Are too many job descriptions over-specifying what they need? I read these two posts: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot Isn’t an Effective Engagement Strategy and Top 3 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid. Both posts discuss poor job analysis. This is the issue of How Many Essential Skills Do You Require? Over-specifying a job is bad management and […]
When I taught that one-day workshop in Sweden, one of the questions we discussed was the number of essential skills to list in a job analysis, and by extension, the job description. Too few essential skills, and you don’t differentiate your position from anyone else’s. Too many, and you over-constrain the role. Surely, there must
I have another article posted on InfoQ: What Scrum Master Are You Hiring? I’ve noticed that many organizations are calling certain positions Scrum Masters, and they might be Scrum Masters, but to me, they are anything but. You need to do a job analysis first, and name the position second. This is all about cultural
I read this article, “Poor Job Fit: A Growing Global Epidemic.” Julie Moreland, the author, says our hiring approaches neglects to account for an individual’s suitability for a potential job. … Research from Towers Watson shows that companies with high levels of employee engagement improved operating income by 19.2 percent, while those with low levels
I recently worked with a hiring manager who was having trouble with his job ads. They were not working for him. The ads were not screening out the more senior people. They were not screening in the more junior people. As part of the problem solving, I asked him to send me the job analysis
I’ve had a heavy speaking calendar this month. I knew I’d be home, so I accepted a number of local and close domestic speaking engagements. I’ve been surprised by some fantastic stories of managers and employees. First, there’s the well-meaning manager who wants a current tester to be “motivated” to do manual testing. “How do
I must be in quite the mood today. I am disagreeing with just about everything I see online. I saw a tweet today for an opening for an agile coach who needed to have C++ in his or her background. Why??? Is the coach going to be developing? I hope not. Testing? I hope not?
It’s easy to hire for a “normal” kind of job, where you say, “Developer” and everyone knows what you mean. But what if you are looking for a new kind of role, say, “knowledge management” or “social media guru”? Those roles are new. They mean different things to different people. Well, if you’re like my
I taught my “Hiring for Agile Teams” workshop at ADP today, and finally have words for something I’ve seen for a while. When I ask people to describe qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills, they say things like “easy-going” or “intuitive” or something else that describes behavior. Since I love behavior-description questions, you’d think this would
So you didn’t get the promotion. Before you look for a new job, ask why. It’s possible you’re missing something critical for that role. Many years ago, I was working as a “senior member of the technical staff.” I was a tester, had coordinated beta tests, much of the testing work for the last couple