTIONS: MOVING
TOWARD
A BETTER MODEL
So where does all this lead us? It means that any discussion of how to define and organize work
depends on the context and the participants. Job descriptions began with civil service reformers
and HR directors and specialists. They evolved toward greater emphasis on managerial
effectiveness (work management) and employee aspirations (career management). In addition,
they now incorporate the flexibility and focus on efficiency appropriate to market-based values
and systems.
Traditional Job Analysis is a Tool for Position Management
Job analysis is the process of recording information about each employee’s job. It is done by
watching the employee work, talking with the employee about the job, and corroborating this
information by checking it with other employees and the supervisor. It results in a product. The
product could be a set of job specifications that are general to a set of positions (e.g., Admin
Assistant I) and that job descriptions themselves grow out of or it could be the job description
itself—a written statement of the employee’s responsibilities, duties, and qualifications. It may
also include a qualifications standard (“qual standard”) that specifies the minimum
competencies and qualifications (education, experience, or others) an employee needs to perform
the position’s duties at a satisfactory level.
Traditionally, job descriptions have been used as the “building blocks” of position management.
By requiring that a legislatively authorized position be identified before an employee could be
hired or promoted into it, job descriptions controlled the size of the bureaucracy and its
occupational diversity. They have functioned well in this capacity because they specify the job
title, occupation classification, level of responsibility, salary, and location of the job in the
organizational hierarchy. Similar jobs (positions) can be classified into an occupational series,
along with other jobs involving similar job duties. Jobs in different occupations but of
comparable difficulty (requiring similar skill, effort, or responsibility, and performed under
similar working conditions) can be classified into a common grade level. Each position can be
identified by an occupational and grade-level code, much as a point on a graph can be located by
measuring its distance from the vertical and horizontal axes.
Because each job (position) can be classified into a common occupational series as one of a
number of identical positions in the agency, its grade level served to fix salary and relationship to
other positions above and below it in the agency’s bureaucratic hierarchy. This has had the
additional benefit of identifying, in a manner similar to military rank, the power of the individual
in the organization. To emphasize the power of classification systems, consider that federal
government employees in Washington, DC, have long been accustomed to identifying
themselves and evaluating others based on classification system shorthand. A federal employee
might describe a coworker by saying, “She’s an 11 at Agriculture, a program analyst.” Both of
them would immediately understand that the employee in question was a GS-343–11: that is, a
classified civil service employee, pay grade 11, in the occupational specialty of program analyst.
She would outrank a GS-343–9, but be subordinate to a GS-343–12.
While not all classification systems are as complex as that used by the federal government, all
traditional job descriptions contain common elements, as shown in Figure 5-1: an occupational
code and/or title, a pay grade, an organizational locator, a position in the hierarchy, job duties,
and required minimum qualifications.
Traditional Job Descriptions Do Not Help Supervisors Manage Work
The traditional job description is designed to limit patronage appointments by classifying
positions by job type, skill level, and agency and to promote efficiency and employee rights by
ensuring that employees are qualified to perform their jobs and paid equitably based on their
qualifications. It minimizes patronage by facilitating external control over patronage hiring. The
use of standardized job descriptions for a range of positions, with each one identified by a
different position number and organizational location, is useful for reducing paperwork and
providing position management (external control over the total number of positions and their
salary level).
Job Title: Secretary
Position No: 827301-2
Pay Grade: GS-322-4
Responsibilities Works under the direction of the Supervisor, Operations Support Division
Duties Performs a variety of clerical functions in support of the Supervisor and the
mission of the Division:
types correspondence and reports
compiles reports
maintains inventory of supplies arranges meetings and conferences
answers the phone
handles routine correspondence
performs other duties as assigned
Qualifications High school degree or equivalent
Typing speed of 40 wpm
At least six months experience as a Secretary at grade GS-322-3, or equivalent
FIGURE 5-1 Traditional Job Description
However, the characteristics that make the traditional job description effective against patronage
also work against its usefulness as a work management tool for managers and supervisors.
Conceptually, traditional job descriptions promote an artificially static view of work and
organizations. Jobs change over time as an organization’s goals shift; and if the goal of the
personnel system is to promote rational management of work or employees, it does not make
sense to “freeze” a job or an organization at one point in time. Nor does it make sense to unduly
restrict the ability of the organization to move people from one job to another, as work needs
change. In addition, with increasing emphasis on working in teams, the whole concept of an
individual job may be questioned.
The traditional job description promotes a hierarchical and control-oriented relationship between
the organization and its employees that works against employee involvement and “ownership” of
the organization or its mission. The job description in Figure 5-1 lists the general duties
performed by any number of administrative assistants. Because it applies to a range of positions,
it is necessarily vague concerning the nature of the tasks (job elements) involved. The employee
may be working in a foundry, a personnel office, or a chemical supply house. In each case,
specific duties will differ. The entry “other duties as assigned” leaves the job description open to
any additions the supervisor may assign but does not leave room for changes in the work caused
by the employee’s particular skills or abilities. Thus, this traditional job description is flexible,
but only unilaterally, and in a way that assumes hierarchical and downward control over work
performance by the agency.
Traditional job descriptions are ill suited to work management because they assume that work
can be divided into individual units called jobs and that these jobs can be differentiated by
occupational type and arranged into hierarchies of increasing responsibility. This eventually
impedes the rational allocation of employees to work or the flexible assignment of employees to
jobs as the mission of the agency changes. As job analysis becomes more detailed, classification
and pay systems become more complex to keep pace. After a while, this results in the creation of
so many occupational categories and skill levels that people become frozen into a job. In
addition, supervisors are frequently impeded from moving employees from one type of work to
another, in that their tasks are “frozen” by their original job description.
Traditional job descriptions focus on the type of work to be done, not productivity or
performance standards. They do discuss duties, but they do so for purposes of task analysis
and job classification, not employee performance. From a manager’s perspective, traditional job
descriptions are deficient because they do not spell out the performance expected of the
employee. Nor do they specify the linking or enabling relationship among competencies,
performance standards, and minimum qualifications that in reality both supervisors and
employees need to work productively in an organization.
Employees and supervisors both know that a general statement of job duties must at some point
be augmented by more specific information about the conditions under which the job is
performed. For example, is the work done individually or in a team setting? That fact, in
combination with the skills and motivation of a range of applicants, will make a real difference
in how work is performed, and it calls into question the relevance of the concept of individual
productivity. Is the filing system a database or a manual system using paper documents? What
types of correspondence are considered “routine”? Do all duties occur continuously, or do some
require more work at certain times? Are all duties equally important, or are some more important
than others? What written guidelines or supervisory instructions are available to aid the
employee? What conditions make task performance easier or harder?
Thus, the traditional job description does not contain enough useful information to orient
applicants or employees. Therefore, the supervisor must use orientation or an initial on-the-job
adjustment period to teach employees how the work they do really fits into the organization’s
mission.
More critically, there are no standards for minimally acceptable employee performance of job
duties. This omission causes basic problems for the supervisor, who is the person responsible for
arranging the conditions of work to make the employee productive. How can this be done if the
quantity, quality, or timeliness of service required is not specified? Moreover, it is hard to
establish or evaluate performance standards unless these take into account fluctuating conditions.
For example, it is easier for a salesperson to increase sales 10 percent annually in an industry
growing by 20 percent annually than to achieve the same rate of increase in a declining market.
Moreover, traditional job descriptions specify a general set of minimum qualifications for each
position. If jobs have been classified according to the type of skill required, these minimum
qualifications may also be based on the competencies needed to perform duties. In general,
however, traditional methods blur the following logical sequence of relationships among tasks,
standards, competencies, and minimum qualifications:
1. Each task must be performed at a certain minimum standard for the organization to function
well.
2. Certain competencies are required to perform each task up to standard.
3. Certain minimum qualifications ensure that the employee will have the requisite
competencies.
Executives are handicapped because such traditional job descriptions describe only the personnel
inputs into a job and not the resultant outputs in terms of organizational productivity. That is,
they do not specify how many employees would be needed to produce outputs at a given level of
quantity, quality, or timeliness. Because traditional job descriptions do not lend themselves to
output analysis, they are not as useful a part of the human resource planning, management, or
evaluation process.
Managers are responsible for carrying out most HR functions, even in traditional organizations.
They, not the personnel director or personnel specialists, are the ones responsible for
interviewing applicants, deciding whom to hire, orienting new employees, giving them feedback
on performance, and evaluating their performance formally so as to provide either discipline or
positive reinforcement depending on the outcomes.
Managers are handicapped because they cannot readily use such job descriptions for recruitment,
orientation, goal setting, or performance evaluation. If new employees are recruited based on the
brief description of duties and qualifications given in the traditional job description, extensive
interviewing by managers may be needed to select the applicants most qualified for a particular
job. Orientation will require clarification of the job description to fit the particular organizational
context, but this may be incomplete because of other demands on the manager’s time. If the
organization uses management by objectives (MBO) goal setting and evaluation procedures,
these will be unrelated to the job descriptions used only by the personnel department for position
management and recruitment. For these purposes, individual jobs should each have a separate
job description, in recognition of the variability of tasks, conditions, standards, and competencies
they require. They should help the manager and the employee by serving as links among
personnel functions such as selection, orientation, training, and performance appraisal. These
two problems—the lack of evident relationship among tasks, standards, competencies, and
qualifications, and the lack of clear information about the nature of the job—reduce the
usefulness of job descriptions for executives, managers, and employees.
Traditional Job Descriptions Do Not Help Employees Manage their Careers
Because traditional job descriptions give only a brief outline of duties, employees must wait to
find out about working conditions and performance standards until after they have been hired.
Yet this may be too late; unclear or inequitable psychological contracts are a cause of much
unrest between employees and organizations. Evaluating employees without giving them clear
performance standards is a sure way to increase anxiety and frustration. Traditional job
descriptions generally do not help employees answer the most important questions they have
about their jobs. Such questions include:
•Which job duties are most important, and why?
•What makes the job easy or hard to accomplish?
•What competencies (skills, knowledge, and abilities); are needed for the job, and why?
•What performance standards will be applied to judge their work? How will their job
performance be measured and evaluated?
•What performance standards will they need to meet to keep their jobs?
•How will this job prepare them for other progressively more responsible positions?
Moreover, employees cannot use traditional job descriptions for career development because
they do not specify how increases in minimum qualifications are related to increases in skills
required for satisfactory task performance. It is easiest for employees to accept the qualifications
for a position and to strive to meet them through upward mobility programs if these linkages are
more apparent.
Traditional Job Descriptions Limit and Stereotype the HRM Profession
Personnel managers, and the HRM function itself, are most seriously affected by traditional job
descriptions’ focus on position management rather than on the primary concerns of managers or
employees. Because traditional job descriptions are unsuitable to work management, managers
and employees consider them a waste of time. Inevitably, job descriptions tend to be regarded in
the same light as inventories of office equipment or the updating of workplace safety
regulations—something that must be done yet does not add value or help the bottom line.
Therefore, if personnel managers consider job descriptions to be one of the most important
personnel tools, and if managers and employees know from their own experience that job
descriptions are irrelevant to their needs, then the impression may be created that other personnel
activities are equally unimportant. This logic is frequently used to belittle performance
evaluation, job analysis, training needs, surveys, and other items from the personnel manager’s
stock in trade.
Consequently, the traditional job description’s focus on position management makes it more
difficult for contemporary HR managers to effectively establish their own professional
credentials. The traditional job description has been largely responsible for the traditional view
of personnel management as a series of low-level operational techniques used mainly for
external control or system maintenance purposes. Position management and legislative
compliance are historically respected roles for public personnel managers, but they are less
important today, in a world of strategic planning, than many other objectives and values,
including management efficiency and effectiveness, or employee rights.
How to Improve Traditional Job Descriptions
Job descriptions continue to be useful under a range of personnel systems, but their reputation
has been tarnished. This is because, in their present form, they are more effective at position
management than management of work or employees. What changes would make them more
relevant to managers’ and employees’ needs?
Job descriptions would be more useful if they clarified the organization’s expectations of
employees and the links among tasks, standards, competencies, and minimum qualifications.
These improved job descriptions would contain the following information:
1.Tasks. What work duties are important to the job?
2.Conditions. What things make the job easy (such as close supervision or written guidelines
explaining how to do the work); or hard (such as angry clients or difficult physical conditions);?
3.Standards. What objective performance levels (related to organizational objectives); can
reasonably be set for each task, measured in terms of objectives such as quantity, quality, or
timeliness of service?
4.Competencies. What knowledge, skills, and abilities are required to perform each task at the
minimum standard under the above conditions?
5.Qualifications. What education, experience, and other qualifications are needed to ensure that
employees have the necessary competencies?
These changes are all related because they clarify the enabling relationship among tasks,
conditions, standards, competencies, and qualifications. In other words, they specify the
qualifications needed to demonstrate that an employee has the competencies required to perform
essential job functions at acceptable performance standards under a given set of conditions.
Taken together, these refinements emphasize the relationship of jobs to management of work and
employees, rather than of positions. They do so by focusing on outputs (what is actually
produced by a job); rather than inputs (which positions are allocated to the agency);.
Two examples of performance-oriented job descriptions are shown in Figures 5-2 and 5-3. These
examples show why performance-oriented job descriptionsare superior for management of
work and employees. They provide clearer organizatio
Adiministrative Assistant/Receptionist
Operations Support Division
Position No.: 827301-2
Pay Grade: GS-322-4
TASKS CONDITIONS STANDARDS
Type letters Use PC, MS Office Suite, and agency style manual Letter completed in 2 hours,
error-free
Greet
visitors
Use appointment log provided by supervisor about
waiting, provided supervisor is on time
No complaints from scheduled
visitors
Maintain
files
Use Access database management software and
instructions provided by supervisor
Update files weekly, with
accuracy and completeness
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
Able to type 40 wpm
Courtesy
Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access);
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
High school degree or equivalent
Two years word processing, especially MS Word
One year database management, especially MS Excel
FIGURE 5-2 Performance-Oriented Job Descriptions
Thus, job descriptions can do more than just establish a link between tasks, conditions, and
standards, which is useful to employees and supervisors. This link is the logical connection
between duties and qualifications required for content validation of qualifications standards
under affirmative action programs or civil service systems, and for employee productivity under
personal service contracts and other alternative/flexible employment relationships.
THE ROLE OF JOB DESCRIPTIONS IN ALTERNATE
PUBLIC PERSONNEL SYSTEMS
All personnel systems are responsible for accomplishing common functions (PADS);. Because
work must be defined before employees or independent contractors can be selected, job
descriptions are important under affirmative action, collective bargaining, and alternative
mechanisms and flexible employment relationships.
Juvenile Probation Officer
State Department of Corrections
TASKS CONDITIONS STANDARDS
Meet clients to
record their
behavior
Caseload of not more than 60;
supervisor will help with hard cases;
use departmental rules and
regulations
See each probationer weekly; keep
accurate and complete records per
DOC rules and regulations
Report criminal
activity to
supervisor
Prepare presentence
investigation
reports
Average of five per week; supervisor
will review cases per court
instructions;
Reports complete and accurate per
judge; judge will accept
recommendation in 75 percent of
cases
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
Knowledge of the factors contributing to criminal behavior
Ability to counsel probationers
Ability to write clear and concise probation reports
Knowledge of different judges’ sentencing preferences for particular types of offenders and
offenses
Knowledge of law and DOC regulations concerning pre-sentencing investigations and probation
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
High school degree or equivalent plus four years of experience working with juvenile offenders,
or a BS degree in criminal justice, psychology, or counseling
Possess a valid driver’s license
FIGURE 5-3 Performance-Oriented Job Descriptions
Affirmative Action
By specifying the minimum qualifications for a position and by logically relating minimum quals
to job tasks, job descriptions are the most critical element of equitable personnel practice. That
is, they act affirmatively to ensure that applicants and employees are not discriminated against
based on nonmerit factors. Moreover, they reduce the impact of favoritism by requiring that
vacancies be identified and posted, that all qualified applicants have the opportunity to apply,
and that applicants not hired be informed as to the reason for their nonselection. Of course, there
are widespread abuses in recruitment and selection procedures, and the folklore of public
personnel management is filled with fables confirming every suspicion: highly qualified white
male applicants who were not hired because they were the “wrong gender” or the “wrong color”
and highly qualified minority or female applicants who were included in the interview pool only
to demonstrate a “good-faith effort” at recruiting a diverse workforce, yet who never had a real
chance of being fairly considered for the position. Nevertheless, job analysis and job descriptions
are at the heart of test validation, affirmative action compliance, and reasonable accommodation
of persons with handicaps under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Collective Bargaining
Job analysis and classification are also central to collective bargaining. First, collective
bargaining starts with the identification of an appropriate bargaining unit, either occupation
based or agency based. In either case, the number and identity of positions eligible for inclusion
in the bargaining unit presumes that all positions, those included as well as those excluded, have
been analyzed and classified in advance.
Once a union has been selected as a bargaining agent, it begins to negotiate with management.
Frequently, contract negotiators justify requested pay and benefits by comparing pay and benefit
levels with similar jobs in other jurisdictions. Contracts stipulate pay, benefits, and working
conditions applicable to covered employees or to employees in specified occupations. Contracts
may prohibit management from assigning employees work outside their classification or above
their grade level. They will certainly specify that disciplinary action can only be taken against
employees who do not perform their jobs satisfactorily, for tasks assigned in their job
descriptions, as measured against previously defined performance standards.
Third-Party Service Delivery Mechanisms
In one sense, job descriptions hinder productivity because they tie up resources without adding
value. That is, they require work to write and review, without directly contributing to the outputs
by which the effectiveness of the organization is measured. However, in another sense, they
create value by specifying the nature of the work to be done, and the rewards the organization is
prepared to pay to have it done. For those public administrators contemplating the use of
alternative means of service delivery, it takes but a moment’s reflection to realize that clarity with
respect to performance expectations and rewards is at the heart of establishing most third-party
mechanisms for delivering public services without the use of government agencies, employees,
or appropriated funds.
If a public agency decides to outsource a public service or use a private sector contractor or a
volunteer-based organization to deliver a public service, no meaningful contract can be written or
enforced unless outputs or outcomes are specified; nor can the performance of public agencies,
private contractors, and volunteers be compared unless the performance standards and pay and
benefits are clearly specified. For example, a City considering contracting out security services at
public housing or transit facilities will have to define what level of service, and what level of
employee qualifications, will be needed to do the job—whether it is eventually done in-house or
contracted out.
Nonstandard Work Arrangements (NSWA);
Flexible employment relationships make it easier for management to hire, fire, and reassign
workers. They also tend to remove agencies somewhat from legislative controls based on
position management. However, job descriptions are more important than ever under these
alternative and flexible employment systems because their objective is work management and
their function is to define jobs. Consider that management needs some criteria to separate “core”
and “contingent” positions. These criteria can include occupation, level of difficulty, or
geographic location. Nevertheless, whatever criteria are used, jobs need to be defined and
classified based on the nature of the work. Moreover, consider employment of workers on shortterm
performance contracts. These need to clearly specify the terms and conditions of
employment, lest the rewards offered are not proportionate to the skills and responsibilities.
Summary
Many current controversies in public personnel management center around the appropriateness
of a focus on positions, work, or employees. Traditional job analysis defines the position as the
unit of analysis and develops classification systems based on the type of work and its level of
responsibility in the organizational hierarchy. More contemporary approaches focus on work
management—flexible use of human resources to accomplish the mission of the agency. In
addition, employees have yet a third perspective—career development. Performance-oriented job
descriptions offer a way of bridging between traditional and contemporary HRM and, therefore,
of linking the professional status of HR to the organizational productivity and career
development that are considered more important to mature civil service systems than using
position management to control patronage and enforce legislative priorities. There is no doubt
that job analysis will continue to be an important personnel activity, because it is required not
only for civil services systems but also for alternatives to them. One of the key points of conflict
within public personnel management is the extent to which the system should be driven by
market models or by broader concerns of social equity and individual rights.
Key Terms
average grade-level restrictions 109
career development 109
career ladders 109
competencies 114
employee management 106
grade level 111
job analysis 111
job classification 113
job (position); description 105
minimum qualifications (“quals”); 109
payroll 109
performance standards 113
performance-oriented job descriptions 116
personnel ceilings 109
position 105
position description (PD); 107
position management 105
qualifications standard (“qual standard”); 111
staffing (manning); table 108
traditional job descriptions 106
work management 106
Discussion Questions
1. How does the historical development of job analysis relate to the differing objectives of
elected and appointed officials, merit system reformers, HR directors and specialists, supervisors
and managers, and employees? How are these reflected in the concepts of position management,
human resource management, and career development?
2. Why are traditional job descriptions unsuitable for supporting personnel management as its
focus has changed to human resource management and career management?
3. How do performance-oriented descriptions differ from traditional job descriptions? Why are
they more effective from the supervisor’s viewpoint? From the employee’s viewpoint?
4. How can performance-oriented job descriptions be combined with traditional (position
management-based); job analysis and classification systems?
Case Study: Who’S Most Qualified to be Minority Recruitment Director?
Background
You have recently been appointed Personnel Director of the state police. The organization
consists of about 1,000 uniformed officers and 200 civilian employees. Its primary mission is to
promote highway safety through enforcement of traffic laws and assistance to motorists. In
recent years, the state police agency has come under increasing public criticism. The major
complaint: too much attention is being paid to writing traffic tickets; a more appropriate focus
would be on attacking the organized crime and drug trafficking that increasingly overwhelm
urban police departments. In addition, many community activists believe that the state police
routinely discriminate against African Americans and Hispanics in both employment and
enforcement of traffic laws, and in antidrug and antigang operations.
Morale is low among younger officers, who see themselves as victims of societal conflicts.
Turnover among recruits averages 25 percent during the first year after they complete a threemonth
training course required of all state-certified law enforcement officers. Reasons most
often given for leaving the state police are working conditions, lack of immediate promotion
opportunities, and the feeling the advancement is based on “whom you know, not what you
know.” Many observers consider the state police to be a highly political organization because the
governor appoints its top administrative positions. Some observers believe that, as a result, top
management lacks experience in law enforcement or management, and that this reduces the
organization’s morale and effectiveness.
As Director of Personnel, your task is to select an assistant who will be responsible for
developing, administering, and evaluating a minority recruitment program for the agency. An
outside consulting firm has selected three candidates as being the most qualified of several
hundred applicants who responded to nationwide advertising for the position. You and your
panel have interviewed each applicant. Now it is time to pick the one most qualified for the
position.
Process
Divide into discussion groups with four or five people in each group. The instructor should
designate the groups as A, B, C, etc. Within twenty-five minutes, place all three candidates in
rank order, based on their relative qualifications for the position. The résumés of the candidates
are given in Figures 5-5, 5-6, and 5-7. Before you do so, be prepared to defend your selection by
writing a brief performance-oriented job description for the position. This means you will need
to answer each of the following questions:
1. What job duties are most important to the position?
2. What competencies will successful applicants need to perform these essential job duties?
3. What objective performance standards could you use to assess whether the minority
recruitment director is doing a good job?
4. What conditions make the job particularly easy or hard to perform? (Hint: think of laws,
resources, organizational conditions, etc.); How do these conditions affect the performance
standards that should be established, or the competencies that should be required?
5. What minimum qualifications will successful applicants need to ensure that they have these
competencies? Specify education (type, level, and length);, experience (type, level, and length);,
and any other qualifications you consider essential
6. In what rank order should the three candidates be placed? In your group’s column, write a “1,”
“2,” or “3” opposite each candidate’s name. (See Figure 5-4.);
FIGURE 5-4 Rank the Applicants
7. Why is the applicant you chose the most qualified for the job?
8. What selection criterion was most important in making the choice? Place a check beside it.
9. Which value (political responsiveness, efficiency, or social equity); is most enhanced by your
selection decision and criteria?
10. How confident are you that your selection criteria are job related?
11. How would you validate the criteria if asked to do so by a federal court or by an affirmative
action compliance agency?
12. What is the appropriate definition of merit in this situation?
13. Was your group ever tempted to pick the “best” candidate first, and then identify the desired
competencies and minimum qualifications based on that candidate’s resume (rather than
identifying the desired competencies and qualifications first, and then ranking the candidates
against them);? If so, what does this show about merit-based selection procedures?
Postscript
The State Police Agency hired John Lewis for the position of minority recruitment director. The
selection panel comprised several senior state police officers and one of the book’s authors as an
outside observer. There were no women or racial minorities on the selection panel, but they were
unanimously in favor of hiring Jones because his military background and demeanor led them to
view him as the most likely candidate. Moreover, he was an African American, and recruitment
of African American male police officers was considered a higher priority than recruitment of
women or other minority groups.
For almost two years after his appointment, John Lewis gained nationwide attention for his
ability to recruit African American state police officers. As the only one of the three candidates
with first-hand recruitment experience, he did an excellent job recruiting through schools,
community organizations, and minority newspapers and radio stations. State police agencies
throughout the region studied his methods and results as the example they were trying to emulate
in their own agencies.
Nevertheless, as strong and successful as his recruitment efforts were, within two years of his
appointment it became evident that there were problems with his overall job performance. First,
turnover among new recruits and trainees continued to be high. The personnel director concluded
that it was because the John Lewis lacked experience with other key personnel functions (like
orientation and training, performance evaluation, and career development); that related to
retention. Once out of the academy, new recruits were still being assigned as trainee troopers
with senior officers who were quite likely to be white males. Their view of the organization, and
of the role of minorities in it, was not always consistent with the John Lewis’ mission and vision
for minority recruitment. Therefore, the state police personnel director ended up hiring someone
with a background similar to Harold Murphy who could help John Lewis institutionalize his
successful minority recruitment program by designing and evaluating similar changes in other
functions. These included diversity training for all officers, development of mentoring programs
for new minority recruits, and increased attention to racial harassment or informal discrimination
in the agency. In addition, police supervisors received training in performance appraisal,
promotional assessment, and other functions needed to advance minorities along a career
trajectory once they had joined the state police.
Second, John Lewis was a good minority recruitment program director, well liked and respected
by state police officers regardless of race. He communicated forcefully and effectively with
recruits, state police officers, and the hierarchy of uniformed command. However, he was not a
politically adept speaker who could be trusted to deal smoothly or comfortably with the media or
with federal compliance agencies. He was not an accomplished report writer or program
evaluator. Therefore, the state police personnel director and media relations representative
needed to cover many of these aspects of the job.
In short, the ideal candidate would have had the composite competencies of all three finalists:
John Lewis’ minority recruitment experience, Harold Murphy’s overall HRM expertise, and
Norma Sikorsky’s media relations, program evaluation, and political networking skills. In fact,
the nature of the job, and the requisite competencies, did evolve over time. Initially, the critical
need was to hire someone with John Lewis’ background to plan and manage a successful
minority recruitment effort. Next, to prevent minority recruitment problems from continuing as
minority retention problems, the state police needed to hire someone with Harold Murphy’s
background. As the program matured, it needed continual positive communication with
compliance agencies, the state legislature, and the Governor’s office to maintain good political
relations.
Questions
After reviewing the outcome of the case, please answer the following discussion questions.
1. How does the outcome show that jobs and organizations change over time?
2. How does the outcome show that definitions of “merit” change over time, even for the same
job?
3. How would you recommend that job descriptions be revised to accommodate these changes?
How would you “sell” these recommendations to managers and employees, given their varied
concerns and priorities?
John Lewis
1327 W. Addison Street
Minneapolis, MN
Job
Objective:
A responsible professional position in minority recruitment, higher education
administration, or personnel management.
Employment History:
2006–
Present
Assistant Director of Admissions, Northern Minnesota State College. Responsible
for minority recruitment, minority financial aid, and internship programs for a
25,000 student state university system institution. Since 2006, the percentage of
minority students has increased from 7% to 11%, despite cuts in Federal loans and
other financial aid programs.
2000–2006
1st Lieutenant to Captain, U.S. Army. Responsible for a variety of combat
assignments in the United States and overseas. Rifle Platoon Leader responsible for
the health, morale, welfare and safety of 43 men (2000–2004);. Company
executive officer (2004–2005);. Battalion Air Operations Officer (2005–2006);.
Awards and Decorations:
2007: “Who’s Who” (Outstanding Young Men in America);
2000–
2006:
Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal with “V” Device for Valor (Two Oak Leaf
Clusters);, Air Medal, Army Commendation Medal with “V” Device for Valor, and
Purple Heart (Two Oak Leaf Clusters);
1997–
1998: Medgar Evers Memorial Scholarship, Jackson State University
Education:
1999: BA in Psychology, Jackson State University, Mississippi.
FIGURE 5-5 John Lewis’ Résumé (African American Male);
Harold Murphy
3732 18th Street
Arlington, VA
Job Objective: A responsible professional job as a human resource manager.
Employment History:
2005–
Present
Personnel Director, Northern Virginia Community College. Responsible for
management of labor relations, recruitment and selection, training, and affirmative
action compliance. Represents NVCC in negotiating session with staff union.
2001–
2008:
Assistant Personnel Director, Manassas Crossroads Bank, Manassas, VA. Responsible
for selection, payroll and benefits administration and staff development.
Education:
2005:
M.S. in Government (Personnel Management);, the George Washington University,
Washington, D.C. Master’s Thesis: “Minority Recruitment Problems in Virginia State
Government.”
2001:
B.A. in Business Administration, George Mason University. Senior Honors thesis:
“Politically Incorrect: Conflicts between Union Seniority Systems and Affirmative Action
Compliance.”
Honors and Awards:
2001: Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha, cum laude.
Professional Activities:
“Managing Privatization and Labor Relations Issues in State University Systems,” National
Association of University Personnel Administrators Conference, New Orleans, 2008.
Personal Information: married, good health
FIGURE 5-6 Harold Murphy’s Résumé (White Male)
Notes
1. U.S. Department of Justice (2008);. An investigation of allegations of politicized hiring in the
Department of Justice Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program. Report prepared by
the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Department of
Justice Office of Professional Responsibility.
2. Klingner, D. E. (1996);. Public personnel management and democratization: A view from
three Central American Republics. Public Administration Review, 56 (4);: 390–399.
3. Naff, K. C. (2003);. Why public managers hate position classification. In S. W. Hays and R.
C. Kearney (eds.);, Public personnel administration: Problems and prospects (4th ed.);. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall
Norma Sikorsky
P.O. Box 6597
Salem, OR
Job
Objective:
A responsible position in management, media relations, or affirmative action
compliance.
Employment History:
2007–
Present
Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Governor of Oregon, responsible for the
coordination of statewide affirmative action plans for state agencies. Made
recommendations on affirmative action programs to state agency affirmative action
program directors. Responsible for media relations and legislative relations between
the Governor’s office and affirmative action compliance agencies. Represented the
state at numerous state and national affirmative action compliance conferences and
news conferences.
2003–
2007
Assistant Coordinator of Title IX Planning. Principal staff assistant to the Deputy
Director of Education, State Board of Education. Responsible for advising the Deputy
Director on design and implementation of statewide funding and curriculum changes
required for compliance with federal funding guidelines for women’s athletic programs
under Title IX.
Education:
2007: M.A., Education, University of Oregon
2002: B.A., Education, University of Oregon
Honors and Awards:
2006: “Golden Tongue Award,” Oregon Media Relations Association
2001: NCAA Finalist, Track and Field, State of Oregon
References:
The Hon. Slade Gordon
U.S. Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.
William Groves
Director, Affirmative Action Program