The Need for Standardizing SharePoint Job Descriptions

by Shadeed Eleazer , Posted December 6, 2011 - 19:52

SharePoint Job Descriptions: Help Wanted.

Any competent SharePoint professional has been forwarded emails from their online job search and LinkedIn profiles with job descriptions for openings that border on impossible to illogical.

Questions for Consideration:

Do SharePoint Developers with 15 years of SharePoint development experience exist?

Do SharePoint Administrators with MCSE certs and CSS, XML, and .Net development exist?

Should Project Managers with SharePoint 2010 certifications be a requirement?

Supply and Demand Dilemma

The overwhelming demand for SharePoint talent has lead to attempts to staff professionals by any means. SharePoint Job Descriptions are the victim of round-robin copy/pasting from the Internet, from other Recruiters, and unverified sources.

Who is responsible for writing the descriptions that we come across in our respective job search?

Who is responsible for Quality Assurance within each workcenter?

Does One Description Fit All?

I am an advocate of establishing Skillset baseline expectations for each SharePoint role within an enterprise. These roles will change based on requirements but I believe that a standard definition for the skillsets that every Admin, Dev, PM should possess would go a long way to helping to standardize SharePoint positions as we know them today.

3 Suggestions

1.) Technical leads should have a final look at all outgoing SharePoint career descriptions that the workcenter is responsible for staffing. This will aid in the Technical phone screen and interview process

2.) Recruiters should connect with their local User group to begin to learn the fundamental differences between the key SharePoint roles in our industry

3.) Establish a skillset baseline to standardize skills for each key discipline to build a consistent definition which creates a common language and expectation ranging from management to technical to staffing islands of information.

What Do You Think?

What are your SharePoint Job Description horror stories?

What suggestions will you offer to improve this area of the SharePoint industry?

What can Recruiters do better?

I’d love to read your opinion on a topic that impacts us all. Use the comments sections or Tweet me with the hashtag #spjobs

Written by: Shadeed Eleazer

Photo Credit: Randy Kinnick .com

Post By Shadeed Eleazer (56 Posts)

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808 total views, 1 today

http://twitter.com/dannyjessee Danny Jessee

Great suggestions all around. I often see recruiters pass through as SharePoint “developers” anyone who has ever created a site, managed permissions, or added a custom column to a list. Though SharePoint Designer has come a long way since 2007, true SharePoint developers should have a firm grasp of the options Visual Studio and the object model provide to them as well.
http://twitter.com/SharePointOscar Oscar Medina

The one thing I will say, is that recruiters and others must know that there is a clear distinction in roles and skill set in the SharePoint realm. You cannot ask for a SharePoint Architect/Dev/Administrator/Designer etc all the time, those skills encompass different roles and rarely a single person will have those (possible nonetheless). Yes, due to budgetary issues they want it all in one person but are they simply trying to fill a position that their client dreamed up without any experience in the SharePoint realm??

Microsoft tried standardizing on these, but not sure how far they got.

I agree, we must come up with a solution that makes sense for everyone.

Cheers,
Oscar (@SharePointOscar)
johnpaul david

all the suggestions are awesome, Thank you very much.Job Descriptions
- Shadeed Eleazer
  
  Thanks for reading the article. The need for standard job descriptions for SharePoint roles is a huge void in our industry.