Not What I Signed Up For

The candidate was thrilled to land a dream job as manager of a project team. But once he began work at his new firm, his daily tasks did not seem to resemble the job for which he had interviewed: He was spending his days doing the work in corporate headquarters, not managing a team off-site as he’d imagined—and the project itself had morphed beyond recognition. What to do?

“Get used to it" may soon become the message, if it hasn’t already, say experts. In the business world, disruption used to happen over extended lengths of time and firms typically hired people for the roles they expected to perform, at least in the first few years. Enter AI, tariffs, and a host of global disruptions, and a new survey finds that a whopping 79% of employees find themselves in a role that differs substantially from its job description. And few of the changes are minor: Half of the survey’s respondents said that their job responsibilities were very different. “That’s the reality of the world we are working in,” says Jaime Maxwell-Grant, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

To be sure, the art of writing accurate job descriptions wasn’t easy even in slower times. In many mid- to large-size companies, both job descriptions and most interviews are the responsibility of staffers who have never actually met the team members. But swift workplace acceleration is accentuating the problem: One in 5 Fortune 500 companies reinvent their business models every 12 months or less, according to one data firm. This means that jobs themselves are constantly shifting—and that HR departments are struggling to keep up in real time. “One of the biggest drivers is that too little time is invested in really getting the job description right,” says Marnix Boorsma, senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Amsterdam office. From the time a posting goes live until a candidate finishes onboarding, “the advertised role can quickly become outdated,” he says.

These sudden job overhauls can be unnerving for anyone, and particularly abrupt for leaders, who might come into a job planning to oversee manufacturing employees in Vietnam, only to find themselves supervising robots in Tennessee. As a result, consultants say that AI-ready leaders need to have agility and resilience. “When you change the game, the strategy also changes, as does everything else that flows from that,” says Shanda Mints, vice president for RPO analytics and implementation at Korn Ferry.

Yet continuing to hire candidates under what can be perceived as false pretenses can create unmotivated, unhappy employees, say experts. And in world in which workers are clinging to their jobs, that could mean a mounting number of slow movers. The answer, says experts, is to communicate that change may happen right off. Indeed, experts suggest treating job descriptions as a strategic tool, not an afterthought. Thoughtful, accurate descriptions “not only attract the right candidates, but set the stage for long-term retention and engagement,” says Boorsma.

HR pros also advise firms to pay close attention to supporting their rank-and-file employees through shifting landscapes. Executives expect job change, but staffers typically do not. Rather than placing the onus on individuals to succeed amid swiftly shifting markets, companies can support them. For example, one organization is currently retraining and rerouting hundreds of staffers from a failing initiative to more successful parts of the business. “The expectation of change is something that we unfortunately have all got to come to terms with,” says Maxwell-Grant.

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Organizational Strategy capabilities. 

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