Registering job titles on Persons
When you add a Person to your Pure, you can register a Job title for each of their Organisational Unit affiliations. There are, however, three other fields that can be used for job titles and similar data. When deciding which field(s) to use, you should consider the following:
- Do you have a defined list of job titles, or are your job titles free text?
- Do you need to register other types of job titles, such as job categories, job functions, or job grades?
- How and where do you need to showcase job titles on your Portal - or should they not show at all?
- How and where do you need to display job titles in the Master Data overview and Persons list in the backend?
The answers to these questions will help you decide which of these fields to use for your job titles and similar data:
- Job title
- Job description
- Employed as
- Custom Keyword
Note that Pure stores job information on affiliations to Organisational Units, rather than directly on the Person record. There is a separate Title field in the Person record, designed for personal, academic, honorary and other types of titles that are not associated with affiliations; these can also all be displayed on the Portal. Staff affiliations also have a mandatory field called Staff type, a dropdown with two values (Academic and Non-academic) that cannot be edited; this field is used to calculate the number of Current Academic Staff (CAS) licenses in use. See License count.
Fields that can be used for job titles
Job title
The Job title field is a dropdown. You can edit the list of available values in the Job title classification scheme. By default, the Job title is only displayed in the Persons list in the backend and on the Pure Portal if the Job description field is empty. It is possible to change this at Administrator > System settings > Person:
Job description
The Job title field is free text. By default, only the Job description is displayed in the Persons list in the backend and on the Pure Portal; if the field is empty, the Job title is displayed. It is possible to change this at Administrator > System settings > Person:
Employed as
The Employed as field is a dropdown for job categories, which are sometimes required for reporting purposes. You can edit the list of available values in the Employment type classification scheme. The Employed as field is displayed in the Master Data overview and the Persons list in the backend, but is never shown on the Portal.
Custom Keyword
Keywords are custom fields; you can configure them as dropdowns or free text, or allow both. They are configured at Administrator > Keywords. There are two default dropdown Keywords on staff affiliations called Ex Officio (designed for positions held alongside or as a result of the main job title, and often used for Head of Department positions) and Grade (designed for job grade information), which use the Ex Officio and Grade classification schemes respectively. Keywords are not displayed in the Master Data overview or the Persons list, but can be configured to display on the Portal:
Decision matrix
| Criteria | Job title | Job description | Employed as | Custom Keyword |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Define a list of available job titles | X | X | X | |
| Enter job title as free text | X | X | ||
| Show job title in Master Data overview | X | |||
| Show job title in Persons list | X (or Job description) | X (or Job title) | X | |
| Show job title on Portal | X (or Job description) | X (or Job title) | X | |
| Filter by job title on Portal | X | |||
| Show multiple types of job titles for one affiliation on Portal | X (with Job title or Job description) |