What is a job description?
A job description is the published document that sets out what a role involves: its purpose, its responsibilities, the requirements attached to it, and what the employer offers in return. It is written to be read by people outside the organisation.
That audience is the whole point, and it is what separates it from the internal document it is usually derived from.
How is a job description different from a job profile?
A job profile is internal. It specifies competencies, the level of the function, its classification for pay purposes and often a salary band, and it exists so that the organisation can be consistent with itself. Nobody outside sees it.
A job description is the outward version of the same role. It has to attract rather than specify, it cannot contain everything the profile contains, and it is subject to rules the profile is not. Confusing the two produces adverts that read like internal paperwork, or profiles too vague to sit a function in a salary scale.
What does Belgian anti-discrimination law require?
That the description does not exclude on a protected criterion, directly or indirectly. The three anti-discrimination laws of 10 May 2007 protect a long list of criteria, including sex, origin, nationality, disability, age, health, belief and several others, and Unia is the institution candidates can turn to.
Indirect exclusion is the part that catches employers out. A requirement that is neutral on its face but filters out a protected group without being genuinely necessary for the role is still a problem, which is why unexamined requirements copied from an old advert carry real risk.
Which language does a job description have to be in?
The advert itself has some latitude, but the employment relationship that follows does not. The language of employment relations is determined by the region of the workplace: in the Dutch-language region the Decree of 19 July 1973 requires Dutch for the documents of the relationship, and the sanction is that a non-compliant document is void, as the SPF Emploi guidance on the use of languages in employment relations explains. Court of Justice case law has since limited that sanction for cross-border relationships, where an additional authentic version in another EU language is possible.
The practical consequence for hiring in Belgium is that an English job description can be entirely appropriate while the contract behind it still has to be drawn up in the right language. Sparagus recruits across the three regions and handles that framework as part of its recruitment mandates across technology, engineering and business.
