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The Job Profile Builder is a platform feature in the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite that provides a flexible and intuitive way to identify all the elements of a job and share them with your users. It is meant to be a replacement for the legacy Job Description Manager (JDM) so that a user can use this tool to control changes and updates to job profiles. The use of Job Profile Builder (JPB) also negates the need for the legacy Families & Roles (which I covered in my previous blog), as JPB provides more comprehensive features to allow customers to build complete job profiles with multiple elements and types of content.

JPB can be accessed from different parts of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite. Since JPB also uses the Families and Roles construct, at a minimum all the modules that use legacy Families and Roles will also use JPB. In addition, there are some modules, such as Recruiting, Career and Development Planning, Succession, and Employee Profile, that are more tightly integrated with JPB and use more, if not all of the full JPB feature set. In the diagram below, I have highlighted the modules that use JPB.

In the above diagram, you can see that one of the modules where JPB is used is Employee Profile. Here is a screenshot of how the details for a job profile can be displayed to the user from the Employee Profile.


The Administrative Assistant profile that is displayed in the screenshot above is associated with a Job Profile template. The concept is similar to a Goal Plan template or a Requisition Form template. You can have as many templates as needed and each of them can have different elements. Of course, the more templates you have, the more complex and time consuming it will be to maintain them. In addition, templates can have one or more Job Profiles associated with it, as shown in the diagram below.




The flexibility to have different job templates allows you to tailor the information that will be captured in a job profile based on the position requirements. For example, if “Physical Requirements” is not needed in a corporate job profile, but is needed for the job profiles for store employees, then this can be supported. You can create one job template for corporate positions and exclude the “Physical Requirements” element and then create another job template for the store positions and include the “Physical Requirements” element. Since JPB is based on the Meta Data Framework, you can modify it as needed to support your specific requirements.

Some of the elements in the Job Profile are standard and others are custom. One of the standard elements is Job Family. Job Family uses the same structure as Family and Roles. The figure below highlights this relationship and shows how Competencies are associated with a Job Role which is then associated with a Job Family.

JPB can also be used with the Skills Management feature to allow customers to capture employees’ skills within an Employee Profile portlet. There is an additional cost for the Skills Management feature, but it comes with pre-built content that can make the setup and use of the feature easier.

Conclusion

One key decision that needs to be made for the implementation of SAP SuccessFactors is whether to use Job Profile Builder or the legacy Family and Roles. There are pros and cons on the use of either one of these components. The decision will vary for each client, but typically legacy Family and Roles is more suited to a client who only wants to maintain basic job definition information and does not have the resources available to setup and maintain JPB. On the other hand, clients with well-defined job descriptions who have the personnel and data available can implement JPB and derive more value.

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