When qualifying a candidate goes from practical into the absurd
If you are asking your recruiters to qualify candidates in a micro managerial style, don’t be surprised if one day you see the following response to one of your questionnaires.
BA Questions
1. Yrs of B/A 8
2. Yrs of Healthcare? 8
3. Explain to me why/how you think they are expert in requirements gathering. He’s an expert because he has been doing it for 8 years.
4. Have they and when did they have to develop a use case presentation
without a formal requirement management tool
Use cases are developed without formal tools, when asked he thought I was joking with him.
5. Do they have Business Process Modeling experience? What tools? how long? (visio?)
Every business analyst who has ever participated in a business analysis process has BPM experience. If not then he’s probably not a business analyst.
6. Give examples of how they have strong multitasking abilities.
He had this big project at Fiserve where he had to handle 4 mini projects at the same time and he was able to complete all tasks according to spec. This makes him a good multi tasker.
7. Give examples of how they were creative when trying to gather req from a difficult business user
He told me he conducted JAD sessions where he would play yankee swap with the user community until they gave him the appropriate requirements. He would then take them out and get them hammered.
8. Are they aggressive when it comes to tracking down business users.
Yeah, he is aggressive, he told me that once time he actually followed a stakeholder home and held him up at gun point until the terrified stakeholder gave him the answers he was looking for.
9. Experience with Claims? Yes, at Fiserve
10. Experience with Accounting Systems? Yes at Fiserve
11. Have they had experience upgrading/implementing etc a repricing engine
for claims. Yes at Fiserve
12. Communications skills… Solid.
I leave it up to the individual to figure out which are legitimate qualifying questions and which are over reaching and hold little value to the candidate presentation process.
I experienced this a few months ago in an interview. I’ve been a PM/SrBA for 16 years and these questions speak volumes about the hiring manager, and it’s not good. If you see a client doing this type of questioning, you had better set them straight. Otherwise, you will be risking your own image. I find most IT managers do not know how to hire a BA. Unlike a code jockey or PM, the BA role is much more soft skill oriented. IT managers are accustom to hiring positions with hard skill sets versus soft skills. The interview questions you site clearly indicate the manager is completely lost. These types of clients are the worst, because their situation is often dire, and they don’t realize it.
1. They end up hiring the wrong BA.
2. They end up with incorrect project requirements.
3. They end-up delivering the wrong thing.
4. They fire and blame the BA.
5. You get a black eye as the recruiter.
6. The cycle repeats, and the madness continues.
It’s even worse if the questions are coming from the Account Manager and not the Hiring Manager.
Wow…THAT is a new tier of absurd recruiting. Thanks for sharing. I love this blog!
Thanks!