It's really all about the value you bring?

I'd love to strike up a discussion on this forum around value add.

Let me explain a little in hopes to get this discussion moving in a direction I am hoping to get some answers or at least some thoughts.

I've seen this happen in almost environment I have worked in. Company A hires employee X with the hopes they can do A, B and C, but really can only do C, however management gets creative and puts D and E on their plate and now their roles have changed and are adding value. You don't see much conflict in regards of this either, at least I haven't.

I've seen this from the help desk, where a lady was so bad at troubleshooting, but in a former life she was a AR accountant employee who they shifted to a metrics gal or some admin assistant. She was hired for the help desk but couldn't deliver and was transitioned.

I've also seen this at higher level roles, such as developers, database analyst and other positions. Another example, we had a data architect come in who really was nothing more than a pure DBA. He eventually assumed that role for ~ 2 years before being let go. He literally couldn't deliver on the ETL end or other components of the position but he could perform backups etc and he was getting paid a lot of scratch.

Does this happen a lot from your experiences? I could go on but you get the point.

I find it weird and facinating at the same time.

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Comments

ChickenNuggetz

I've seen this happen many times before. I think part of the reason is either the company (i.e. hiring manager) has some bloated idea of what they want from an admin or engineer or that they simply dont know what to look for and end up hiring someone who they "think" can do the job.

I've also seen this happen the other way - a company hires someone for job A and B but ends up needing someone to do C and D. My last role was basically that. I was brought on as a systems engineer to help develop a platform for an application and I ended up fixing their data center environment and barely touched the platform I was originally hired for.

I will say scenario 2 (my experience) was aggravating and frustrating to deal with but I suppose at the end of the day you're there to do a job and get paid for said job.

N2IT

@Nuggz I've had that happen to me, oh my brutal. At one position I went from design and implementation to operations for ~7 months. They finally switched me back but ouch that hurt.

And to your point very frustrating, but I still find the latter more interesting.

Here you have a resource who literally can't do the job but still holds the position and gets different duties.

ChickenNuggetz

To be honest, I always thought hiring someone who "cant do the job but still holds the position" is the fault of HR either for not vetting candidates well enough or for not really understanding/knowing what they're looking for when they're sitting a candidate down for an interview.

Also, I think you'll see this a lot in government contracting, especially if clearances are involved. Background investigations arent cheap so it's likely they need to maximize on having an available "warm body" to get the most bang for their buck.

philz1982

This is the whole bus concept from Good to Great. Get the wrong people off the bus the right people on the bus and the right people in the right seats.

Unfortunately this is where many managers either A suck or B can't adjust due to HR/politics.

I hire for drive, fundamental intellectual capabilities, and basic raw skills. 3 months at a company is going to be just learning the process.

N2IT

I'm buying no question, I was just curious where the break down is. I realize not everyone is going to be great at everything, but if you are looking for a ETL dev and you get a DBA something went wrong somewhere.

Both are very different, IMO the ETL Dev is much harder, but that's just me. Either way I appreciate the input.

philz1982

Well the whole recruiting process is broken for one. Two, if your good you can talk your way through most interviews even technical ones with a few weeks of dedicated study. Three, most companies stray from their core competencies and try to setup programs that they have no tacit knowledge to execute. Finally, most people are freaking lazy, myself included sometimes, thus they will not push themselves past the bar you set and most people set the bar so low....

ChickenNuggetz

Sadly, I agree that the vast majority of people out there are really lazy and do just the bare minimum to get by...this is probably why N2IT and myself have seen so many "hired to do A, cant and now does B" type of people.

shodown

Most places higher for skills and not quality candidates. The problem at the higher levels is that management doesn't even know how to find the right person. How do they know when they have the need for it? They just know where they want to be in the end, but not how to get their. For example recently a client of mine wanted to interview one of my engineers cause they needed some network help. I was kinda skeptical of this as there best engineer is nothing more than a network administrator and not a senior one at that. They beat my engineer up on configuration questions which he answers with ease. He talks about his experience of building large MPLS networks(SP type), Large DMVPN networks and some of this other experience. He has his CCIE already. They call back and says he doesn't have the experience for their network. They took no time to think about the skill level he brought to the table just that he didn't check "x" box because they felt thats what they needed. In the mean time this customer is continuing to have problems, their engineers reach out to me for help constantly.

dou2ble

shodown wrote: »

They call back and says he doesn't have the experience for their network.

Sounds like they couldn't afford him. I think mid and higher positions should have more than one interview after the HR one. I've also seen instances where Company A interviews for x and y but what they really need is z. But because the PM has the wrong solution they're looking for the wrong candidate. So they hire a guy to do x and y expecting the results of z. But he actually can't do z so they fail the audit. Becomes a much bigger problem when dealing with financial data and HIPAA. The customer knows the problem but it's the consultant that should offer solutions. So when the PM doesn't know the right solution but thinks they do, they hire the wrong guy or gal. Whose fault is this? Should be management. Who takes the blame? Often the one hired for the task, or at least is let go transitioned off.

doobu

N2IT wrote: »

I'd love to strike up a discussion on this forum around value add.

Let me explain a little in hopes to get this discussion moving in a direction I am hoping to get some answers or at least some thoughts.

I've seen this happen in almost environment I have worked in. Company A hires employee X with the hopes they can do A, B and C, but really can only do C, however management gets creative and puts D and E on their plate and now their roles have changed and are adding value. You don't see much conflict in regards of this either, at least I haven't.

I've seen this from the help desk, where a lady was so bad at troubleshooting, but in a former life she was a AR accountant employee who they shifted to a metrics gal or some admin assistant. She was hired for the help desk but couldn't deliver and was transitioned.

I've also seen this at higher level roles, such as developers, database analyst and other positions. Another example, we had a data architect come in who really was nothing more than a pure DBA. He eventually assumed that role for ~ 2 years before being let go. He literally couldn't deliver on the ETL end or other components of the position but he could perform backups etc and he was getting paid a lot of scratch.

Does this happen a lot from your experiences? I could go on but you get the point.

I find it weird and facinating at the same time.

I've experienced that plenty of times. Currently involved in that now. I'm lucky I'm smart enough to teach myself things (or they're just not that hard

). I was hired to do A, B, C, yet I'm doing H-Z and still expected to get A-C done, but also know D-G just in case.

Hiring managers should have worked in the company as something else other than hiring manager. To me that would give a company the greatest of value when searching for employees, since their own hiring manager has been with the company and knows their needs.

It's beyond frustrating seeing requirements thrown onto people who were not expecting it, but the company expects them to perform without compensation or guidance.

I call bullshit on the "make them learn it" completely on their own. At the worst, provide a video. Maybe my expectations are high of where I work and what they offer me, or I might be too demanding. I like to have my whole toolset with me. I can use a few tools for a lot of things, but ideally if I work in a place that CAN provide that but DOESN'T says more about their overall philosophy than just their crap training and hiring methods.