Show Me A Diver
Why Job Descriptions Matter More Than You Think
I recently tried a simple experiment with AI. I asked: “Show me a diver.” Within seconds, it gave me a scuba diver. Fair enough.
But there are many kinds of divers. Platform divers, cliff divers, commercial divers, rescue divers, even athletes who dive in other sports
My prompt was vague, so the result was predictably generic. Then I adjusted it:
“Show me a level two diver”, then “…a level three diver”, “…level four”, and “level 5”.
The images barely changed. The first 4 divers were at the same depth on the same reef, nearly identical poses. The most noticeable difference was the patch identifying the divers’ supposed level.
It wasn’t until my prompt for a level 4 diver that the equipment changed materially and when I asked for a level 5 diver that’s when it was abundantly clear to me that this was a different skill level entirely.
That’s when it clicked. This wasn't really about AI. It was about job descriptions. Every job description is a prompt. The manager is the prompt engineer. Compensation is the interpreter. When the prompt is fuzzy, the market-pricing output will be predictably generic.
When Managers and Compensation See Different Divers
The diver experiment illustrates what frequently happens inside organizations. When a manager asks for the pay range for ‘a diver’ the manager already has a specific image in mind. in their mind what exactly a ‘diver’ is. Compensation, however, can only evaluate the role reflected in the information it receives.
The problem is often not that either party is objectively wrong. The problem is that the manager, the job description, and Compensation are not aligned. That is usually where HR first enters deep water.
There are many reasons a manager may believe Compensation has priced a role incorrectly, but the misalignment most often comes from two sources:
1. Unclear job functions and responsibilities
2. Misaligned expectations regarding competency, skills, complexity, and experience
Unclear Job Function and Tasks
There is usually a general understanding of the function being requested—but not always. Sometimes the job title disguises what the manager is actually seeking. In other cases, the role is so broadly defined that it combines responsibilities from several different job functions. Consider the instruction: “Show me a diver.”.
A picture of a cliff diver might appear
completely wrong to someone expecting a scuba diver. The immediate reaction may be to blame the person—or the system—that produced the result.
But Webster’s definition of a diver provides a reasonable defense:
Diver – noun A person who dives.
Given this, it would be unfair fair to conclude that Compensation got the market pricing wrong when the request was simply “I need a market price for a diver?”
Most compensation professionals understand the businesses and industries they support well enough that they are unlikely to make such an obvious functional error. A more common problem is that the available survey source groups several kinds of work together, or that the survey description is too broad to distinguish among them.
A market-pricing result can only be as precise as the work being matched.
When the work is poorly defined, the match will also be imprecise.
Misaligned Competency, Skills, Complexity, and experience
Even when a manager requests a “Level 2” or “senior-level” role, there is often a disconnect between what the manager believes that level means and what the job description actually requires.
Most people understand conceptually that two jobs performing similar functions may differ substantially in complexity, difficulty, scope, judgment, and required expertise.
The tasks may appear similar, but the level of work is not necessarily the same.
Disagreement over market pricing almost always reflects a difference in how the manager and Compensation understand one or more of the following compensable factors:
Competency mastery
Knowledge, skills, and abilities
Work complexity
Independent judgment
Autonomy
Scope
Experience
Comparing the Five Levels of Divers
My diver experiment illustrated this point almost perfectly. Consider the 5 levels of divers below:
| Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 | Level 5 |
Scope, Scale, and Influence | Solo-diver
| Solo-diver
| Solo-diver
| Solo-diver
| Solo-diver
|
Work Complexity & Independent Judgement | Day light, Clear visibility, Observing Only | Day light, Clear visibility, Observing Only | Day light, Clear visibility, Observing Only | Day light, Clear visibility, Multiple instruments | Day light, low visibility, Diagnostic / Exploration |
Autonomy and Discretion | Single tank; Shallow reef | Single tank; Shallow reef | Double-tanks; Shallow reef | Multi-tank; Shallow reef | Multi-tank; Cave / Cavern |
Scope of Knowledge, competency, and Experience | Open Water Diver Depth < 35’ | Open Water Diver Depth < 35’ | Open Water Diver Depth < 35’ | Cold-Water Diver Advanced Equipment Depth < 35’ | Advanced Diver, Dri-Suit / Cold Water Night Dive; Depth: Unknown |
Levels 1 through 3 were performing nearly identical dives. Even the Level 4 diver appeared to be operating on the same shallow reef, despite carrying more sophisticated equipment.
Without clearer information, it would be difficult to determine whether the additional equipment represented a genuinely higher level of work or merely more capability than the assignment required.
That is also the challenge Compensation faces when reviewing a job description.
What Job Architecture Can—and Cannot—Do
When market pricing a role, compensation professionals review the full job description to assess its organizational and market value. This is where job architecture becomes useful.
A job architecture provides a consistent framework for differentiating roles based on factors such as:
Scope and organizational influence
Work complexity
Independent judgment
Autonomy and discretion
Knowledge and competency
Relevant experience
For compensation purposes, job architecture helps standardize how an organization distinguishes different levels within the same job function.
It is a diagnostic tool, helping to determine whether a role aligns more closely with a Level 2, Level 3, or Level 4 description.
But one thing job architecture cannot determine by itself is which level the organization needs. That requires managers and compensation professionals to collaborate, define the work that must be performed, and identify the job description that is truly fit for purpose.
Fit for purpose
If I were diving the same reef as the Level 4 diver, I would probably chuckle to myself.
He is going to the same depth and the same location as I am, but he has brought substantially more equipment, capability, and expense than the dive requires. Much of it will never be used. Worse, he had to carry all that heavy and expensive equipment onto the same boat as everyone else.
As the boat departed the dock and made its way along the Intracoastal, I would inevitably put on my compensation hat—over my dive mask—and think about the managers who insist they need a Level 4 diver, pay the premium required to hire one, and then assign work that a Level 2 or Level 3 diver could perform equally well.
And that is the point.
They did not hire the role they needed. They hired the role they wanted. The clearest indication that the decision was not fit for purpose is a simple question:
Why pay more for capability that produces no additional value in the work being performed?
The route to that conclusion may sound unusual but consider the same decision in another business context:
Imagine the Vice President of Supply Chain telling the CEO that the company must maintain a $1.75 margin for profitability, but that the company has just entered into a major agreement producing only a $1.07 margin because the product being purchased can do far more than the organization needs it to do.
This would not be praised as a good investment; it’d be challenged as poor capital allocation. The VP may even find themselves looking for a new job because he ‘lacks sound purchasing decision-making’.
Yet managers sometimes apply exactly that logic when hiring. They seek the most experienced candidate, the broadest skill set, or the highest possible level—even when the work does not require that degree of capability.
The price of the role must be grounded in the work the organization intends the person to perform.
The problem is not necessarily that the candidate is too expensive. The problem may be that the role was designed at the wrong level.
A Level 4 diver performing Level 2 work does not automatically become a Level 2 diver. Nor does the unused capability create additional value simply because the organization paid for it.
The price of the role must be grounded in the work the organization intends the person to perform.
Spending Wise Means Paying for the Job You Need
When managers and Compensation disagree about the market value of a role, the disagreement is often one of interpretation.
The manager may be assigning greater value to the role than the job description supports. Compensation may be pricing the work that is documented, while the manager is imagining work that has not been clearly articulated.
Finding alignment on what is needed is an effective way to ensure your company is spending wisely. The best way to reduce that misalignment is for managers to take two basic steps.
Provide the job description with the pricing request
This serves two purposes. First, it gives Compensation enough information to evaluate the role based on its actual responsibilities and requirements. Second, it gives the organization a real-time opportunity to review and update the job description when it no longer reflects the work being performed.
The request should not simply be: “What does a Level 3 diver earn?”
It should be: “Here is the work we need performed; which diver level does this work require, and what does the market pay for it?”
Discuss the team’s actual needs and market position
The pricing discussion should not occur in isolation. Managers and Compensation should consider:
The work assigned across the team
The level of capability each role requires
Internal relationships among jobs
Existing pay concerns
The organization’s compensation philosophy
The desired market position
Whether the role is designed for current work or reasonably anticipated future work
This helps ground the discussion in organizational need rather than title preference. It also allows Compensation to identify broader pay or structural concerns before they result in reactionary adjustments.
These conversations gradually move the organization away from one-off pricing disputes and toward more intentional compensation planning.
Organizational Consistency of Job Architecture
At the individual-role level, the central question is whether the job description aligns with the manager’s needs and expectations. The five diver levels can help determine whether the work most closely resembles a Level 1, Level 3, or Level 5 assignment.
At the organizational level, however, the question becomes broader: “Are similar distinctions in complexity, judgment, scope, and experience being applied consistently across the organization?”
A Level 4 role in one function should reflect a reasonably comparable degree of organizational value to a Level 4 role elsewhere—even when the work itself is completely different.
The jobs do not need to perform the same tasks. They do, however, need to reflect a consistent philosophy regarding what makes one level more valuable than another.
That is the broader purpose of job architecture. It does not merely place jobs into boxes.
Without that common language, titles become patches.
It provides a common language for explaining:
Why roles are leveled differently
Why one job commands more market value than another
What additional contribution is expected at higher levels
How employees may progress from one level to the next
Why two managers cannot define “senior” in entirely different ways
Without that common language, titles become patches. They tell us that one diver is supposedly more advanced than another, but they do not explain what is actually different about the work.
And no compensation analyst—human or artificial—can accurately price distinctions that the organization has not clearly defined. A better job description produces a better market match. A better market match produces a more defensible pay decision.
And a more defensible pay decision begins with a much better prompt than: Show me a diver.
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