Evaluating technical skills comes up in every interview, during employee reviews, and while guiding associates on their career paths. We all focus on the ‘big’ skills are required for the position to be filled. But often a person can have skill gaps that are overlooked because of this focus. People can also inadvertently hold themselves back in their career by focusing exclusively on the big skills and not filling in the gaps.
The first step to remedying this is to organize the skills into categories and then see what skills, if any, a person has in each category. I look for skills in the following categories when evaluating a candidate.
SKILLS YOU SELL
This is the main category, such as Java programmer, Oracle DBA, Project Manager, etc. Ideally everyone should have at least one secondary skill that can land them a consulting assignment. A consultant that can fill multiple roles will go farther and hitting the bench isn’t nearly as scary. This shows forward thinking and career development as they can better handle the ebbs and flows of their main skill set.
UTILITY CODING / SUPPORT
These are the skills that support your main skill set. It’s the Java Developer with Ant and Maven experience, the DBA with extensive OS scripting experience, etc. These skills show a commitment to their craft. It’s also the toolkit for the one-off requests, automation of repetitive tasks, etc. People with these skills are simply more productive and consistent in their work.
DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY
This is where we separate the cowboys/cowgirls from the professionals. Does the candidate have experience with a defined SDLC such as Agile, Lean, SAFe Six Sigma, etc.? Can they slot into the various methodologies of their clients?
Beyond SDLC knowledge, what’s their personal workflow management like? One of my favorite interview questions is “How do you organize your work and complete your tasks on time?” What I’m looking for is an answer like GTD, Bullet Journaling, the various planners, or even simple To Do lists. The person that can’t answer this question is typically the person who ‘forgets’ tasks and doesn’t perform consistently. I care very little for the details because these systems appeal to different people. I care a lot that they have one.
Finally, what is their testing methodology like? Do they practice Test Driven Design, do they build test suites or assertions into their code, do they have a plan for regression testing when making changes?
SOURCE CODE / DOCUMENT CONTROL
This is another area that separates the cowboys/cowgirls from the professionals. Does the candidate have experience with a source code control system? Are they versioning their code? If they have a laptop then are they backing up their local documents regularly? What about their phone? Not having a plan for failure shows a lack of professionalism.
EDUCATION / CERTIFICATIONS / ASSOCIATIONS
This is where a person can show a commitment to their craft. Can a person show that they are continuing to grow and improve their skills beyond their current job requirements? Hopefully they can show this. Now not everyone needs to have a huge list of certifications, but at the least they can show that they are reading books and/or following technical blogs from relevant software vendors.
These categories are focussed on software developers, but they can be adapted to project management or other technical fields. Take a step back and evaluate yourself or others more broadly.
