Employment
I’ve been reading a lot of job specs recently as I’m looking for something new and have to agree with Guy Kawasaki’s post about How to Not Hire Someone with a totally unattainable list of requirements.
I had a job spec recently asking for a ‘master of all trades’ and it wouldn’t surprise me if the only people actually that applied for the role would be chancers where one of their only skills would be having a way with words. This means that the role would likely be filled by someone who would end up frustrating most of their co-workers by being incompetant in their job. I’ve worked with such people in the past and I’m sure there’s at least one person you’ve worked with and thought “How on earth did they manage to convince anyone they could do this job?”.
At the end of the day, interviewing is tough and the only way you can really find out if someone can do a job is to give them a chance, but you can at least test all candidates and really push them in the interview. I had an interview recently that I left feeling exhausted because I’d had so many technical questions thrown at me as well as a 50+ question written test. Now even if I don’t get an offer I at least know more about how I can cope under that pressure. I’m sure many would crumble…