Create or review a role

Ensure your role complements your team and addresses what’s missing or needs to be more strongly represented. Confirm you cannot distribute the work to existing roles.

Refer to your agency's strategic workforce plan. Your role should fill a critical gap at a team or agency level and help deliver your short-term and long-term objectives.

Identify any specialist skills the role requires. Consider if outsourcing the work would be more appropriate.

Determine if the work is temporary or ongoing, and part-time or full-time. The Queensland Government is committed to maximising permanent employment where possible. See our Employment Security policy.

Consider if the role should be offered as a relieving, secondment, graduate, contract, or fixed term temporary opportunity. Or do your need a permanent employee?

Consider all suitable flexible work arrangements, as this will increase the pool of potential candidates.

Look at diversity within your team and consider targeting the difference that is lacking. For example, people with disability, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, women, people of linguistically diverse backgrounds, and young or older people.

See How to write a role analysis (PDF, 157.3 KB) for help developing or updating a role analysis. Ensure the role purpose and context is current. Align the role’s knowledge, skills, experience and personal attributes to your business and agency objectives.

See the Leadership competencies for Queensland for help creating the competencies included under the Capability profile.

Use your role analysis to develop your role description.

Use our Role description template (PDF, 219.9 KB) for help creating or updating your role description.

Your role description should be no longer than 2 pages. It should be clear and concise, and provide candidates with realistic information about the work, team environment, benefits, and challenges. If the role description is too different from the real job, you’ll quickly lose your recruit and have to start all over again.

Your role description must include:

• the duties
• the key capabilities that you’ll assess the candidates against
• any mandatory qualifications
• any required attributes (e.g. Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander)
• the location
• the type of vacancy (e.g. permanent, temporary, flexible working)
• any pre-employment checks (e.g. disciplinary history, criminal history)
• the probationary period (if applicable)
• the obligation to disclose previous employment as a lobbyist.

Avoid using jargon or 'public service speak'. Consider whether the terms you're using will be equally understood by internal and external candidates.

Ensure you use gender neutral language and inclusive themes. Women may respond differently to men when presented with certain language. For example, ‘dominate the marketplace’, ‘aggressively meet targets’, and ‘drive teams to achieve'. Research shows that women may overlook a role if its role description has gendered wording.

For help with gender neutral wording, you could speak to a recruitment agency or specialist organisations can ask them to review the role description.

For more on role descriptions and how to get yours approved, see your agency’s intranet or speak to your HR team.

Once your role description is approved, if it is a new role, or the role has been updated to include new skills or capabilities, you need to determine the role’s classification level.

For help, see your agency’s intranet or speak to your HR team.

Use Queensland Shared Services

If your agency uses Queensland Shared Services for role classifications, see Establish or review your role’s classification level (JEMS) for more.