What is a job description and what does it do?

When applying for new jobs and exploring the possibilities across early education and care, it soon becomes clear just how many options are available. From specialised roles within early education and care provisions, such as a designated safeguarding lead or training providers through to wider roles working with children in their early years, such as play therapy or family support services. There are so many opportunities to inform future career possibilities. 

The world of early education and care is constantly moving so new roles are emerging all of the time. Each job role will come with exciting ventures and fresh challenges to navigate, extending your skillset and providing opportunities to shine in new ways. In order to understand what any new position will entail before you consider making an application, it’s important to closely pay attention to the job description, found within the application details.  

What is a job description?

A job description is a document that sets out the details of a role, including what the responsibilities of the position are.  A job description will also set out the essential skills and desirable qualities that an employer is looking for within the role. These might include qualifications and licences needed to perform in the role, or they might refer to more generalised skills and qualities, such as being an effective communicator or being able to demonstrate effective team management.  

Not only does this give the potential applicant (you) a good idea of what the role entails but it also outlines what qualities and skills the employer is looking for. Structuring your application using the job description allows you to formulate it in a way that makes clear to the employer anything relevant you wish to highlight and demonstrate how your values align with those that the employer deems to be most important to their role and team.  

How do I use a job description in my application?

Job descriptions provide a useful framework for you to not only understand what is expected of the applicant, but also to infrom the structure of your application so that you can showcase your most applicable skills for the role.  

Highlight and prioritise  

There are often a huge number of skills and qualities highlighted within a job description, as well as a wealth of information to consider about the role itself. Take three different coloured highlighters and go through the description, including the essential and desirable skills, and colour-code the elements that you:

1. are very confident in and can evidence well
2. have some experience of and would like to develop
3. have very little or no experience in.  

By doing this, you will be able to focus your application on those skills that you have identified as strong, whilst also being able to highlight those that you would like to progress in, showing that you have a passion for your work and a desire to continually improve. Keep your application positive facing by focusing on your strengths and desires, rather than thinking about gaps in your knowledge as a deficit.  

Use the assets as subtitles 

Recruiters will only spend a short time scanning CVs and cover letters when looking to finetune their candidate pool. When expressing your suitability for the role, it can be helpful to structure your application, or cover letter, with the skills deemed essential and desirable in the job description. You don’t need to highlight each and every one of the skills, and you can merge some of the attributes into one paragraph to keep your application concise.   

Apply yourself to practical examples  

It’s easy to list a range of skills you believe yourself to have but showing how you’ve used them helps to bring your application to life. Recruiters will be looking to know about the experiences that you have had, so providing concrete examples of how you have developed these skills in ways that are relevant to the role you are applying for, is one way of making your application stand out. 

The STAR method is a useful way to think about the situations you are describing to ensure that your skills are being conveyed in a clear and succinct way.  

Again, you don’t need to go into huge detail or provide an example for every claim, but these examples also help to integrate your work experience into your application in a way that demonstrates why you are a strong candidate for the role.  

Final thoughts

Job applications and recruitment processes will look different depending on the role and company you are choosing to apply for. Following successful progression from the application stage, some roles may place greater emphasis on how well a candidate performs at interview, whilst other roles might place a heavier emphasis on observing a candidate in ‘role’ perhaps leading a stay and play session or story time with a group of children.

Most commonly though, the recruiters’ first impression of you will come from your written application, through cover letter, application form and CV. The job description is a helpful tool to use to navigate this unique process and helps you to structure the information and showcase your best qualities, in a way that is most useful to anyone involved in the recruitment process.

Why not give it a try by searching for some current roles of interest and downloading the job description? Think about the skills you are most confident in evidencing and how you might do this for some of the more challenging or obscure requirements too. Good luck!