Consultants and experts will tell you that job analysis must adhere to very strict legal and scientific standards to be effective. They'll tell you it needs to be as complete and systematic as possible for your company to be able to defend itself against legal challenges from job candidates and government agencies that accuse the organization of flawed hiring practices. And they are correct in their claims. Whenever possible, job analysis should be planned and implemented by internal or external consultants with job analysis expertise. Unfortunately, you and I live in the real world. Out there, such expertise is not always accessible. Your company might be too small to have the budget to invest in such quality implementation. Or, as TheAppliedPsychologist has observed in past lives, your organization might actually possess the size, budget, and means to perform a proper job analysis -- but might also lack the wisdom to appreciate its value.
We admit that sometimes it isn't worth going to such lengths. If you work at a 10-person company with three salespeople, maybe hiring consultants to do a job analysis is overkill. If so, you have a lot to gain from this section because you'll be doing it yourself.
For the rest of us, these limitations mean that you, the HR professional (or pseudo-HR-professional-jack-of-all-trades whose company saddled you with this task), might end up with a bleak choice. You can either:
A) Tell your bosses that you can't possibly do a good enough job analysis by yourself, and risk the consequences -- an admirable stance that nonetheless could cost you your job depending on the circumstances. Or...
B) Try to do the best job you can do on your own, knowing that you lack the authority and resources to ensure that the company adheres to the best practices and legal standards of a good job analysis, and hope it holds up long enough for you to move on to the next step in your career well before the potential shortcuts and flaws come to light -- assuming they ever do.
Renegade Psychology created this section chiefly for the poor bastards whose only available option is B. I again emphasize that we do not encourage this path, and we strongly recommend that you consult professionals. But we also understand that too often, out in the real world, organizations refuse to afford you that luxury despite all the available evidence that they should.
For those of you whose circumstances aren't as dire, the info in this section will at least help you to recognize the steps and components you'll find in any decent job analysis. This will enable you to recognize whether or not your hired experts know what the hell they're doing. As the dearly departed Syms clothing chain stated in their slogan, "An educated consumer is our best customer."