Incumbents are the people in a specific role. A benchmark job is a generic role. For example, Mario is an incumbent. Plumber is the benchmark role that his job was benchmarked against to determine that most other organizations require a high school diploma or equivalent, three to five years of experience, and a plumbing license to qualify for a pay range of $49K-64K annually, and that this role is typically non-exempt and reports to a supervisor or manager.