Job Security or Job Description – Which is more Important?

Job is ultimately the biggest goal in one’s life. No matter what your passions are, no matter what you have studied or what your ambition is, you need a job to make sure that you have ample security in life, that you can obtain basic necessities including food, clothing and shelter along with an opportunity to fulfil your desires.

Although, job security and job description don’t seem to be related to each other, yet they both are interconnected. You need to know about a job’s description as well about the security that job offers to ensure that you have sufficient stability in life.

1. What’s job security?

As the term suggests, Job security refers to the probability at which you will retain the job. It is a subtle indicator about the fact that whether you will be employed or unemployed in the long run. For instance, a job offering more security ensures that you have fewer chances of losing it and rendering you unemployed. Similarly, a job that offers lesser security, owing to factors like economic recession, expansion, laws etc, you may have more chances of becoming unemployed. Factors such as experience, education, functional area, work industry play a pivotal role in deciding about job security. Ideally, government jobs and jobs in law, education or health are more secure than ones in the private sector.

2. What’s a Job Description?

Job description includes a set of skills that a person needs to possess for a particular job. It is a set of functions or responsibilities that the individual performing the job is expected to take over. It is considered that job description is very important in companies that respect competency architecture and are involved in strategic human resource development. Job description and job security may or may not be interrelated, but if you are focusing on getting or creating jobs, then you need to know their importance.

3. What is more important – Job security or Job description?

Let’s check out what is more important.

It is widely believed that a job description is exceptionally important, especially for companies that support a proper competency structure in the organization. Job description is necessary to help you know what the organization expects from you, what your jobs, skills and responsibilities will be and the kind of relationship you will have with clients. It is utterly important for individuals who have received education in a particular vocational skill. For instance, for a student of psychology, job description is important to know whether she is expected to be a counsellor, a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist.

Job security on the other hand is an important factor for individuals who seek growth in a particular organization. For instance, surgeons in health care would seek a job with more security, as it will help them gather the experience required to become a head or senior official in their organization. This is particularly important for individuals who work in a system where age hierarchy works and seniority is based more on the work experience in a single organization.

Therefore, both of them are equally important. If you are looking forward to changing jobs or have a specific private sector vocational degree, then job description is important for you. But if you are working in an age-related seniority organization, then job security is more important.