Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: Analyzing the Job

Aug 21, 2013

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Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science of Hiring Technical People

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Complete the job analysis worksheet.

Use your worksheet as a place to capture the job analysis work you’ve done so far. Describe job components, cultural attributes, education, and company factors, and use what you have recorded as a basis for writing a job description.

Once you have filled out the worksheet provided as a sample below, take a look at the case study example following it. The Walker Software Case Study appears in bits and pieces throughout the book and in Appendices A and B.

Worksheet 2-3: Job Analysis Worksheet (with Job Requisition Name).

Defining Questions	Needs & Observations
Who interacts with this person? What roles does this person have in this job? What level is the company willing to pay for? What's the management component?
What are the job's activities and deliverables? What periodic deliverables are required?
What are the essential qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills? Initiative? Flexibility? Communications skills? Ability to handle projects of varying scope? Ability to work on multiple projects at one time? Influence and negotiation skills? Goal-orientation? Technical leadership and problemsolving skills? Responsibility and independence? Passion for learning? Teamwork skills? Others?
What are the desirable qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills?
What are the essential technical skills? Technology/tool skills? Functional skills? Product-domain skills? Industry experience? Others?
What are the desirable technical skills?
What minimum level of education, training, or experience is required?
What are the corporate cultural-fit factors? What benefits should be offered? Company growth? Cash position? Industry leadership? Entrepreneurial environment? Benefits? Company size? Others?
What elimination factors should be considered? Travel? Availability? Salary? Others?

Case Study: Walker Software

Now let’s walk through the job analysis worksheet using an example from Walker Software, a fictional hundred-person company that manufactures an add-on to the telephone company’s central office switch. Walker is coming out of its startup phase and is becoming profitable, but members of the management team are cautious about growing too rapidly—they have only approved hiring people they can support with the current revenue stream.

Who should we know about on Walker’s current staff? First off, Vijay is Director of Engineering and Operations and is responsible for product development and support, with a total staff of thirty people. His direct reports are Dirk, a development manager; Susan, a test manager; Ed, the support manager; and two project managers. Vijay’s problem is a simple and common one—he needs more people to do more of the same kind of work.

Dirk manages eighteen people in development, five of whom are senior-level developers and technical leads, eight of whom are mid-level developers, four are junior-level (but not entry-level) developers, and one is a release engineer. Dirk is looking for a junior- to mid-level developer.

In the test group, Susan manages four people now: One is a technical lead/senior-level tester, two are mid-level testers who can read and write code, and one is a junior-level tester. She’s looking for one mid-level test automation engineer and a mid-level black-box tester.

Ed has five people in support: Two are tier-1 engineers, two are tier-2 engineers, and one is a tier-3 engineer. Ed is looking for an additional tier-2 engineer.

Also on Vijay’s staff are two project managers, but he wants to start up a third project and needs another project manager. The technical people are matrixed into the projects (they report to a functional manager, but perform day-to-day work for a project manager), so the project managers need to be relatively senior, to deal with the issues involved in selecting and negotiating for the appropriate people for their projects.

Dirk’s first-draft Software Developer job analysis work-sheet is shown below.

Worksheet 2-3: Dirk’s Job Analysis Worksheet for the Software Developer Opening.

Defining Questions	Answers re: Needs & Observations
Who interacts with this person? What roles does this person have in this job? What level can we pay for? What's the management component?	Works with developers, testers, writers, and project manager as a software developer. Mid-level, no management component.
What are the job's activities and deliverables?	High-level design (post architecture), implementation, participate in requirements-definition meetings, moderate and attend design and code reviews, contribute to smoke-test suite, develop integration tests. Able to manage subsystem development under the guidance of a technical lead.
What are the essential qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills?	High collaboration, high teamwork, adaptable, able to consider multiple designs.
What are the desirable qualities, preferences, and skills?	High focus.
Essential technical skills	C++, UNIX system calls, UNIX shell scripts. Data structures. Understanding of telephony industry.
Desirable technical skills
What minimum level of educational or training requirement is needed?	Four years working as a developer, at least two completed projects. BS nice, not necessary. BS equivalent okay.
What are the corporate cultural-fit factors?	Small company, project-oriented, high growth expected, stock options.
What elimination factors should we consider?	$70,000 cap for salary.

Dirk, Susan, Ed, and Vijay are all looking for someone with at least four years of technical experience. Actually, they’re each looking for someone who’s completed a variety of smaller projects, and putting the experience level at four years is their shorthand way of saying so. Vijay is looking for someone who’s already managed at least two projects from start to end. The qualities, preferences, and skills are similar across group lines, but they’re not the same; for all of the job analyses, see Appendix A.

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