What are the effective ways to do staffing for various projects within an organisation (i.e., internal staffing)? Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
I like to think of staffing as if I am creating a sports team. Each member of the team plays a position (role) requiring specific talents and skills. Hopefully they have some versatility so they can be used in other positions if circumstances dictate. I have my first string players, plattoon players and am constantly scouting for talent. Most of all my team has to play as a team not as a bunch of individuals so chemestry plays a huge role in the hiring process. While I want input from existing team members the decision must rest with me as to the make-up of the team. One of the tools I use is a rating sheet that profiles potential candidates on various aspects of their ability to contribute to the team's success. These are Technical Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Platform skills (if appropriate), Chemistry, etc. Each of these areas are broken into specific items each with an importants weighting and criteria for scoring. For example if work experience in the field were an item being rated a 1 might = less than one year a 2 = 3 to 5 years, etc. If work experience was 10% of the decision and,on a scale of 1 to 5 a 5 was over 10 years experience then a perfect score in this area would have a weighted score of .5 (5 x 10%). The key here is to have a measurable way to rate a candidate so that objective decisions can be made. Rating interpersonal skills and team chemistry is more difficult to quantify but it can be done as well. For instance you might rate interpersonal skills in the active listening area base on percernt of air-time comsumed in conversations or how often the candidate used open ended questions to facilitate a conversation or how many times a candidate made leaps of abstractions, etc. The goal is to have a balanced evaluation of the candidate pool that reflects a total view of the value a candidate can contribute to the team's success. Saving Changes...
