ONET! my ONET!
If you say you’ve never heard of something called ONET, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a project administered through the United States Department of Labor. ONET was created for the general public to provide broad access to a database of occupational information offering a variety of search options and occupational data.
I’ve used ONET for years to help me quickly zero in on a general idea of a particular occupation. ONET has gone through a few iterations over the years and it offers an easy view of the general knowledge, skills, and abilities for hundreds of generalized occupations. However, it goes beyond just basic KSAs. It offers you measurements by job incumbents or job experts about various dimensions of certain jobs including cognitive abilities, originality, mathematical reasoning, vision requirements, and hundreds of other spectrums.
For example, if we search ONET for a basic job title such as “Sales Manager”, we find about 20 potentially matching search results and then by clicking on one, we find a list of tasks, technology skills, knowledge, skills, abilities, Work Activities, Work Context, Job Zones, Education, Credentials, Interests, Work Styles, Work Values, Related Occupations, Wages, and Employment Trends, Any training professional, job analyst, or HR professional should consider ONET a great repository of additional information to supplement the existing work.
Here is an easy example. Let’s say we are working to analyze the role of a Sales Manager. When we select the Sales Manager job title, we can start by looking at the task list and we find this.
Direct and coordinate activities involving sales of manufactured products, services, commodities, real estate or other subjects of sale.
Resolve customer complaints regarding sales and service.
Review operational records and reports to project sales and determine profitability.
Oversee regional and local sales managers and their staffs.
Determine price schedules and discount rates.
Prepare budgets and approve budget expenditures.
Monitor customer preferences to determine focus of sales efforts.
Plan and direct staffing, training, and performance evaluations to develop and control sales and service programs.
Direct, coordinate, and review activities in sales and service accounting and record-keeping, and in receiving and shipping operations.
Direct clerical staff to keep records of export correspondence, bid requests, and credit collections, and to maintain current information on tariffs, licenses, and restrictions.
Advise dealers and distributors on policies and operating procedures to ensure functional effectiveness of business.
Confer or consult with department heads to plan advertising services and to secure information on equipment and customer specifications.
Represent company at trade association meetings to promote products.
Confer with potential customers regarding equipment needs and advise customers on types of equipment to purchase.
Assess marketing potential of new and existing store locations, considering statistics and expenditures.
Visit franchised dealers to stimulate interest in establishment or expansion of leasing programs.
Direct foreign sales and service outlets of an organization.
WOW! This gives us an incredible start on looking at this job. Regardless of the organization or industry, it is highly likely these tasks will apply to the job you are analyzing. Your job got easier because it’s less discovery and more of adapting some of these task statements to how your organization defines a Sales Manager. What’s more is that beyond just a task list, ONET also provides measurements for most tasks including importance, relevance to a particular job, and how frequently someone performs that task. Depending on how close the task is to one you have in your organization, some of your work may already be done.
Did I mention ONET is FREE?? I’ve used ONET for years and highly support their work. While it is rather general to occupations across organizations and industry, they do a great job of quantifying factors for each job which we can then use to dig into each job as we may need.
Have fun!