Ideal Job Specification

Once you have decided that you need to hire for a role, the next steps are to create a:

·        job description (what are outcomes and processes in role), and

·        job specification (what knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are you seeking in a job incumbent).

But a job specification doesn't end with only listing out what KSAs you are seeking in a job incumbent.

 

As HR Recruiter or Hiring Manager, take into consideration following factors:

·        Most things are teachable and learnable given adequate time, effort and cost. But different organizations have different capacities/appetite for time, effort, and cost. Hence what is trainable and what is non-trainable is an organization specific decision.

o   Ability is most difficult to teach and learn, followed by skill and then knowledge.

·        Ask yourself 'What is trainable/non-trainable for this role?".

o   List out Non-trainable K,S, and As. These should be criterion against which you will make a hire/no-hire decision for a candidate

What is advantage of following a procedure like this?

By following above mentioned procedure, you increase size of candidate pool you are looking at. Hence possibility of hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation increases.

 

You may also want to keep the following in mind when formulating job specification:

·        If you are being particular about an educational qualification and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Is this qualification really required? Can someone who has relevant work experience but not this educational qualification perform this job effectively?

·        If you are being particular about a certain type of work experience and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Can someone with high learnability but having a different kind of work experience/no work-experience do this job with an accelerated induction program?;

These are some tips to ensure that you are hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation.

 

Your next question might be - so how do we ensure high performance? Well! I will post about this soon.

 

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Sourav

 

A 'Concern'!

A few days back i received a call from a colleague. She said 'I was to facilitate a session beteween Leadership team and a group of individual contributors. But i might not be able to come to work tomorrow. Can you facilitate this session? I would help you prepare for it.'

I did agree and landed up facilitating this discussion between 2 Leadership Team members and a around 15 individual contributors.

There was a particular challenge/dynamic i faced during the discussion - 'When does one take up a 'concern expressed' for team/group/organizational level actioning?'

In the initial part of the discussion, I realized there were di-alogues happening in the room. One person was expressing a concern, while another person was responding to his/her concern. The concerns were being acknowledged, and many a times being taken up for actioning.

I found something amiss with this inter-personal dynamic. I thought 'How could a concern be acknowledged as a team/group/organization level action item without first being thrown around the room and debated?'

I subsequently made a conscious attempt to change the nature of the discussions. Every concern raised started getting thrown around to others in the room and debatd. I asked 'Have others had a similar experience? Has anyone else handled a similar situation successfully?'

The tone of the discussion changed. People in the room with differing opinions/experiences slowly but surely started speaking up.

With multiple people speaking about their experiences handling similar situations; we got a better sense of whether a concern expressed lay at the individual/team/work-group/organizational level.

It also made participants see that someone they considered 'their type' (and not from HR or Leadership team) had experienced a similar situation differently from the way they had experiened a situation. The face validity of possible solutions proposed was consequently higher as it came from someone perceived to be 'their type'.

What did i those who expressed concerns that were unique - not representative of a team/group/organizational level problem?

Well! I tried acknowledging his/her concern (s/he felt heard) but managed to make him/her aware that his/her concern maybe unique and may not be reflective of a larger problem. 'Feeling heard and acknowledged' seems to have a cathartic effect.

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Sourav

A Clean Canvas!

I was having a discussion with a friend over the weekend. We were exchanging notes on the most hilarious campus interviews we have been part of either as an interviewee or an interviewer.

Here are excerpts from 2 such interviews:

Interview 1

Panelist 1: Are you an extrovert?

Interviewee: I am an extrovert.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Which dud would tell you a no? Every interviewee who has undergone some form of interview preparation would proclaim himself to be a people’s person. And hello - what happened to non – leading questions?

Panelist 1: How do you say that? Prove it!

Interviewee: {Has a weird expression on his face which is a combination of intrigue, shock, disbelief and deep concentration}.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Wow! What a deep and insightful question? Would the interviewee now pull his chair closer to us? I hope not!

Interview 2

Panelist 1: What is your favourite book?

Interviewee: Book XYZ

Panelist 1: So what does it tell me about you?

Panelist 2 (to himself): That he is a geek! What else do you expect to hear?

Talks like these abound, especially when interview of a fresher is being taken. It reminds me one of the famous quotes I use to describe aimless interviews:

“A blind man asking a deaf person to show him the picture.” J.

What do you think the candidate goes through when asked such questions? (and here I let loose a bit of my rhyming abilities J)

“He fumbles and then mumbles, follows it up with bumbles and stumbles and finally expectantly tumbles. All this while the heart of one panelist crumbles while the brains of the other panelist rumble.”

This according to me is a manifestation of a lack of clarity on what to select a candidate on. Now when it comes to an experienced candidate, we have the canvas of prior work experience to fall back upon, viz: similarity of work experience or industry, our judgement on the candidate’s performance on the job, etc. This happens to be a large canvas on which we can let our biases loose (e.g: Retainability of this candidate may be an issue, this candidate is not committed or serious) and it also allows us to camouflage our lack of clarity on what we should be hiring a candidate for. But when it comes to interviewing a fresher we don’t have this camouflage at our disposal and in the face of lack of clarity, even the best of us, tend to fumble (and pretty obviously at that).

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Sourav