If you have an employee with a unique role, or if you are recruiting for a position that is unique, it can be difficult to know how to describe it. To help candidates, your employee, or the rest of your team understand the role, where it falls in the organization, and exactly how it should be approached, you’ll want to use a metaphor. The metaphor’s purpose is to provide terms that everyone understands. For instance, if you’re hiring for a new administrative role to manage assignment delegation and completion in a firm, you may liken it to the person who manages delivery orders for a pizza place. That person’s role is to take the orders, delegate them to drivers, and follow up once they’ve been completed. People generally understand that role and how it operates. Therefore, they can apply it for the new administrative position for which you’re recruiting. 

Some other metaphors that are easy to use include ones taken from business structures that everyone interacts with routinely. These include restaurants, retail businesses, schools and doctors' offices. The next time you find yourself needing to define a new, unique and potentially complicated role, think about other businesses and ones that have similar roles. Telling someone she should think of herself as the assistant principal may help her understand the concept of her role more simply than its title of associate vice president. The better your team understands everyone’s role, the easier it becomes to stay in role and succeed as a team.

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