You define roles to represent the ways that different groups of employees work. In Oracle HRMS you can use jobs or positions, or a combination, to define roles.

Oracle HRMS uses jobs to represent the duties people perform and the required skills, for example:

• Professor
• Developer
• Accountant

Positions represent a specific instance of a job, such as:

• Assistant Professor of Sociology
• Senior Software Developer
• Payroll Accountant

Job: A job is a generic role within a Business Group, which is independent of any single organization. For example, the jobs Manager and Consultant can occur in many organizations. You can also use jobs to set up supplementary roles that an employee might hold, for example, fire warden, or health and safety officer. You can  distinguish these supplementary roles from other jobs by using Job Groups.

Position: A position is a specific occurrence of one job, fixed within one organization. For example, the position Finance Manager would be an instance of the job of Manager in the Finance organization. The position belongs to the organization. There may be one, many, or no holders of a position at any time.

Example
In a large structured organization, you may have a permanent establishment of positions for most of your employees.
However, you may also have groups of employees hired to perform specific tasks. This can be on a temporary or a permanent basis. Staff in this category can include agency workers, consultants and contractors. For these staff, you can define the role more flexibly as a job.

Using Oracle HRMS to Manage Jobs and Positions
As you implement your enterprise model, one of the earliest decisions you face is whether to use jobs, positions, or a combination of both. You can use Oracle HRMS to define required skills and valid grades for either one. Enterprises fall into one of three general categories:

1. Rule-based If your organization is a rule-based enterprise, you regulate employment, roles, and compensation according to strict policies and procedures. Fixed roles tend to endure over time, surviving multiple incumbents. You manage roles rather than individuals. Examples include government, higher education, and health care. Rule-based industries, where roles continue to exist after individuals leave, typically model the enterprise using positions.
2. Project-based If your organization is a project-based enterprise, such as a construction or software company, you require the flexibility to assign people to new projects or organizations on a regular basis. You manage people and their skill sets, rather than fixed roles. This requires the flexibility to match competencies to tasks quickly and easily. Project-based organizations, where roles end when individuals complete a project, typically model the enterprise using jobs.
   
3. Hybrid If your organization is a hybrid enterprise, you assign some individuals to fixed roles, and others to multiple projects. This is typical of large manufacturing or corporate enterprises. Hybrid enterprises such as these model the enterprise using both jobs and positions. 

Roles
HRMS provides two key contexts for a role: the primary role and the HRMS role.
Primary role You set up primary roles using jobs and positions, as described above, to define the key tasks the enterprise employs people to perform.
HRMS role You set up HRMS roles to grant permission to authorize or approve HR actions, such as creating new positions, recruitment, hiring, or managing expenses. Roles also specify destinations in a routing and approval sequence, such
as initiator, classifier, reviewer, or approver. You can associate multiple users with the same role, allowing anyone occupying the role to process a position or budget transaction, or approve other changes, such as promotions or transfers
Defining a Position
STEP 1: Define the position flex field structure