Posts Tagged ‘job title’

How Do IT Leaders Write A Good Job Description?

Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Image Credit Before you can hire someone, you need to describe the job

Before you can hire someone, you need to describe the job

How would you like to end up spending the next year in court and costing your company many millions of dollars? Not a good way to manage your IT Leader career, eh? Too many of us risk doing this whenever we try to fill an IT position without first clearly defining what the job is…

Just Exactly What Is A Job Description?

A job description is exactly what it sounds like – a description of an IT job that you are trying to fill. The reasons that you create one are many and varied.

The primary reason for creating a job description is simply because although you know what you are looking for in a job candidate, the team of people who will actually help you find that person do not know. The other reason that creating a job description is so important is that should it become necessary to fire someone, a good job description is the key to protecting yourself from a lawsuit.

In most companies you won’t be alone when you go to develop a job description. Your HR or legal departments probably already have a template for you to use. Just in case they don’t (or if it is incomplete), here’s what every job description should contain:

  • Title of the job, what business unit it will be part of, and the name of the part of the company that it will belong to

  • Responsibilities and assignments associated with the job

  • Who the hiring manager is and which manager the job reports to (they are not always the same)

  • A more detailed description of what the person who has the job will need to do including tasks, responsibilities, and perhaps even objectives for the job.

  • How much they will be paid, where they need to perform the work, and what hours you expect them to work.

  • What background is required to do the work such as college education, or previous work experience.

  • Any personal characteristics that may be required (outgoing personality, good with people, etc.)

The Process Of Creating A Job Description

Sometimes we find ourselves in the position of creating a job description for a job that already exists – the person has just left. In these cases, you should not feel constrained by what the job was in the past when you are creating the job description. Instead, write the job description for what you want the next person to do for you – what the job should be going forward.

As you are writing the job description, you are going to have to be very careful about detailing the differences between what a candidate brings to the job. We all have different types of job knowledge, sets of skills, and personal abilities. Each job requires a unique set of these and when you are creating the job description you’ll have to lay out what you are looking for.

Keep in mind that you are defining what you need to have the person that you hire do for you. If for some reason it turns out that they can’t do the job, you are going to have to let them go. These situations can get out of hand quickly (and become expensive). In order to protect yourself and your company, make sure that the job description has enough detail so that you can clearly make a case if someone doesn’t live up to your expectations.

Finally, a clearly written job description will keep you on the right side of the law. No matter what country you are in, having a job description that clearly states what you are looking for in a candidate will protect you from lawsuits from those whom you end up not hiring.

What All Of This Means For You

IT Leaders like to spend their time leading, charting new paths for their IT teams. Writing a job description may not seem like the best use of your time; however, it turns out that it is a crucial task to do and to do well.

When creating a job description, it’s important to make sure that it contains at least the important pieces of information that we’ve detailed here. Additionally, you’ll need to make sure to determine what skills are needed, what grounds for dismissal would be, and to be sure that you’ve covered all of the legal bases.

I’m not a lawyer and so you should be sure to talk to a lawyer when creating a job description. When you take the time to do this correctly, then you will have created a powerful document that will ensure that you get the right person for the job…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How long do you think a job description should be? How long is too long?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Congratulations – you’re an IT leader. Now go hire someone. Wait a minute, did anyone ever take the time to tell you just exactly how you should go about hiring staff? I mean, you’ve been on the other side of the table when you were looking for a job, but what are you supposed to do differently when you are the one doing the hiring?

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How Come You Don’t Know What Your IT Dream Job Is?

Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Image Credit What Does Your IT Dream Job Look Like?

What Does Your IT Dream Job Look Like?

Stop. I know that your normal day-to-day is crazy, you are overworked, underpaid and nobody really appreciates all of the fine things that you do. I get all that. My question for you is do you have any idea why you are doing what you are doing? What are you really working towards? If you don’t know, then perhaps now is the time to find out…

What Is Your IT Dream Job?

At the start of each year we all feel sorta guilty if we don’t come up with at least a few New Year’s resolutions. Generally these are quickly forgotten and we move on with the daily grind of life. However, if that’s all there is to life, then things pretty much suck. Wouldn’t you like to be one of those people who always seems to be happy and motivated – like they are working towards something?

Outside of getting a lobotomy or starting to take some happy pills on a regular basis, how can you become one of these “motivated” people? It’s actually rather simple, you need to have a goal. I’m not talking about one of those New Year’s resolutions in which you say that you want to lose 20 pounds or you want to start being nice to everyone. Nope, I’m talking longer term here.

I’m sure that you’ve all seen coworkers who put up pretty pictures of far-away beaches and fantastic locations all around their work cubes (maybe you do the same?) so that when things get bad (everyday), they can imagine that they are somewhere else. It turns out that they are on the right track.

To give yourself something to work for, you need to have a goal that you are working towards and the writer Marvin Walberg suggests that an IT dream job is as good of a goal as any.

Defining Your IT Dream Job

If you are going to be motivated to work towards a future IT dream job, then you are going to have to be able to visualize what that job looks like. Note that is different from how you are living your life right now!

Sure you could just sit back, shut your eyes for a bit and try to picture your dream job, but generally you just end up falling asleep when you do that. How about if we set some ground rules here to help you along?

First off, lets try to make this somewhat realistic. In your dream job you won’t be sitting on a golden throne getting foot massages while lower IT staffers feed you peeled grapes. Get over it. Instead of a visit to fantasy land, let’s try to keep things grounded in reality.

First, you need to come up with a job title – what would your dream IT job be called? This title does not have to currently exist – what would you like the job to be called?

Next, write down a job description. Yes you actually have to write it down or else there is no way that you are going to remember all of it. When you are describing the job you need to add as much detail to it as possible so that you’ll be able to create a vivid mental image of what you want.

Identify who you would be working for. Go ahead and identify who they would be working for. Not all IT dream jobs have you working as the CIO, lots of times we just want to have our own area to focus on and be left alone! Identify who would let you do that.

Who would you be working with? Who would be working for you? Give this some serious thought because often the other people in your work environment determine how much you like your job. It’s your IT dream job, so you get to pick who else is there.

Finally, describe a typical day at work in your IT dream job. When do you arrive at work (do you even go into work)? What is the first thing that you do? How many meetings do you go to? How long is your day? Once again include as many details as possible in order to make it play like a movie in your head.

What All Of This Means For You

We all picked the IT field to work in for a number of reasons. One of these was that it is a dynamic field – it’s always changing. Although at times this can be very frustrating, it also means that the future is not set in stone – we can still shape it.

In order to give yourself the motivation that it takes to be able to move forward with a purpose, you need to be able to picture what you are working for – your IT dream job should be part of this. The key is to sit down and spend the time to write down the details of exactly what that IT dream job would look like.

Once you are able to visualize it in your head, you can come back to your description over and over again in order to get reenergized. It’s this kind of daily motivation that will allow you to become a true IT Leader – you know what you want and you are working towards it.

Do you think that your department’s succession plan should be public knowledge?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Isn’t it every IT Leader’s nightmare: you work long hours, pull of miraculous feats of IT project accomplishment in order to create one of the most complicated pieces of software ever, only to have all of your customers hate it?

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Posted in IT jobs | 2 Comments »